Spanos -- are you freakin' joking? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Spanos -- are you freakin' joking?

JMick said:
this is a bit extreme. it was going to be Mora's defense no matter who the coach was. I am not in love with the hire, either, but it is what it is.
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Agree that someone hungrier and younger would have been better. But the cards have been dealt out. So play ball. Ooops sorry that is baseball.
 
JMick said:
Bad news:

seems pretty obvious this was not the first. or second. or maybe even third choice

Good news:

Mora is a defensive guy. His fingerprints will be all over the defense, and Spanos will be calling Mora's type of game.
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Exactly with Mora here Spanos is ok, the kids love him that helps.
 
I am OK with this. I think that DB probably was opposed but HCJM probably wore him down with a number of attempts in other directions that didn't click. Wouldn't be surprised to see Mazzone as a part time analyst either. Doesn't make me wildly enthusiastic, but the staff is a team too and some continuity is valuable to say nothing of previous relationships.
 
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Like the hire.....they have coached together before.....Mora will have his influence on the defense.....the kids really liked Spanos.....let’s see what he can do with a talent upgrade and an offense that can hopefully stay on the field and move the ball to give the defense a rest!

Like that they have a full coaching staff now and like the recruiting so far...things are headed in the right direction!
 
Palatine said:
Grow up. Have you watched the Huskies in recent years? The defense sucks and the coaching is a HUGE reason why.

What are you saying Pudge, you like the hire?
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This is not a defense or criticism of Spanos. We don’t know at all how much of Edsall’s conservative imprint was at play. I do know that our offense made sure the defense was worn down sooner or later. Way too many quick possessions. Spanos had too much of a positive history to have been solely responsible for the passive defense. But we will find out. And Mora isntvRandy and I hope that’s a good thing.
 
I think just hearing the name of anyone from the old RE staff makes all of us have a little shiver. I know my immediate response was a scream of NOOO! However, after a deep breath, I realized that he had this team excited and pumped to play every game. The only game we looked dead was the UMass game. Guess who wasn't on the sidelines for that game?? These kids believed and followed Spanos. Gotta believe that played a big role here. That along with the fact that he and Mora have a previous working relationship and seem to know each other well.
 
It’s hard to find coaches players want to play with. Mora is the head coach and will have ultimate say. Just give the guy a shot. If he succeeds then great. If the defense is awful they move on. This isn’t a bad hire by any stretch as it offers stability and continuity to a program which lets be honest has been a mess. I don’t blame Spanos at all for the failures of last season because not many coaches in the country could have succeeded in the situation he was handed. Go huskies
 
LBird33 said:
Did it ever occur to anyone. That it’s possible we were waiting for Spanos ?
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What would be the delay? And why announce that no one’s from the existing staff was returning?
 
pepband99 said:
The success of many, MANY, HCRE assistants, without, well, HCRE, gives me hope.
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Moorhead took PSU to a top 5 team at one point. Made Fordham into a contender and made OSU's defense look pedestrian. Edsall definitely held back his assistants.

Spanos defense showed a lot of improvement by the end of the year. Problem was they were on the field significantly longer than the offense. Not much you can do when you're running on fumes by mid 3rd quarter. I fully believe this is going to be a completely different defense because 1) Edsall won't be micromanaging and making it incredibly vanilla and 2) Edsall is no where near the offense and Guifre is gone and we have adults running the offense now.
 
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I see much 2nd string QB thinking in this thread.
 
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giddyup said:
Takes a lot to build trust, and one bad move to destroy it. Mora just took ten steps back in my book.
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Not sure how bad the ten steps back are, how many steps had he taken forward prior to hiring Spanos.
 
After reporting that none of the prior coaching staff would be retained.............this is a major surprise. So who jumped the gun, the press, or Mora? My guess............................surprise..................... the press.
 
I see nothing wrong with this selection - the kids absolutely loved Spanos
I am sure Mora interviewed others and maybe some turned him down but in the long run, Spanos knows UConn and that in itself is a comfort level that maybe Mora felt he needed. They know each other well over the years also.
Puke all you want Palatine but it's Mora's team and he made the selection
Live with it as Mora will - it's not the end of the world - he will do what Mora wants
 
gtcam said:
I see nothing wrong with this selection - the kids absolutely loved Spanos
I am sure Mora interviewed others and maybe some turned him down but in the long run, Spanos knows UConn and that in itself is a comfort level that maybe Mora felt he needed. They know each other well over the years also.
Puke all you want Palatine but it's Mora's team and he made the selection
Live with it as Mora will - it's not the end of the world - he will do what Mora wants
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Personally think it was Spanos’ job all along.
 
Viet Vet said:
After reporting that none of the prior coaching staff would be retained.............this is a major surprise. So who jumped the gun, the press, or Mora? My guess............................surprise..................... the press.
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you know you can look this stuff up, right? Mora said to the press that 2021 staff wouldn't be retained.
 
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jdb50 said:
It was quite a ride we had this year as fans and imagine what the players went through. Something that I observed at the Rent was how even when the D came up short Lou would walk onto the field and meet the players walking to the bench and give them words of encouragement and interact with them. We forget these players are 18-23 years old. Lou knew what we were up against and beating them into the ground was not going to be the correct choice. Because they were going to be right back out there trying to stop our opponent again in a couple minutes. To me I felt we had improvement in the secondary in coverage and tackling. I know there are some ugly plays where we did not tackle but overall it was better this season. Our biggest hole on D is pass rush. Losing Jones at D-tackle we could be worse at run D this year. Lou could not focus on defense after the Holy Cross game. I have a feeling our players on defense are going to amped up with Lou returning.
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After HCRE 2.0 "left" it must have been a very unsettled and depressed locker room/team. Now in an instant Coach Lou had to keep the whole ship from sinking, and despite the record he may have done just that. With no real OC, Coach Lou, I believe, was, no matter what he was feeling inside, deep in a week to week, game to game grind of keeping his Very young team somehow together.
His body language, and I believe his genuine upbeat encouraging tone kept the ship from sinking altogether.
If I may, I think Palatine's and other's initial reaction is legit in that most of us were getting used to the idea that a clean sweep would be a good thing, but there was initial "votes"/suggestions, for perhaps Corey, because of his relationship with some seemingly good recruits and our Special Teams coach to be retained. Most of us agreed regarding our Strength & Conditioning coach staying.
So, now we shall see. Coach Spanos is a "Young 50"(?), has plenty of positive energy, his, again, very young players, genuinely respect/like him, and so will play hard for him. Continuity in this case, could well be a positive as he has first hand knowledge on both sides of the ball regarding communicating with all the coaches regarding personnel, their individual personalities, psyches, and physical abilities. The criticism regarding his "vanilla' defense may well be legit also, but now he was HC, down a coach, (or two), and working with what he had.
He and HCJM have worked together before, very successfully. He now has on the D side, energetic, hungry coaches accepting the challenge of turning around the #130 team in D1. And they now are under the umbrella of an experienced, (not old, lethargic) coach who has had success at the highest level. Coach genuinely seems to love it here, his players seem to know that and we should have at least have no doubt that Coach Spanos will tirelessly work to do the best job for HCJM, his players, and UConn.
We await the results. Good Luck Coach and Congratulations.
 
uconnric said:
We had a defense that was on the field for most of the game and our secondary was pretty weak. I don't think that Spanos got to show what he is capable of. Hopefully we'll see what he can do with better recruits.

He was also a favorite of the players on the team, and I think that had something to do with it. He managed to salvage a semblance of a season, and would have had more success but for Phommachanh's injury.
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I’ll chime in here. My opinion- the secondary was actually pretty solid. Our D Line, while decent against the run barely generated a pass rush. You try playing defensive back when the QB literally makes cups of coffee in the pocket and see if you can cover skilled receivers for 5-7 seconds. The best secondaries are ones where the pass rush gets home a decent amount of time and forces the ball out the QB’s hand quickly or forces bad throws.

Not to mention our defensive backs literally had about 90 seconds of rest on average with the amount of 3 and outs our offense had.
 
Husky68 said:
Not sure how bad the ten steps back are, how many steps had he taken forward prior to hiring Spanos.
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The D has been generally terrible to moderately functional at best. Cleaning house was job 1, not handing out favors to friends. Program first and thus isn’t program first.
 
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