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Mike Anthony: UConn Football's Recent Struggles Well Documented And Increasingly Irrelevant
>>Edsall was hired to rebuild this program and he understood, even embraced the ground-level point from which the project began. We were all here for the unraveling under Pasqualoni and subsequent on- and off-field damage that was incurred under Diaco. Head-scratching stuff, all of it.
This space has been very kind to Edsall, supportive of his capability, his vision for building something similar to what he built in 1999-2010, this time with long-term sustainability. His body of work shouldn’t truly be judged until 2020 — when all the freshmen and sophomores playing Saturday are juniors and seniors and the backbone of a team with expectations.
Edsall deserves our patience and, for now, expectations are virtually nonexistent. Success will be measured, for the most part, away from the scoreboard. That UConn has been outscored 118-24 in losses to the best teams on its schedule (Central Florida and Boise State) is no gauge of the future. The Huskies, as currently constructed, can’t be expected to compete against such teams.<<
>>”I have every reason to believe that Randy is the right person for us, to be leading us through this time,” Benedict said. “I talk to a lot of people who have a lot of history with our program and most of those people say that this feels very reminiscent of last time Randy was here and we went through a similar rebuilding process. It might have been different because we were transitioning from FCS to FBS, but it's a similar process of becoming competitive at this level. It's like a battleship. It takes a while to turn it.”
Was Benedict comfortable with Edsall’s comments this week?
“I'm not going to quarterback everything my coaches say,” he said. “Look, this is challenging. This is hard work. It can get emotional. But we've got a lot of young kids, a lot of people working very hard. We're going to do everything we can to continue to move this thing in the right direction.”<<
>>Edsall was hired to rebuild this program and he understood, even embraced the ground-level point from which the project began. We were all here for the unraveling under Pasqualoni and subsequent on- and off-field damage that was incurred under Diaco. Head-scratching stuff, all of it.
This space has been very kind to Edsall, supportive of his capability, his vision for building something similar to what he built in 1999-2010, this time with long-term sustainability. His body of work shouldn’t truly be judged until 2020 — when all the freshmen and sophomores playing Saturday are juniors and seniors and the backbone of a team with expectations.
Edsall deserves our patience and, for now, expectations are virtually nonexistent. Success will be measured, for the most part, away from the scoreboard. That UConn has been outscored 118-24 in losses to the best teams on its schedule (Central Florida and Boise State) is no gauge of the future. The Huskies, as currently constructed, can’t be expected to compete against such teams.<<
>>”I have every reason to believe that Randy is the right person for us, to be leading us through this time,” Benedict said. “I talk to a lot of people who have a lot of history with our program and most of those people say that this feels very reminiscent of last time Randy was here and we went through a similar rebuilding process. It might have been different because we were transitioning from FCS to FBS, but it's a similar process of becoming competitive at this level. It's like a battleship. It takes a while to turn it.”
Was Benedict comfortable with Edsall’s comments this week?
“I'm not going to quarterback everything my coaches say,” he said. “Look, this is challenging. This is hard work. It can get emotional. But we've got a lot of young kids, a lot of people working very hard. We're going to do everything we can to continue to move this thing in the right direction.”<<
