He's going to be the coach next year. If they show little progress next year I will be leading the charge carrying a torch and pitchfork. My hot take:
When he was hired, I thought it was a decent hire. I was a bit thrown off with his act. I was worried we were getting a used car salesman or a PT Barnum type rather than a football coach.
In year 1, I was a big critic. Thought he did a terrible job. The red flags were all over the place.
Year 2 I thought he improved a lot. Still some head scratching stuff but now I'm thinking a lot of our warts were covered up by our excellent turnover margin.
Year 3, I've seen little progress. The OL has played better recently, but the boneheaded Shiite is way too common.
I'm quickly losing faith. I'm starting to think we got more used car salesman than football coach. Diaco needs to can the PR salesman crap and needs to focus on winning games. Once you starting winning THEN you can play PT Barnum.
I was not thrilled with the hire but talked myself into it after the fact and defended his throw away of year one as part of a long-term plan.
Year 2 was an improvement, but in hindsight it was mainly due to (1) actually trying to win some of the games and (2) a lot of fortunate bounces. There were, however, signs of competence and a reason to hope for continued improvement. The bowl game performance should have been a big red flag at the time.
Now, in year 3, the defense has failed to deal with the departures of two of its better players and looks to have regressed significantly. The offense, despite improving pass protection from the OL over the course of the season and one of the better receivers in the conference, is still inept. The crazy decisions are still there. Even with the stalled development, we have had the opportunity to win at least two games in which mismanagement by the coaching staff has caused us to miss out on those opportunities.
Next year we lose our best offensive player and two of our three best players (and perhaps 3 of 4) on defense. The only reasons that we would be better next year are if (1) The guys currently taking redshirts are significantly better than the guys playing now and (2) the coaching staff stops leaving games on the field with blatant mismanagement. We have Missouri coming here, and we are at a Virginia team that is likely to be better in year 2 of Mendenhall's regime. I'm extremely concerned that year 4 of the Diaco era will look much like year 3 of the P era.