Justin Fuente: "I feel better about our football team than at any point. ... We're not happy with not winning the ballgame, but my gosh, did our guys lay it on the line today." #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) November 14, 2020
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Well at least someone laid it on the line...
Fuente seems to have forgotten one of the fundamental tenets of management, and that is effort vs results. Effort is good. Effort is essential. Effort is not enough. Results are what count. There are many a team who are clapping and making a good effort, and going down the tubes.
Eh. You don't get results by not recognizing effort.
True. But effort alone is insufficient. To Fuente that's all that matters. He can have a no win season and be happy with the "effort"?
Where exactly did you hear that haha? He literally said that he was obviously "not happy with not winning the ballgame." There's nothing wrong with giving a shoutout to his players for their effort.
Praising effort while losing game after game is cognitive dissonance! The best coaches SIMULTANEOUSLY indicate what went wrong and what we need to do better while also motivating. Fuente was asked if Hooker held onto the ball too much. His comment? He said he's not going there. Really?!? Of course he held onto the ball too much!!! Welcome effort and also speak the truth. If you don't there will no improvement
It's insufficient for Fuente, sure. When he does a presser though, his audience is at least as much his own team as it is the media or the fans.
Our Fearless Leader inspires so much confidence.
Totally agree. He is like a K-5 teacher clapping and telling Johnny he did a good job while Johnny is failing miserably.
I feel better about the players
I feel the worst I have about this coaching staff
One day, the right coaches will be at the helm and the players will be put in a position to succeed.
Hooker has my admiration. His coaches, not so much.
You are definitely a huge hooker fan!
If I didn't already know you're a dad, this would be enough proof.
Wrecking isn't easy
He had a good run.
Hooker was given plays in the 4th qtr as a pocket passer, which he is not. We went away from who we are and what was working and boom, no offense. This is on whomever was calling offensive plays 2nd half.
Hooker could be a very good college QB with the right coaching.
Brad Cornelson isn't the right coach for...well...anyone really.
The fact that he still has moments of brilliance is testimony to his talent.
Outcoached yet again.
Here's a perfect example.......on third down in our first series, Hendon completes a pass for an apparent first down.....it gets replayed due to the injured player.......on the replay of third down, we run a qb draw for a 2 yard loss........raise your hand if you didn't see the qb draw coming.
Someone please drive fuente to baylor
I need to do a solo flight sooner or later...
via GIPHY
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 this made me laugh out loud. I needed that... Goodnight TKP
"but my gosh, did our guys lay it on the line today."
That's nice. Do have the team prepared to do even half of that against Wake and Liberty and the team is 6-2, ranked, and in a position to have a very good year.
Now = too little, too late.
But, but, but, Covid. Cause you know only Tech has that issue right now...
There is literally knowing to gain this season. We can't play in the ACCCG. There is no minimum wins for bowl games. Coach like your job is on the line (cause it is). You've wasted one of our most talent teams in years.
Fuente should be fired on Monday morning.
Why wait that long?
Whit Babcock: "One month, $2.5 mil; see me in a month...."
this. I think the season is cemented, and there's nothing that can be done to change the impression left on the fans. The fiscally responsible thing to do now is let the season finish and save a few million per year by waiting 30 more days.
I can think of 12.5 million reasons that will not happen...
Gotta weigh that against the cost of driving thousands of us (and the associated donations) away, some of us never to return, as well as the new fans they are NOT creating by putting a shitty product on the field. The Hokies were good when I was a teenager, but I was lucky that Vick and I got to Blacksburg the same year. If I got there this year...yeah, I love watching some of the players on this team, but the overall product is bleh. Only one person is on the hook for that, and Whit is on the hook for that guy. Hope Whit learns a lesson about buy out clauses from this.
See Lt Rob's comment above.
Serious question: if whit tires to negotiate down the buyout and Fuente refuses (as is his contractual right), should the athletic department leak that fact to turn public opinion (more) against Fuente and try to pressure him out? Or is that put us in way too bad of a light?
Personally I don't care who our coach is. I just want to be able to enjoy our games. First half yesterday was enjoyable. Second half was incredibly frustrating seeing the defense keep them in check enough and the offense flounder. Shades of the stinespring years
I'm speculating, but if I were in Whit's position I would have already tried. That leads me to a host of conclusions.
If the conversation hadn't happened already, Fuente would be coaching with a lot more sense of urgency. The on-field play doesn't reflect that.
Therefore,
Absolutely not. No agent would let any coach come here
If we are all thinking alike none of us are thinking. Legit question, not asking rhetorically:
What is the counter-argument for not firing Fuente (aside from the buyout)?
What does he bring to the table?
The reason I'm asking this question, is that I want to see how strong the argument for firing him is.
To me its the students that will get lost in the transition
I think Fuente can overachieve with subpar talent. Take away actual expectations, he can get good numbers out of quarterbacks that wouldn't play elsewhere. By all accounts he runs a clean program.
If we can overcome the financial strain, I can't see his strengths overcoming the negative of fan apathy and recruiting spiral.
I think what pisses me off the most though is that if boosters can cough up money to fire a coach, why cant they do the same to hire one. Our staff salaries are laughable.
Because when VT had one of the highest-paid staffs in the country and started to fade, boosters' concerns were met with "10 wins a year". That falls into the fool me once, fool me twice category. The promotion of Stinespring to OC from TE coach in 2002 had to have been met with a lot of skepticism and that caused boosters to go into wait and see mode. Year after year, VT wins 10 games a season, but it was clear there were problems not being addressed with respect to the offense. Needing more money when that money isn't used to replace an OC that was in way over his head would give anyone pause about how responsibly and competently that money would be spent. Those concerns are completely warranted a la Tennessee, FSU, Texas etc... Who's ROI on major $$$ has yet to be seen or even seem imminent. It's easier to pony up one time cash to "fix" a problem then to pony up continuous cash to prolong it.
The frustrating part is that we've seen what we can do with talented players. 2016 he came in and we dominated everyone. Yes we still had a the wtf loss to syracuse that year and to GT as well but other than that we crushed people and were as close as we could hope to winning the ACCCG against a top tier Clemson team.
We had to start rebuilding after that and it's never been as close to that year as we would like. If it's just the recruiting then Whit needs to put as much as he can to recruiting to support the program. I don't know who comes in and does anything different. Maybe someone does and that will be fine. I'd be just as happy if JF can right the ship and start winning. But it starts with recruiting. JHam and company didn't get a chance to go on the road due to covid. I know we all think JF can't relate to recruits but how do we know that?? It wasn't like we were reeling in top recruits before him. When we were it was before the age of social media so it was easier to keep good in-state talent in state. SM has basically erased those borders and allow recruits to be seen by all in the country.
I don't know what the fix is. There isn't a coach out there that I can think of that would excite me coming in at the moment. I just know I don't want to be come the coaching carousel that other teams have become.
The counterpoint? My understanding is that Fuente laid-out everything that was going to transpire with the program before he accepted the original offer from Whit. If everything that we have witnessed was forecasted before he even took the job then Whit has some belief that Fuente understands what direction he's heading, and he's still working to get the right pieces in place (coaching and players). Basic multi-year strategy planning, and if he's on target with what he intended to do and the expected outcomes then Whit would have an incentive to keep him on because success is allegedly around the corner.
This is a good point. We don't know what conversations Whit and Fu have had. Fu may have told Whit that there are going to be some rough years ahead of us w/o X, Y, Z. If Fu is relatively on track with that then there is no reason to let him go b/c people who don't get paid to coach football are trying to make coaching decisions without the inside info.
I think if any part of their conversation involved losing to both ODU and Liberty or having bottom-level Recruiting classes in the ACC in his 5th season, Whit probably would have hung up the phone and moved on...
How about continually looking like an incompetent boob with clock management? Probably didn't come up I'm guessing.
Look, 2017 and 2018 were the "get a pass" years while Fuente was getting his players and system in place. This was supposed to be the "payoff" year and, excuses aside, there just isn't nearly enough positive here to support keeping JF around.
Edit: grammar fixin'
CJF is a straight shooting coach, and runs a clean program. He has rebounded to lead a team that seems to be all pulling together, without apparent drama or dissension He seems to me to be a genuine blue collar, hardworking guy. I think the Hard Smart Tough mantra genuinely fits his personality and to some extent the team's.
Nonetheless, we're in year five, on a downward trajectory; and we lost to LIBERTY, December 16- Push the Button.
When even your best isn't good enough....sad
Well, typically there is a team where there best wasn't good enough in every game. Someone has to lose. You guys have fun burning it down though.
I know all the attention is on the big whistle. Would your sentiment towards him change at all if he let go of Corn and brought in a new OC? Vice has our line clicking, our RBs are great right now, we have a couple of QBs who can do good things (though 2 of the top 3 are not able to be trusted throwing, which is troublesome), WRs are decent. The talent appears to be mostly there right now. Our offense has been mostly decent all year, but the playcalling in the second half yesterday was pretty...blech. The defense, I am highly frustrated with, but I can understand some of the COVID/new DC/system etc problems especially with no time to really instill it in the offseason that JHam would have had.
TL;DR: Corn out and new OC in...would you change our opinion on Fu for another season?
Too little, too late at this point.
The time to dump Corn was 2 years ago or certainly last year when Kill marked him as dud.
But we couldn't dump our buddy and now we have former players lighting Corn up on Twitter during games.
We're so far in the hole from a Recruiting standpoint that we aren't nearly a coordinator away from solving it. Our current strategy of Roster building seems to be.."hit the Portal and hope we get lucky." It's not tenable for the long-term. Fuente is not a good Recruiter and has not surrounded himself with other coaches who can make up for his lack of ability in Recruiting.
All this is before even beginning to get into actual Gameday issues--gameplanning, playcalling, and clock management--all of which have been subpar as well.
There's just too much wrong here and the direction of the Program is clearly downward. There isn't enough worth saving, a new OC would be a bandaid, but this thing just needs to be taken down to the studs.
Also, this feeds on itself. Recruits see Fuente for who he is and what he has done, and they steer clear. And this leads to a downward spiral. Bad results beget bad recruiting. And bad recruiting begets even worse results. Fuente's goose is cooked. He won't be fired due to the buyout. But he is never gonna build a strong team.
Agree with all of this.
This is a great point ... think about how bad we'd be if we didn't land Herbert in the portal this year, who also surprised everyone at how incredible he'd be
No, it's clear we have a bigger issue.
After 2018 I thought JF was facing the decision of his career wrt Cornelson. That was his chance to cut him loose and bring in an OC who knows how to break down film, can recruit, has a feel for play calling and can make in-game adjustments. I said as much back at the end of 2018 too. I argued that Fuente could save his job and his career by getting rid of Cornelson then. However, if he decided to keep Cornelson then he better make sure that he succeeded with flying colors. My hypothesis at the time was that if Fuente kept Cornelson the offense would continue to flounder, the team would fail to improve as a whole and we'd be, essentially, in the exact position we find ourselves today. I said it then and I'll say it again. Cornelson is single-handedly destroying JFs credibility as an offensive guru. I really believe that JF knows how to coach football and has all of the attributes one would look for in a great OC. But for some reason that I can't wrap my head around he's keeping a completely incompetent OC around to his own detriment. I'm not sure what is blinding him to this but whatever it is it is a blind spot far too big to be successful as a head coach.
It's too late to save face now. That ship sailed in 2018. If Fuente couldn't see it then he's not fit to be a P5 HC. Cut the head off the snake. The entire staff must go (and that makes me sad because I feel the defensive staff is really getting shafted here. I was excited about TNT and JHam didn't get a fair chance to prove himself, IMO). The next coach needs to have complete control over staff decisions for the entire team. No strings.
If Corny was fired, I would give JF another year. COVID has been an impact, we blamed 3 of our losses on the defense who had an new staff, new scheme, and wasn't allowed to practice. Not to mention one of the star players opted out.
It seems like the overall plan for offense from JF can work, but our QB's have just had really poor development (Corny's job) and the actually game plans and play calls have been very suspect (Corny's job). Clock management is on both of them, as some of the delays in the 2 minute drill might come from Corny not calling down the plays in a timely manner.
Not to mention another year is another 2.5 million off the buyout. But a new OC/QB Coach is REQUIRED and should be executed before Dec. 16 if he wants to keep his job.
100% agree and I think the replacement we should go after is Tim Beck over at NC State. He has an long resume of offensive success (including the KU Orange bowl team *ducks*). He also took last year's dumpster fire offense for NC State and turned it into a good one (even with a pretty bad QB in Hockman). At least from an X's and O's and film standpoint he would be light years ahead of Cornelson.
You know the more I think about it, the more our situation reminds me of Al Golden's time as head coach at Miami Hurricanes. Everyone outside of the program agreed that the main problem was Miami Defensive Coordinator Mark D'Onofrio. People kept saying "Fire your DC", but Golden wouldn't because of their friendship. Well, D'Onofrio helped to bring down Al Golden as Head Coach at Miami. Looks like Cornelson may do the same to Fuente.
This is so accurate it is painful.
Fellow Hokie, I share you pain and I want you to know I took no joy in writing that post. But the picture sure is coming into focus...
I'm glad covid is giving the players an extra year of eligibility, cause my gosh, what a way to waste such talent with such abysmal coaching.
You're assuming people don't bolt. How many of our best players could declare for the draft or grad transfer to greener pastures? Herbert, Hooker, QP4, Turner, Waller, Hewitt, Ashby, Hollifield, Deablo, Lecitus Smith, TJ Jackson, Darrisaw, Hoffman, Mitchell, Bradburn, Brian Johnson, off the top of my head. New coaching staff is going to have to sell a LOT of dudes on sticking around. And I saw your follow on post about Artis and Debose. Transfer Portal is going to be busy this year.
Bottom line, I think we're going to be ass in 2021 no matter what. It's just a matter if we're using that year to build for the future or running the clock down on his buyout.
Is there anyway we can get fuente and Cornelson to opt out?