Spanos -- are you freakin' joking? | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Spanos -- are you freakin' joking?

I like spanos as a person and how the team rally around him. However the D performance has not been well around him. I say he gets one to two seasons tops to turn the D around or we gotta turn the page
 
businesslawyer said:
Without even chiming in on whether or not this is good (because I don’t know), what happened is fairly obvious. Mora wanted to clean house, but struck out at finding anyone better. Not good or bad, but almost certainly what happened.
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Agreed. And, if is correct that we struck out with better talent, it is kind of bad, just not horrible.

Let’s see how it works out. It is entirely possible that with a talent upgrade a summer to work on a new defensive scheme and an upgraded offense trust burns some clock it may be fine.
 
Palatine said:
The DC whose defense NEVER used disguise. No movement on D line pre-snap. Just show the defense and play the defense Spanos.

Disappointed beyond belief. He has been flat off awful. And Mora hires him? WTTF?
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This is ridiculous !! Our defense sucked and this fool hires Spanos. I thought he was doing an ok job until this news. This program isn't going to improve.
 
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I understand Palatine's concern but I'm sanguine about it. Here's why. It worked at UCLA. Mora is a defensive coach. Spanos was really the only coach the players heavily lobbied for. Who knows who was better out there that said no. One thing is important to me. Spanos isn't headstrong. He'll create a defense with Mora that fits Mora's philosophy and the skills and strengths of the players that have to execute it. Bottom line it's a done deal. I'm supporting it.
 
businesslawyer said:
Without even chiming in on whether or not this is good (because I don’t know), what happened is fairly obvious. Mora wanted to clean house, but struck out at finding anyone better. Not good or bad, but almost certainly what happened.
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I agree with this. He obviously had people he targeted and, for whatever reason, couldn't close the deal. However, I'm actually fairly positive on the hire. Mora could have hired someone. I'm sure he received plenty of contacts from coaches and their agents. However, rather than just taking someone he wasn't confident in, he decided Spanos was the best available option. He's not stupid - he undoubtedly knew his own words, "Members of the 2021 staff will not be retained" (and ideally that probably would have been the case), would be used against him. But he felt confident enough that Spanos was the best option that he went ahead anyway.

As for the famous comment that UConn played the most transparent defense (seemingly in keeping with our relatively transparent offense), I'm sure Spanos has heard it and so has Mora. They know improvement is required. I wouldn't expect Belichickian disguises and schemes, but I expect more as our talent, experience and confidence level (on field and in coaches box) improve. Mora and Spanos have been in charge of or part of top college and professional defenses so it's not as if they don't understand and haven't executed the concepts.

As hard as it is to believe, I think FHCRE actually became more vanilla as time went on (and he was hardly Rocky Road when he started). As he seemingly lost confidence in what the players could do he adopted the "well let's just do a few things well" philosphy and spurned any complexity that he didn't think they could handle. The problem is that the other team quickly learns the few things so they are bound to fail - making the problem worse. That's why he had to go.
 
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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Think it became about bailing water until the season was over and not about being creative. They would have kept Mazzone or his concepts otherwise, also.
 
This thread is becoming a joke. We are gonna hammer the guy for last season when 90% of other coaches would have been polishing their resume and looking for their next job. He wants to be here, he understands the program and has experience with the current HC. He is a coordinator, he works with the HC and personnel. Why bail on the guy before you see what he can install in a new system. If you can’t see what this hire meant to the players who obviously have faith in his ability then you’re not paying attention. Let’s hold judgement till the season shall we.
 
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Husk1881 said:
This thread is becoming a joke. We are gonna hammer the guy for last season when 90% of other coaches would have been polishing their resume and looking for their next job. He wants to be here, he understands the program and has experience with the current HC. He is a coordinator, he works with the HC and personnel. Why bail on the guy before you see what he can install in a new system. If you can’t see what this hire meant to the players who obviously have faith in his ability then you’re not paying attention. Let’s hold judgement till the season shall we.
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I’m neutral on the hire, but how the heck do you know he wasn’t polishing his resume and looking for his next job? And, at the end of the day, just didn’t have a better opportunity anywhere?

It’s o.k. to be happy that we have a former NFL coach and a mostly new staff without needing to pretend that every bite of steak you ever eat came from Capital Grill.
 
businesslawyer said:
I’m neutral on the hire, but how the heck do you know he wasn’t polishing his resume and looking for his next job? And, at the end of the day, just didn’t have a better opportunity anywhere?

It’s o.k. to be happy that we have a former NFL coach and a mostly new staff without needing to pretend that every bite of steak you ever eat came from Capital Grill.
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I prefer Abe and Louies but get your point
 
I don't know if he more or less always was the guy, given he had the same job for Mora at UCLA or whether we struck out. I don't care really. The kids liked playing for him. I don't think he's a bad coach or doesn't know defense. He couldn't fix our offense as interim HC but the defense was slightly better then. Not sure any defense can survive an offense that doesn't get first downs and constantly gives up field position while never letting them rest.

So let's hope for the best.
 
businesslawyer said:
I’m neutral on the hire, but how the heck do you know he wasn’t polishing his resume and looking for his next job? And, at the end of the day, just didn’t have a better opportunity anywhere?

It’s o.k. to be happy that we have a former NFL coach and a mostly new staff without needing to pretend that every bite of steak you ever eat came from Capital Grill.
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One of my favorite Steak Houses.
 
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Urcea said:
I’m willing to put the rose colored glasses on and believe that the delay was to give Spanos a chance to maybe get a decent HC gig somewhere else. Just a thought
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It's just as valid of a speculation as all the other ones put forth in this thread. We may never know the exact truth, but I'm in the camp that having Spanos on staff will be a big net positive for our overall performance as a team next year.

And I expect to see substantial improvements in D performance since Spanos as a DC can now focus efforts on it (doubt he was able to do what he would have liked to due to interim HC duties). He allso will have Mora as a HC to work with who, in my opinion, is at least 5-10x the defense-minded coach vs. Edsall.

 
History Geek said:
This is where I am too. I say give him a year and see what happens.
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This is Div 1 football, Uconn needs a proven winner not a proven loser !!! Like they say 1 step forward and two backwards !!
 
This is an ash * the offence will have to be on the field 40+ minutes per game. And score 40+ points
 
CL82 said:
What would be the delay? And why announce that no one’s from the existing staff was returning?
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I don’t recall the school ever announcing that. I believe S&C coach is sticking. And if you listened to Jim speak yesterday, u know Mike Z was killing himself.
 
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Bubba1957 said:
If he couldn’t coach defense and young men, Mora would not have given him the job. IMO the idea that he could find anyone else is ridiculous and goes along with a defeatist mentality that many have.
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They are buddies !
 
Palatine said:
The DC whose defense NEVER used disguise. No movement on D line pre-snap. Just show the defense and play the defense Spanos.

Disappointed beyond belief. He has been flat off awful. And Mora hires him? WTTF?
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We were thinking of getting back the 13 season tickets we gave up but not anymore .
 
tower1 said:
This is Div 1 football, Uconn needs a proven winner not a proven loser !!! Like they say 1 step forward and two backwards !!
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He has been a proven winner wherever else he has been. I'm willing to give it a year to see if maybe it was extenuating circumstances (lack of talent to do what he wanted to do) that lead to the unacceptable results.
 
History Geek said:
He has been a proven winner wherever else he has been. I'm willing to give it a year to see if maybe it was extenuating circumstances (lack of talent to do what he wanted to do) that lead to the unacceptable results.
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Mora and Spanos had winning records the last time they were together. They seem to have a good connection. What do people want? Someone that Mora doesn't know, who won't have any input on the LBs or DBs or DL coaches? This will be Mora's defense, just like the past ones were on Edsall.
 
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