Edsall talks talent deficiency

[CL82]

Grinders is an acronym for "Tough but less talented than what we were trying to recruit".

 

[Ldandy]

By that line of thought changing any members of the coach staff would always be a waste of time.

Many are reading too much into this. We have simply changed the messaging and it’s that grind will matter. Not all programs sell grind. Not all kids want grind.

Honestly you are the one reading something into a bunch of 2 minute videos. You asserted that Jucos and grad transfers would potentially eliminate UCONN from consideration because of the "grind" that they see on these videos. I disagree and contend that nearly every school, and because you asked, yes teams in The AAC put out the same type of media. It's great if the current team is buying into it, but I recall a lot of enthusiasm surrounding Balis early in his tenure as well. JMO the biggest handicap last year wasn't talent and strength alone, but instead dreadfully awful coaching and fingers pointed everywhere but where they should have been.

 

[kemba]

I’m drinking the kool-aid that the S&C program has taken a strong turn for the better.

But even that is way too much. They are pump up videos. That's it.

 

[Chief00]

Completely agree. I laugh when I see fans "drinking the Kool-Aid" about the S&C program. When you can't recruit "talent" - you recruit "grinders". Grinders is an acronym for "Tough but less talented than what we were trying to recruit". UConn S&C was EXCELLENT under Balis. Excuse me, where did Balis go from UCONN - oh yeah, Notre Dame and the FCS play-offs. We NEVER had the hamstrings and soft tissue injuries under Balis that followed Klein (fact). WE didn't have TALENT pumping those weights and running those sprints.
King is the shiny new toy that Klein was. Who hired Klein...Who hired Crocker? I hope we got a gem with King, BUT....only time will tell.
In the meanwhile, can RE2 STOP comparing 2019 to 2009. The AAC will never be the vehicle that the Big East was. RE2 had better adjust to the reality of 2019 and quit blaming the players ( and in doing so , chase guys like Tyler Davis away) and have just a speck of accountability. I want to see how HIS players DEVELOP. I've heard all I need to hear about how terrible the roster was when he got here. Coach 'em up dude. We HAVE looked out-coached by every offense for 2 years. 2 YEARS. You tell me what guys got better over those seasons.
Finally we beat UCF by 40 points in '15. They stunk, we went to a bowl game. Then they hired a DUDE and we lost by 7 in '16. Boat race since then. The Dude coached em up and changed the course of the program. I don't expect that or anything close to that when all I get is comparisons to 2009. Get a dude and don't recyle with a dude that WALKED OUT on you next time.

True, Edsall needs to take responsibility for Klein and Crocker. The Klein hire was influenced by the assistant AD but Edsall 100% owns the Crocker disaster. It would have been a smart and courageous move cutting the loses after year 1 with Crocker but unfortunately there was still a scapegoat to blame (Diaco’s players). I was told my an assistant coach, who will remain nameless, that Diaco wanted the all round student/athletes guys that ND in theory could attract and sign. However, when it came to the trade offs UConn invariably needed to deal with - the thing he would first trade off was athletic talent much to the frustration of some on his staff.

 

[AndOne]

By that line of thought changing any members of the coach staff would always be a waste of time.

Many are reading too much into this. We have simply changed the messaging and it’s that grind will matter. Not all programs sell grind. Not all kids want grind.

You're jumping the gun. #BoutDatGrindLife is next year. This year it's still #RaiseTheBar, since #RiseAsOne crashed and burned and #REStorred is on life support.

 

[Excalibur]

PP was a bad hire, Diaco was a program killer.

We could have survived Diaco if he didn't follow PP.

 

[Husky68]

This is how bad it was last year- when we had guys in the right spots(which was rare), they were physically manhandled in 1 -1 situations. Unlike pro football- you can replace guys with similar or better players(physically). In college, kids mature- as they get older they get stronger and even faster. Since 5 star dudes ain't walking through that door, you coach up and develop your younger players. There is no comparison to UCF and what Frost did. We don't have the recruiting territory to draw from. For people to have problems with Randy's recruiting - look at what Diaco did. Unless UConn is paying $4m a year + for a dude(think Les Miles or someone with instant credibility, this is the path. Randy doesn't keep comparing it - he gets asked questions that compare it. Difference is, he did it the first time. And his talent evaluation hasn't gotten worse. it will take time, but this year we will see the upward trend. Bank on it.

Let's see upward trend from no FCS victories, record setting BAD defense and 113th out of 129th scoring offense that lost its OC and promoted the existing OL coach to OC with hope that he'll get it done better than either of the previous 2 guys HCRE2.0 hired.

Hmmmmm, I see why you expect an upward trend.

 

[Exit 4]

You're jumping the gun. #BoutDatGrindLife is next year. This year it's still #RaiseTheBar, since #RiseAsOne crashed and burned and #REStorred is on life support.

You are right. They shouldn't have a new motto every season for the players, coaches and for the public to rally around.

You asserted that Jucos and grad transfers would potentially eliminate UCONN from consideration because of the "grind" that they see on these videos. I disagree and contend that nearly every school, and because you asked, yes teams in The AAC put out the same type of media.

Yeah, I do think tough love Edsall's more public campaign to rally the kids to compete against one another at S&C sets a tone that wasn't necessarily here in the same public way the past two recruiting seasons. And yes I do think the stonger messaging from the program to compete internally will turn off some older kids that want to coast on talent it being "their turn" alone. Its not a far fetched concept.

 

[gtcam]

True, Edsall needs to take responsibility for Klein and Crocker. The Klein hire was influenced by the assistant AD but Edsall 100% owns the Crocker disaster. It would have been a smart and courageous move cutting the loses after year 1 with Crocker but unfortunately there was still a scapegoat to blame (Diaco’s players). I was told my an assistant coach, who will remain nameless that Diaco wanted the all round student/athletes guys that ND in theory could attract and sign. However, when it came to the trade offs UConn invariably needed to deal with - the thing he would first trade off was athletic talent much to the frustration of some on his staff.

I agree with the Crocker issue
You needed an assistant coach to shed light on the obvious path of RedPants???? C'mon Chief00 many of us were decrying that philosophy in year 2 of Lil' Bobby Red Pants

 

[Palatine]

We could have survived Diaco if he didn't follow PP.

We could have survived PP if he didn't bring along DeLeone

 

[Chief00]

I agree with the Crocker issue
You needed an assistant coach to shed light on the obvious path of RedPants???? C'mon Chief00 many of us were decrying that philosophy in year 2 of Lil' Bobby Red Pants

True, he validated what many of us thought.

 

[Chief00]

The reality is Diaco could sell himself in an job interview (eg. UConn, Nebraska) but yet couldn’t sell an 18 year old on the program.

 

[gioff2323]

It does not matter at all, but PP was the program killer, not BD. Hiring PP was a loud signal to the so-called powers that the Ville better understood the dynamics of sports (football buys, drives, and decides who gets on the bus) and was far more committed to making that happen. Diaco was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Had we hired a stud post-RE .......

Oh well, that ship sailed.

 

[ktuck911]

Pasqualoni was a “state pride “ thing. Bad hire but the athletic community in the state was going to back him to the hilt. Not unlike how most were slow to pick up on Olli’s deficiencies because he was “family.”

Enough with the Ollie bashing. He's the last good thing we had for either program in the past 5 years thanks to that National Championship he helped us get in 2014. Let it go.
Fact is we've sucked horribly in both since then. No more passing the blame. Let's start winning now with what we now have. Can't go back. Move fwd.

 

[Pudge]

Effort and Resilience is a Talent

I am big one on Comparables. I talk that ... though I am not a real estate Appraiser. When I look at Randy Edsall today and then Randy Edsall in 2002, I see lots of the same thing.

Crocker & Klein? Seems that Edsall recycled through a bunch of OC's and Assistants in those first few years. One became HC of Western Carolina and another HC of Davidson. Etc. And Darrell Bevell who became a NFL OC. His coaching staff that we saw from 2002 to 2009 included a few from the start (cough Terry Richardson, Todd Orlando) ... but most of the core (Hughes, Mike Foley, Moorhead etc) were picked up. Maybe Crocker emerges (from this Fail) to something really good.

My central point is that Edsall should be acknowledged as a solid talent evaluator. In 2002, look through that roster ... and think where those kids came from. Maurice Lloyd, Fincher, ONeil Wilson, Oyi, Terry Caulley, Perkins. Those talents are still available today. At the under the rock searches. So ... do you think Edsall has lost anything on his Fastball? Do you think Spanos, Dottin-Carter, Smith, Giufre can recruit? I have no instant hocus-pocus answer. But the PP and Diaco era has to make you think. They both ran us into a brick wall. At least I have HOPE with a renewed Edsall today. (and as those who have known me since cubbybear, HCRE has a talent for saying some asinine things)

 

[Pudge]

Enough with the Ollie bashing. He's the last good thing we had for either program in the past 5 years thanks to that National Championship he helped us get in 2014. Let it go.
Fact is we've ducked horribly in both since then. No more passing the blame. Let's start winn in ng now with what we now have. Can't go back. Move fwd.

Totally agree. I am sad about Ollie. It was a descent personally and professionally like few we will ever see. AND, I won't accept that he didn't have talent and positive qualities. You simply do not win 6 games in MM like that. There is no other comparable story in modern College Hoop.

 

[HuskyHawk]

It does not matter at all, but PP was the program killer, not BD. Hiring PP was a loud signal to the so-called powers that the Ville better understood the dynamics of sports (football buys, drives, and decides who gets on the bus) and was far more committed to making that happen. Diaco was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Had we hired a stud post-RE ..

Oh well, that ship sailed.

I don't agree with this. The guy we thought was ancient then, is the current DC of the Dallas Cowboys Detroit Lions. PP knows football, and knows defense. The real problem was they he brought along his buddies and didn't have an OC that could be effective in the modern college game.

But his players were decent and his teams largely competitive. Diaco got to a bowl with PP's players and proceeded to lose games with stupidity and recruit horribly. A solid coach following PP would have left us in decent shape.

 

[ktuck911]

Totally agree. I am sad about Ollie. It was a descent personally and professionally like few we will ever see. AND, I won't accept that he didn't have talent and positive qualities. You simply do not win 6 games in MM like that. There is no other comparable story in modern College Hoop.

I used to be like the person I responded to when I said "Enough with the Ollie bashing". I used to be that critic, overly anal about the success factor. Until a colleague of mine, who grew up in the same town I did. He grew up in the same neighborhood as former World Boxing Champ Travis Simms (of Norwalk, CT). After he had a few fights (very few in title defenses) I questioned it. My colleague vehemently got at me. He was like "So! He's the champ. It's a fact." I still tried to explain my thought, and he didn't give two craps where I was going with it. Then I had to think about it over time. In hindsight, the fact that remains. We have been CHAMPS. No matter how much you want to scrutinize what's been going on the last 5 years, the FACT is we won the Championship. So, for us to just simply write it off like it never happened is totally asinine. You can't take away the fact that we are champions. So, what do you do? Embrace that simple fact.
Time to get back to working to get that feeling of being champs once again. We were once Big East champs in football. Let's do it again in the AAC... Why not us??? This very moment? Maybe not, but why not in the not so distant future??? It's an us against the world mentality right now. Wagons are circled.

 

[Waquoit]

But his players were decent and his teams largely competitive. Diaco got to a bowl with PP's players

PP couldn't get to a bowl game with PP's players. He was pathetic. His teams underachieved. He coached a bowl team to 5-7 and it got worse from there.

 

[J187Money]

Two more UConn players were drafted in 2010, four in 2011, and by 2014 there were 22 Huskies on active NFL rosters. “You look back,” Edsall said, “and you say, Holy ...”

In 2011 we were told "the cupboard was bare" by Dez and the Courant. That Edsall had left Pasquoloni nothing.

Let's do this again - how many of the 22 were defensive players? And when PP was here with Don Brown - we had a top 10 ranked defense. We literally didn't score a touchdown in like 3-4 games, IIRC. Had we had merely an inept offense we would have won 8 games a year.

It's almost impossible that Buffalo went 17-32 with Khalil Mack on their defense. How is that possible?

The cupboard, as it relates offense, was bare.

 

[Pudge]

The reality is Diaco could sell himself in an job interview (eg. UConn, Nebraska) but yet couldn’t sell an 18 year old on the program.

Where we are in the world ...

Sell? We get in the room with a 4 Star or 3 Star ... I read: you need to blow him away with skill to get him to Storrs.

The Truth is ... you need to see that Darius Butler playing QB in Coral Springs or Will Beatty learning his first years in OL in York, PA or Kendall Reyes or Ryan Griffin playing munchkins in New Hampshire AND have superior evaluation skills. Those kids still exist; particularly in this proximate region. Disco Diaco had negligible impact like that.

Get the Byron Jones + Scott Lutrus etc. studs with growth opportunities. Then be far better at identifying kids that can play at a high FBS. We never beat out the Name programs for highly offered kids. We didn’t beat Rutgers for kids they really wanted in NJ. We found the odd Donald Brown that we could project.

 

[uconnbill]

So Edsall and Matt King has some mystical S&C program that Klein didn't have from his time in Minnesota? Klein said the same things about building the mind and body to the next level. Same thing with Balis and many here were eating that up.

King is more energetic and the players stated that. They are two different kind of coaches. Klein was more restraint and firm while King is more energy and outgoing. It is working with these players and that's all that matters.

 

[metsfan2323]

The cupboard, as it relates offense, was bare.

Kashif Moore, Nick Williams, Geremy Davis, Ryan Griffin, Deshon Fox say hello. Nebrich would have been a good QB here if the coaches had a clue. Max D, and McCombs would have been better utilized with a real staff. The cupboard was not bare, not even close. If P just let Moorhead run the offense we would have scored plenty or better yet if the powers that be named Moorhead the head coach, what an oversight that was.

There were some good offensive lineman too who ended up under achieving because PP let the weight lifting program crumble.

 

[UConnNick]

The reality is Diaco could sell himself in an job interview (eg. UConn, Nebraska) but yet couldn’t sell an 18 year old on the program.

That may very well be because he had to meet with the player, his parents, or some combination of both, more than once. Most folks would have picked up on the fact that he's completely out to lunch by the second or third exposure, if they missed it during the first.

 

[J187Money]

Kashif Moore, Nick Williams, Geremy Davis, Ryan Griffin, Deshon Fox say hello. Nebrich would have been a good QB here if the coaches had a clue. Max D, and McCombs would have been better utilized with a real staff. The cupboard was not bare, not even close. If P just let Moorhead run the offense we would have scored plenty or better yet if the powers that be named Moorhead the head coach, what an oversight that was.

There were some good offensive lineman too who ended up under achieving because PP let the weight lifting program crumble.

Go get Jerry Rice and Randy Moss and put them with no OL and no QB and see how far you get. That was my point on Mack. We had some great players but the team was not constructed properly.