Who still has the guts to remind the Board why they thought he was a good hire?
I thought it was an adequate (not great) hire for several reasons:
1. He has a strong connection to high school coaches in Connecticut, so in theory our recruiting in-state should have improved under his leadership. Though we have landed a couple of good-looking prospects from the Nutmeg state the past couple of years, our local recruiting has clearly not improved from Edsall's tenure. Our out-of-state recruiting has improved but only a little bit.
2. I thought he would be significantly more media-friendly and stop the Edsall tradition of treating reporters like they were house centipedes taking up space on his living room wall. He has done so, and I give him credit for fulfilling this goal.
3. I thought his years of coaching experience would make him capable of winning close games. I also thought his clock management would be exemplary, despite Syracuse fans warning us otherwise. Obviously, he has been a colossal failure in both regards despite his experience.
4. I thought he would beat the teams he should beat because of his conservative style, and likewise fail to pull off major upsets. I consider Maryland and 2010 Rutgers to be upset wins, so he has delivered on that account. Western Michigan 2011 is the only game where I thought we clearly had the better team and lost, so I suppose he wins games that this team "should" beat playing Pasqualoni-ball. Unfortunately, our team hasn't been very good despite having an adequate amount of talent, so I feel like the teams we've fielded the past two years should have been better than they turned out to be. As they have not turned out to be good, judging them solely by the wealth & material of their accomplishments in P's first 18 games here, we haven't been losing to inferior opponents. I don't think that our team is weaker than the likes of Iowa State and Vanderbilt from a talent perspective, so the fact that I can't point out these losses as "bad" losses isn't really a good thing.
5. I thought that the passing game would improve. Though the growth has been incremental, I do think it has (despite a lack of Ryan Griffin and LM in the passing game). Whitmer can throw the ball down the field, and our receivers have done an adequate (though not good) job of getting open and catching the ball. We are not as bad as we were in 2008 or 2010 at least. Unfortunately, this mediocre improvement has come at the expense of the running game, which is now one of the worst in the country by any metric.
6. Finally, I thought he would assemble a quality staff. I do like some of our coaches (Don Brown, Shane Day so far, etc) but others are killing us. I am not pleased with our special teams in either the return or the coverage game, which is on Clayton White. DeLeone's offensive line has been horrible, and Foley (through little fault of his own) has failed to get Ryan Griffin to the next level. It's a shame, as Griffin has the blocking ability and athleticism to play on Sundays. Though he has made some very good hires, including some from other 1-A coaching staffs, DeLeone prevents me from giving P anything more than a "C" here.
Step 4 and 6 get "C's," step 2 gets an A, steps 2 and 5 get "D's" and step 3 gets an F. That averages out to a C- or D+, depending on how one views the talent level here. I personally don't think this team would be that good even if Saban were here, as there are too many holes in terms of depth, the passing game, at RB (I am not high on Lyle and never was), etc but Pasqualoni has done a mediocre at best job. If he were a young, aspiring coach I would easily be willing to cut him some more slack, but as he in his 60's, and next year will be a down year for the program talent-wise, I am not willing to afford him the patience that I would give a Mike MacIntyre or a Garrick McGee.
In sum, though there are worse coaches in Division One (look at Arkansas, Rice, Boston College for examples of this) I do think Pasqualoni needs to go, even if his job performance hasn't been as bad as some drama queens on this board have made it out to be. He will need at least 8 wins
and show a willingness to change and grow (stop running up the middle on first down, run a trick play, improve game management, etc) at the end of the year to gain back my support, and I doubt he'll do it. I do like him and will not root against him or the team for the sake of getting a new coach.
One final note: I have not counted graduation rates or player behavior for or against him yet as these are by and large not his recruits he's working with.
