Diaco did not inherit a complete disaster. Quite the opposite.

[Nostical]

The good news is if we win big on Friday night all of this will be forgotten.

 

[Pudge]

No. No. No. This was a team that had a rough season then bailed themselves out. Won three straight. Showed a lot of character. They were back on the right path.

Diaco came in. Decided to do a complete do over. That resulted in 2-10.

Why is this so hard to understand? It simple. Diaco did not inherit a complete mess. People need to stop jumping all over the kids. They are not a bunch if junk. They were down and got back up. The fact that Diaco wanted to do a complete tear down and build is not their fault.

And it is probably too early to make a judgement on whether Diaco's way was the right way or not. We'll see. I have NOT concluded anything about Diaco. But the 2-10 is on him not the kids. We'll see.

Back on the right path?

Is there anything about the poor (in contrast to other FBS college football programs) weight training and fitness regimen that says right path? Do you have any doubt (given your Pro cred, you have to remember the Pro Day numbers) that what we heard about the Strength and Conditioning Program was true?

I give TJ Weist credit. I give Casey Cochran credit. And I give the entire roster gold stars. I think it was a complete mess. My opinion. There is little from the first August camp that Diaco ran to the first 4 games that was more horrifying than seeing the level of competition we provided in all three phases. You had to duct tape things.

 

[whaler11]

No. No. No. This was a team that had a rough season then bailed themselves out. Won three straight. Showed a lot of character. They were back on the right path.

Diaco came in. Decided to do a complete do over. That resulted in 2-10.

Why is this so hard to understand? It simple. Diaco did not inherit a complete mess. People need to stop jumping all over the kids. They are not a bunch if junk. They were down and got back up. The fact that Diaco wanted to do a complete tear down and build is not their fault.

And it is probably too early to make a judgement on whether Diaco's way was the right way or not. We'll see. I have NOT concluded anything about Diaco. But the 2-10 is on him not the kids. We'll see.

Do you have Jimmy S on ignore? He blew your entire theory out of the water in one post.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

Facts tend to confuse Pal.

The most disturbing thing about this year's team is the defense.
It's has gotten worse of late. Good D and we have a least one more win.
With a good chance at 5 this weeks
What is the problem?
Even against Navy ,they made some adjustments at the half.

The last couple of weeks they looked like a group of underclassmen.

 

[hexlub]

I hate myself for reading this entire thread.

But have you waited all day for Sunday night?

 

[Palatine]

Back on the right path?

Is there anything about the poor (in contrast to other FBS college football programs) weight training and fitness regimen that says right path? Do you have any doubt (given your Pro cred, you have to remember the Pro Day numbers) that what we heard about the Strength and Conditioning Program was true?

I give TJ Weist credit. I give Casey Cochran credit. And I give the entire roster gold stars. I think it was a complete mess. My opinion. There is little from the first August camp that Diaco ran to the first 4 games that was more horrifying than seeing the level of competition we provided in all three phases. You had to duct tape things.

The kids were not responsibility for the strength coach. And he seemed to do a fine job with Jones and Davis. I like the new guy. Balis is an upgrade. But this is way off the point.

As for our competitiveness in the first four games -exhibition season- that was a result of decisions made by Diaco for the long term of the program. Some of them were head scratches like sitting Davis on third downs. That is why we weren't competitive. The mess IMHO was largely of his making. Maybe he's genius, too early to tell.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

The kids were not responsibility for the strength coach. And he seemed to do a fine job with Jones and Davis. I like the new guy. Balis is an upgrade. But this is way off the point.

As for our competitiveness in the first four games -exhibition season- that was a result of decisions made by Diaco for the long term of the program. Some of them were head scratches like sitting Davis on third downs. That is why we weren't competitive. The mess IMHO was largely of his making. Maybe he's genius, too early to tell.

Would you kindly address the rebuttal that we lost 25 kids who contributed versus Memphis in 2013?

 

[Husky25]

Would you kindly address the rebuttal that we lost 25 kids who contributed versus Memphis in 2013?

As I said earlier, Pal is only interest in the name on the front of the jersey. The experience, ability, and discipline of the players filling the uniform is immaterial.

 

[Palatine]

Would you kindly address the rebuttal that we lost 25 kids who contributed versus Memphis in 2013?

Yes, that is many players. But I believe that was some of that was part of Diaco's plan. Part of his tear down. Making space for the kind of players he wanted. It certainly robbed the team of any depth. The bigger issue is how many scholarships were left unfilled. The coach has a direct effect on that number.

 

[businesslawyer]

The kids were not responsibility for the strength coach. And he seemed to do a fine job with Jones and Davis. I like the new guy. Balis is an upgrade. But this is way off the point.

As for our competitiveness in the first four games -exhibition season- that was a result of decisions made by Diaco for the long term of the program. Some of them were head scratches like sitting Davis on third downs. That is why we weren't competitive. The mess IMHO was largely of his making. Maybe he's genius, too early to tell.

Your logic needs to shoot for unassailable rather than unbelievable. The fact that two people survived a strength program and got to the NFL is not proof that the strength program was o.k. It's not even evidence of that. It's only proof that Jones and Davis were good enough to survivie the issues and get to the League.

 

[huskysupporter]

Yes, that is many players. But I believe that was some of that was part of Diaco's plan. Part of his tear down. Making space for the kind of players he wanted. It certainly robbed the team of any depth. The bigger issue is how many scholarships were left unfilled. The coach has a direct effect on that number.

I am 100% convinced that your sole purpose on this board is to generate clicks and views. Obviously nothing compares to your posts in the cesspool, but this one merits consideration.

I think Coach Diaco has not done a good job this year, but to claim the cupboard wasn't bare when he started? Crazy.

 

[cohenzone]

The most disturbing thing about this year's team is the defense.
It's has gotten worse of late. Good D and we have a least one more win.
With a good chance at 5 this weeks
What is the problem?
Even against Navy ,they made some adjustments at the half.

The last couple of weeks they looked like a group of underclassmen.

There's a difference between questioning coaching decisions - fair game - and saying that the cupboard wasn't bare. Sure there were some decent players, but - as has been pointed out - the 3 games won under Weist were not exactly against very good teams. Diaco was not coming into a good team situation and had no players he had recruited. Physically, his first team was not competitive, I've said for three weeks now that as erratic as our O has been this year, I thought it was ahead of the D, which has no scary playmakers at all. It may look like we regressed on D, but I thinks it's more the case that we've faced better offenses, including USF which managed 45 against SU. I'm with those who wonder why we don't rush LB's or D Backs once in a while to mess with the QB's comfort level, especially since we don't have the talent on the D line to raise havoc. But to say Diaco had a a decent cupboard last year is totally out of whack with reality. I give the guy at least through next year, remembering that even then, his own recruits will be underclassmen. I would like to see them adjust the D schemes to account for mismatches against us physically and talent wise. I think I give up on the O line. Remarkable we move the ball decently anyway.

 

[whaler11]

I'm not sure why people miss the obvious.

The defense is good against bad offenses like Army, UCF and Missouri and bad against good offenses like Cincinnati.

I know everyone has a better scheme than the defensive coordinator who took Cinci to within 1 second of a BCS title game and took Notre Dame to a BCS title game. Maybe defensive scheme can't make up the player differences.

 

[Tdaley]

Its pure speculation as to what Weist would have done if he was keep on as head coach. Could he recruit? Its not known. Did he do a good job as interim coach? I thought so but his 3 wins were against the weakest teams in the conference. Would he have produced more wins last year than Diaco did? Its hard to say but probably would have won a game or two more only because he would have kept his system in place and not made the radical changes that Dicao made. But after 3 losing season in a row, I don't know how anyone could conclude that the talent level here wasn't abysmal. Whether it was Weist, Diaco or someone else, this program was in desperate need of a major infusion of talent. All the great coaching in the world isn't going to change that fact. No hire was going to fix things in a year at talent depleted school in the northeast that is known for its basketball not its football. Its a very difficult job with no easy fix. Diaco will be given 3 years to turn things around because it will take at least that long to fix our program. Some of the opinions on the boneyard are colored somewhat by the Edsall years where he complied a 500 record during his tenure with teams that seem to overachieve annually. He built teams that hit hard and could play power football which was a great advantage in the cold weather of November and December. But those teams struggled against speedy offensive minded teams and for the most part had trouble throwing the football. We just didn't have the speed or the athletes to compete with those some of teams. With the changing landscape of college football you are going to have to be able to recruit the kind of players with the size and speed to compete the offensive juggernauts in own conference. That means throwing the football and defending great passing teams. We don't have those players yet. There are some signs ( not conclusions) that Diaco is improving our talent base ( at wide receivers especially) but its too early to tell. He has recruited kids that haven't even seen the field yet. His is working on only his second full recruiting class. Its more than fair to say that the jury is still out on Diaco. I don't think its even remotely fair to say he hasn't done a good job here. We just don't really know yet. You have to give him more time. Coach Saben isn't showing up in Storrs any time soon with a class of 5 star recruits.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Diaco came in. Decided to do a complete do over. That resulted in 2-10.

Yes he did. Guess what, most coaches do. His name is on this and his future will be determined in large part to whether he succeeds or fails here. He views his job as building a program, not merely fielding a team.

And it is probably too early to make a judgement on whether Diaco's way was the right way or not. We'll see. I have NOT concluded anything about Diaco. But the 2-10 is on him not the kids. We'll see.

Yes it is too early to judge but it appears that you already have. The 2-10 is on him as the decision was made to get a number of younger players experience in order to a) see what we did have and b) make the team better two and three seasons down the road. Could we have won more games with a different approach? I don't know as while Army would be the obvious (and only truly debatable) loss that could have been turned into a win, the same change in approach may well have put us on the wrong end of the game against UCF (before anyone yells about the USF game keep in mind that the first two times we had the ball we handed it to them in scoring position. The change to a turtle basically remaining in his shell got us back in that game and kept us there until the end).

Diaco is going to build it his way. You need to accept this.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

Yes, that is many players. But I believe that was some of that was part of Diaco's plan. Part of his tear down. Making space for the kind of players he wanted. It certainly robbed the team of any depth. The bigger issue is how many scholarships were left unfilled. The coach has a direct effect on that number.

So Diaco ran them off. The majority of them didn't graduate or get hurt. Would you kindly name names of the kids that Diaco ran off and tell us how many wins those kids cost is last year? I'm curious how valuable Tyree Clark was. 2 wins? Maybe 3?

 

[junglehusky]

Maybe the program wasn't a complete train wreck. But it was bad, anybody can see it was bad. Arguing over whether or not it qualified as "train wreck" is a useless exercise in hair-splitting. If there had been significantly more pieces in place UConn would have won more than 2 games last year, whether the coach was BD or someone else.

 

[freescooter]

Well there are a couple of things here that I think folks are ignoring in trying to defend Diaco. First this is college football so losing players to graduation makes us exactly like every school in the country. Second no coach developed his strategy based on who might get injured so you really need to forget about injuries in game 1 or especially game 4 or 5. Good grief. Then there is no question that UConn came out of 2013 on a positive note despite the mess that had existed. Diaco elected to squander that positive energy with the idea that by starting from ground zero he could get further in the long run. Given what we have seen so far he has maybe gotten us close to where we were at the end of 2013, able to beat some bad teams, but it remains to be seen if we will get much beyond that. People post here as if it is guaranteed that somehow our offensive line will figure out how to block by Setember or we'll find a back who can actually run it inside or a linebacker who can cover or take proper angles.

 

[whaler11]

I'm struggling to understand why beating a couple of bad teams in November would translate to playing BYU and Boise 10 months later. Especially when Jimmy showed you how many of the players who won those games were around in Sept 2014.

 

[mdkhusky]

literally the dumbest post in boneyard history atleast that ive seen. we beat 3-9 memphis, 6-7 rutgers and 2-10 memphis. look at the players we lost too including our qb

 

[Drew]

Pasqualoni for AD! DeLeone for Associate AD!!!

 

[J187Money]

Seriously. How many of those last 3 games does TJ win with Boyle at QB?

 

[whaler11]

Seriously. How many of those last 3 games does TJ win with Boyle at QB?

4

 

[J187Money]

4

Well played.

 

[freescooter]

Seriously. How many of those last 3 games does TJ win with Boyle at QB?

And how many superbowls do the Patriots win with Garofolo at quarterback? That really is irrelevant to the argument. At least going into camp he had Cochran as his quarterback but he really wasn't impressed. He pulled him in the first drive inside the red zone because Whitmer threw a better intermediate ball he claimed. He played 50 plus guys in that game. He made s decision to scrap everything and start over. That is a legitimate approach but it wasn't the only approach he could have taken. And it isn't guaranteed to succeed either. It might and I hope it does but the jury is out.