A little thought on coaching personality....here's a quote on a guy I know, a guy that's been an NFL coach for 30 years. This quote was obtained by a reporter in 2009.
"For any coach who didn't have a history with him, (xxxxx) might be a problem because of his personality,'' said an NFL scout. "But XXXXXX has worked with him, so he'll know what he's getting into. (XXXXXX) might be an interesting fit in XXXXX-- he'll definitely shake those players up a little bit.''
The team that coach went to, had been a perennial loser, for a long, long time. That team, now (with some good personnel decisions obviously) has a top 5 in the NFL defense, and has been to the playoffs for the first time since - they had Barry Sanders running the ball.
Gunther Cunningham, is probably the meanest, nastiest coach I've ever known or seen. Great, fun guy away from football, but nasty - nasty person on the field. There are plenty like him, in both the NFL and in college, and Deleone is one of them. These are guys, by their very nature, make people uncomfortable around them.
But you know what? They get results. Cunningham is a fantastic defensive coach, coordinator. Deleone - my opinion, is his strength is focusing on position coaching. If you follow his track record through his career, when he's been in charge of position groups for any period of time, they usually improve quite a bit.
This is why I had no problem with Deleone going to the OL as a position coach, when it happened, because I knew he would bring a system that would help us better recruit offensive SKILL players that want to be in the NFL, because we can attract QB's, RB's, TE's and WR's that want to play in the NFL, with the blockign systems he teaches. But when Deleone was named the OC, and chief playcaller by Pasqualoni, somebody should have smacked old Paul in the back of the head.
It's unfortuante that we didn't have an AD in place that knew what he was doing with football at the time, b/c the condition of hiring Pasqualoni, should have been that Deleone doesn't call offensive plays. He had success at Syracuse as a play caller in the early 1990s, but that was when Syracuse had some very, very talented players on offense, that could overcome what he continually does with his calls - and that's completely ignore momentum.
The best offensive play callers, all have the simple ability, to identify what's working during a single drive, during a game, and stick with it, until it doesn't work anymore......and while doing that, work into the plays the things they need to do, so that when they have to change up and adjust,or want to throw in a wrinkle, game plan for different types of opponents, it's not hard to do and not hard to come up with new twists - that won't disrupt a game flow.
Deleone, on the other hand, will draw up completely new, unusual, and unseen before offensive plays, to throw at an opponent, and plug them into the middle of a game, and while on the chalkboard everythign looks great, in the middle of a game, when it's crunch time, it completely destroys momentum. It does actually set defenses up for something either later in the same game, or in future games, which is great in the film rooms, and on the boards, but it too often completely throws off our own offensive momentum in the game.
It happens all the time, at UConn, and when he was at Syracuse.
