I think it's an overreaction...

[Redding Husky]

It's just frustrating to see a game pissed away with such stupidity.

My story: I've never played or coached football. But I was sitting at a Best Buy today getting a car stereo installed and following along play-by-play on ESPN. Suddenly the report comes up: "2nd and goal, 1 yard line, 17 seconds left". I immediately think, "Three pass plays with possibly a QB roll out. We're going to win! Diaco did it!".

The next report is a run for no gain and the clock is at 0.00.

WTF!?!?!

 

[Walker11]

I apologize for my generalization. I was annoyed about the perspective from good posters I respect like superjohn and Stairmaster. Who are you? If you are a guy who posts on the hoops board and took offense to my post I am sorry.

 

[UConnNick]

How can anybody listen to his postgame rambling, incoherent responses regarding the thought (using that term very loosely) processes that went into designing our end game play calling strategy, and not conclude that this guy's elevator doesn't make it to the top floor, particularly during stressful game situations? Enough is enough with this guy. I like the guy personally, but he simply cannot handle the stress of late half or game clock management or play calling, and we're in no position to afford to provide him with on the job training at this point in our athletic department's history. We need somebody who can get this job done now, not three years from now, or maybe never.

 

[whaler11]

It's just frustrating to see a game pissed away with such stupidity.

My story: I've never played or coached football. But I was sitting at a Best Buy today getting a car stereo installed and following along play-by-play on ESPN. Suddenly the report comes up: "2nd and goal, 1 yard line, 17 seconds left". I immediately think, "Three pass plays with possibly a QB roll out. We're going to win! Diaco did it!".

The next report is a run for no gain and the clock is at 0.00.

WTF!?!?!

It's certainly shocking to me that we are in the AAC when I read all the posts from people who prioritize pretty much anything over our football games.

 

[bigAbruns]

Don't forget the timeout last week to kick the fg with all that time left. He doesn't get it. I think he panics at the end of the game and as others have mentioned so does the rest of the staff.

 

[uconnric]

Diaco coaches almost entirely on emotion. He gambles in strange places and with low probability of success. For example, the fake field goal attempt in the 4th worked, but it was a low probability play call. Rather than going for it, or kicking the fieldgoal, Diaco elected to go for it with the long snapper throwing his first college pass I believe. It didn't fool anyone, Navy simply blew the coverage.

Navy blew the coverage BECAUSE they were fooled by the fake. We had 2 guys wide open on that play. I'd say it worked pretty well.

 

[uconnric]

Les Miles has had issues with clock management at LSU and Addazio made the same mistake in a game last year. Yes it's frustrating but he has the program on the right track overall.

 

[BugsyCT]

Thing is, we burned our last 2 TOs on Navy's side of the field during plays where the clock had just stopped AND the Navy D was on their heels and reeling. If the offense is in rhythm, you don't stop action and let their defense get a breather. The first TO you can live with, the last TO call at the 1 was inexcusable. If anything it gave time for the previous catch to be reviewed - why not hurry it in and force Navy to burn their TO? And what happened after the run got stuffed was total incompetence. How do so many players have no clue what to do when they're lying in the pile and the clock is ticking down? That was infuriating. Unacceptable to do that at any college football level. Navy could have gotten flagged for delay of game if UConn did what they were supposed to do - get up quick and to the line for the next play. But too many of them looked clueless.

Look, I'm not calling for Wacky Bob's head like many folks are - it's not going to happen this year anyway and he's built enough good vibes around the program that he'll get the benefit of the doubt, and his players will have his back. But that loss was on him yesterday - he took the ball out of his players' hands and made a couple critical bonehead decisions (running on 3rd & 7 from inside our own 10.) You can't play scared, and you can't put that on your players. He's gotta own it, and actually attempt to learn from it, or this will only continue to cost us football games.

 

[storrsroars]

How much credit should/shouldn't Diaco receive for what I consider the best executed 2 minute drill in UConn football history (minus that last half yard). I'd think he deserves some, no?

I think we have out best QB since Dan-O (at least since Cody when he wasn't high). Granted, Shireffs is now 22, basically a senior, but he's showing he can hit most of the throws and would likely do very well in a West Coast offense.

There have been other instances of poor late game clock management, but none as bad as this. There have been other instances of late game far-too-conservative play calling, but none as bad as this. So what, if anything, does Diaco learn from this - if he's capable of learning?

Does he employ someone who only deals with the clock at end of halves - or make that a priority for an existing assistant?

Does he recognize Shireffs' capabilities in an uptempo offense and loosen the throttle?

If he learns nothing, then maybe this is his last season. But it would be silly to suggest firing him this week.

I was at PSU-Pitt yesterday. It wasn't quite as obvious, but in 2nd half, PSU, which was down 14, started to play more uptempo. It wasn't quite no-huddle, but it was damn close. And at that point they started dicing and slicing Pitt's D. PSU only lost due to a receiver dropping a pass when he was wide open, followed by the QB not hitting either of two wide open receivers in the end zone but hitting the defender between them. Narduzzi made many of the same mistakes for Pitt.

Conditioning is conditioning. I'd like to see what UConn can do in a Jim Kelly hurry up offense as it seems UConn may have the players for it.

So if we're going to fire the coach, let's go get a nutcase that could execute something like that. A Todd Graham type w/o being as big a douchenozzle as Todd Graham.

 

[RedStickHusky]

the abridged version of my earlier post: the consensus description in the chat room of our performance for the first 25 minutes of this game was "no show". two weeks in a row, we wait until we're down to turn the dogs lose. it'd be nice to see us come out aggressive from the start.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

In struggling with his decisions on the second to last drive. The mindset should have been to get a few first downs use a ton of clock and make it really tough on a team that moves the ball 3 yards at a time to come down the field. He seemed to want to give them the ball back ASAP and in the best possible field position. I think he legitimately forgot some teams actually do return punts.

 

[ZooCougar]

I don't see calling for Diaco's head.

He coached them into a loss today. There really isn't anything to debate on that topic.

It's one game though - and to his credit when they looked dead and buried they put themselves in a position to win. A lot of teams quit down 21-0 on the road. They came up with a blocked FG and built from there.

They need to learn how to use timeouts and manage a clock. They need to understand they need to compete on punt returns.

His flaws can be corrected. Maybe most people weren't paying attention the last time UConn hired a first time head coach - it turned out ok... and 27 games into his tenure they were way further behind the curve than this.

Hell it took Edsall until 2010 and a 3-4 start before he finally started to make good decisions like he did against Pitt and WVU.

If you remember the era when Brian Sanchez was returning punts - this isn't our first brush with complete incompetence on punt returns.

I don't buy into the idea that the team is going to roll over after this. They are sitting on two winnable games against ACC teams at home.

Firing Diaco would be like cutting off your leg because you sprained your ankle. I'd say check back in two weeks. 3-1 will take a lot of the sting out of this one.

I'm with you. That's why I said borderline.

But he's got to start getting it together.

 

[MattMang23]

FH"C"PP would have lost that game 40-0. This is better.

 

[Excalibur]

The situation dictates that we can't afford to wait like we did for Edsall. And it's not just the clock management. Diaco made at least four decisions that. Absent those decisions, we likely win. Combine that with an overall failure to improve, and I've seen enough.

 

[MattMang23]

an overall failure to improve, and I've seen enough.

I'm frustrated by the loss, too. But an "overall failure to improve?" When he got here, we had nothing. This was a total rebuild job in a downgraded conference and he went to a bowl in Year 2 and is widely expected to get back to one this year. How does +4 wins from Year 1 to Year 2 constitute a failure to improve?

I'm not the biggest Diaco cheerleader. He's got plenty to work on. But let's try to be a little more objective here.

 

[UCFBfan]

The bigger problem with CFB is that when you fire a coach you set your program back at least 2 years due to recruiting alone. We aren't a school, kids are lining up to play for no matter who the coach is. Due to this, letting go of Dico would harm this program even more then having him lose a game for us here and there.

I know a lot of reactions were instant feelings due to how terrible that call and end was. However, we need to see if Diaco learns from this and builds. Like someone else said, if he shows no improvement then maybe reassess but hopefully he saw that this team is capable of a lot more then they were allowed to do in the first game and first half. Only time will tell and I just hope this was a growing pain and not the start of a disturbing trend.

 

[noeynox]

The fact that so many intelligent posters are calling for Bob's head is mind blowing. It just lacks perspective in a huge way.

Its all raw emotion. Diaco seems to be really good at building a program and players. He almost hyper ventilates in crucial end of clock situations.

At heart of it all however, remains fact that he still cant get plays in without burning tomeouts. More than anything that is what caused them the game. Its frigging Chinese fire drill in end of clock situations.

 

[itgoeslike]

It's unfortunate (to say the least) that the inept play calling during the last set of downs completely overshadowed the incredible play and resilience of our players and, yes, even the clear evidence that they had been coached up.

 

[MattMang23]

Oh and another thing: The same people who predicted an 8 win season are the same people calling for Diaco to be fired because he's an "idiot", a "moron", he's "stupid", etc. But you all think this unqualified coach will win 8 games and battle for a conference championship. Lol, Boneyard.

 

[JSM1970]

Shierffs fumbled and it was a TD. He had an awful under thrown ball that would have been a TD if he hit the receiver in stride which would have meant they only needed a FG to win since that drive resulted in a FG. 90% of his throws are dumps or screens, but so are Tom Brady's so no criticism there.

He's certainly better than guys like Whitner and Tyler Lorenzen.

 

[Chief00]

We ate really bad at offensive clock management and play calling at ends of games.
He really needs an assistant coach just focused on this area of the game on the sideline or in his earpiece. He appears to be too emotional and he doesn't function with a level head in these situations.

 

[Milo65]

I am much better today than yesterday. Diaco has done a lot of good things, but he continues to try to mold this team into a type of team he wants, regardless of the talent he has. He wants this team to be clock eating, run the ball team, but quite frankly the talent on this team is much better suited as a spread/open it up kind of team.

In both the Maine and Navy game, the UConn offense struggled trying to move the ball on the ground. It wasn't until the team's backs were against the wall, when they were forced to open it up. After opening it up, the team moved the ball unimpeded. Yesterday, with the lead and around 7 minutes on the clock, Diaco or Verducci decides to run the ball three times, couldn't move the ball and punted. 17 seconds left, burned time out, why not pass, pass, run? or pass, pass, pass? I don't understand the mindset.

On the other hand, the fake field goal play was brilliant. Adjustments to the defense at halftime were great. Sheriffs, Thomas, Walsh, Meyers, Fatukasi, Carrezola were warriors yesterday. The defensive front totally took away the fullback yesterday. Ayala starting to emerge.

I have more confidence in this season after yesterday's loss, than the opening win.

 

[junglehusky]

I tweeted #FireDiaco in the moment, but of course it was out of frustration with losing in the last minute with the ball yards away from a GWTD. I do not think firing the staff in game 2 of year 3 is a good idea, and I suspect 90% of the people who posted that are also expressing their frustration with Diaco in that particular moment.

 

[kemba]

The situation dictates that we can't afford to wait like we did for Edsall.

So what would you like to do, call up Nick Saban and get him here by the UVA game?

 

[Jimdish255]

I can't buy into the "this is only 1 game" narrative. In most jobs your track record is how people around you formulate expectations until you show clear evidence of progress or decline. We've been stuck in this pattern going on year 3 and all the positive attributes of this coach and the hard work of this team are being overshadowed on most weeks by timid play-calling and game mismanagement.

On the other hand of course most of this is fixable. I sincerely hope our AD is having a productive talk with our coach today or tomorrow that results in a recognition that basic changes to his approach are required. Until then it seems logical to defer to what we've seen on the field and our Coach's post game reactions of admitted confusion and lack of confidence in his team. That needs to change yesterday.