Tis the season... Billy Crocker out as DC

[Madmannsucks]

Sorry but I can never celebrate someone losing their job. This is where the passion of sport distorts the reality of life. These men have families. And it’s the holiday season
True it’s a results oriented business but still.

Sucks

Yeah, timing could be better. Hope they have a decent severance.

 

[HurricaneDave]

Uh, no. He's got more work to do at men's basketball.



Ah, hell no. Don't use the D word with regard to UConn football.

I'd rather have the better physical prep coach for football than basketball. Basketball is getting the more polished athletes compared to football. Plus he's always been a football guy. Would be surprised if he's here for more than 2 years.

 

[uconnyankee]

Uh, no. He's got more work to do at men's basketball.



Ah, hell no. Don't use the D word with regard to UConn football.

Defense?

 

[Waquoit]

So all of our defensive problems are solved now?

 

[Woof 101]

Absolutely had to happen. Crocker seems like a nice guy and I don’t know what went wrong. But you own your results. Hope he lands somewhere and has success again.

I get you own your results but how soon? This has to be a recruiting issue, it is crazy how the stats are everywhere about the defensive records broken this year. Numbers of our ugliness everywhere but not a sole, and many welcomed him here, has anything to say about the fact he was coaching a starting team of 8 freshman and 3 sophs. In D1 football? He was dealt a loosing hand to start and not allowed enough house money to get in the game. Again he may have not brought enough to the recruiting table.

On that topic one wonders with a need at receiving positions not a lot from Cory so far....

 

[ShakyTheMohel]

Window dressing. Also an indication that Edsall (and Bennett) are feeling pressure. This next year is make or break. Less than three wins gets both Edsal and Bennett tossed by the new president. But the root cause wasn't the staff. The root cause was that UConn does not present an attractive value proposition to higher level recruits than they have been getting right now. It is what it is, and it had to be done, but don't expect miracles. We can only hope that all the PT the youngsters have been getting will pay off next year.

I see the holiday season has got you in a cheerful mood.

 

[Walker11]

It would be ugly to bring back the entire staff from the worst defense of all time. Firing Crocker makes sense, optically. Ideally, we would fire Edsall and pay for a high potential coach. We don't have the money to do so. Lets go Randy.

 

[cohenzone]

I still don't think crocker got a fair shake but something had to be done

Hard to judge what the problem is. But there was zero improvement or adjustment all season long. Youth alone doesn’t explain that. All of these players were recruited at some level of college ball because they showed something in his. It looked like they’d never defended before. The plus at home games was I could stay to the end to beat the traffic.

 

[UC1995]

One of the understated issues with Crocker is that he didn’t seem to get much done recruiting wise. Not sure if that is fair or not, maybe he followed Edsall’s plan, but....

You can’t sell kids who want to play in the NFL on a gimmick defense. Teams won’t know what they are.

 

[HuskyHawk]

You can’t sell kids who want to play in the NFL on a gimmick defense. Teams won’t know what they are.

Has someone told Jim Boeheim?

 

[HawkHusky]

Has someone told Jim Boeheim?

I don't think kids who want to play in the NFL would choose to play for Boeheim, no matter his scheme. Just my opinion...

 

[CL82]

I'd rather have the better physical prep coach for than basketball. Basketball is getting the more polished athletes compared to football. Plus he's always been a football guy. Would be surprised if he's here for more than 2 years.

The work he did with Eric Cobb this year was outstanding. Cobb is down 40 lb and has put on muscle. I'd hate to lose him.

 

[J187Money]

Hire Sio as a S&C guy. He will whip these guys into shape.

 

[J187Money]

Yeah, timing could be better. Hope they have a decent severance.

If you make 300k a year you are a big boy. No need to worry about him. He likely knew it was coming anyway. Now he has certainty and can move on.

 

[UCFBfan]

Hire Sio as a S&C guy. He will whip these guys into shape.

Or Andre Dixon. I think he'd be amazing. Just not sure he has any experience even close to working for a FBS program.

 

[J187Money]

Or Andre Dixon. I think he'd be amazing. Just not sure he has any experience even close to working for a FBS program.

You wouldn't put either of them in charge. But as a #2 or #3 - both of them would be incredible - they were gym rats to be sure - one of the things that made our "lower rated" recruits end up in the NFL.

 

[HuskyDogArt]

Sio or Andre would be great to be #2/#2a as S&C coach...

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Hard to judge what the problem is. But there was zero improvement or adjustment all season long. Youth alone doesn’t explain that. All of these players were recruited at some level of college ball because they showed something in his. It looked like they’d never defended before. The plus at home games was I could stay to the end to beat the traffic.

There were adjustments. Started early by moving LBs to DE to put pressure on the QB even TJ Gardner played a little there after Thomas became ill.. The DL was in a constant state of personnel and positional changes playing mainly under developed freshmen/underclassmen and a fat out of shape transfer. This led to playing a
two 220 ILBs who easily got overwhelmed and another underdeveloped freshman who was also battling academic issues. At the end we had someone who imo was neither a good safety or a Husky having to play ILB to finish the season. A young secondary was made even younger due to injuries during the season. None of these kids are 4 or 5 star recruits and all should have been red shirted in a more ideal situation. Randy should have brought in more developed players on the DL and LB to bridge these redshirt gaps.

 

[JMick]

Hard to judge what the problem is. But there was zero improvement or adjustment all season long. Youth alone doesn’t explain that. All of these players were recruited at some level of college ball because they showed something in his. It looked like they’d never defended before. The plus at home games was I could stay to the end to beat the traffic.

I mean, we changed the entire scheme. that's quite an adjustment already lol

 

[cohenzone]

I mean, we changed the entire scheme. that's quite an adjustment already lol

The scheme(s) all had the same result. Those kids, from game 1 to the final gun, never looked they had played defense before. As in finding the ball, filling holes, things they undoubtedly had learned by age 14. They were often not even in position to miss a tackle. Every scheme is aimed at minimizing yardage. The number of wide open runs yielded once past the defensive front for long to very long gains was at high school level. Youth and being a half step slow goes only so far as an explanation by game 11.

Scheme, Randy or Crocker, youth whatever, the one thing we know about Randy is that he espoused the “bend but don’t break” philosophy. He was hired into a 1AA program. Before long, UConn was actively pursuing joining BE football. They were starting to recruit with that in mind but were still playing 95% of their games against programs that had no big time plans. I went to a few games in those days at the old stadium where we got totally pushed around by teams like Northeastern. Randy fell into his 1A job, and I had my doubts. To his credit, we became competitive quickly, it helped enormously that Dan O. stayed home. He never again got another QB anywhere near that level, maybe Andres had the best passing ability but we know how that ended.

RE recruited or developed players pretty well. His defenses were decent depending on the year. I looked back at their record in his first stint taking into account as best I could quality of opposition and was especially interested in how the opposition did in games we won. The 2007 and 2008 teams generally had the best margins and had a lot of our better defenders, with 2009 not being bad. They had several games, even in good years, where they gave up a ton of points, but generally only to really good teams. Bend but don’t break has it’s limits. The AAC is a wide open scoring league. If a team lags in scoring, it darn well better have a great defense, not a characteristic of Randy’s overall history even if this past season (and the one before) can be explained away. And obviously our offense has a way to go to compete with the best in our league.

I’ll probably keep my season’s tickets as lousy as the football has been. I wasn’t ecstatic when they re-hired RE, granting that Diaco had to go, and haven’t seen anything to warm my heart. I know, he’ll need the chance to get his own players and see how they execute. Given the state of the program when he came back, theoretically that will be more than the 3 years his 2 predecessors had, but you’d hope that year 3 would show some better ability to compete. I never thought I’d be depressed by an absence of long lines into the men’s room at halftime. Hopefully that changes soon even though my bladder ain’t what it used to be.

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

Sio or Andre would be great to be #2/#2a as S&C coach...

Not that either's likely to be a legitimate candidate let alone hired, but do they both have degrees?

 

[ktuck911]

The scheme(s) all had the same result. Those kids, from game 1 to the final gun, never looked they had played defense before. As in finding the ball, filling holes, things they undoubtedly had learned by age 14. They were often not even in position to miss a tackle. Every scheme is aimed at minimizing yardage. The number of wide open runs yielded once past the defensive front for long to very long gains was at high school level. Youth and being a half step slow goes only so far as an explanation by game 11.

Scheme, Randy or Crocker, youth whatever, the one thing we know about Randy is that he espoused the “bend but don’t break” philosophy. He was hired into a 1AA program. Before long, UConn was actively pursuing joining BE football. They were starting to recruit with that in mind but were still playing 95% of their games against programs that had no big time plans. I went to a few games in those days at the old stadium where we got totally pushed around by teams like Northeastern. Randy fell into his 1A job, and I had my doubts. To his credit, we became competitive quickly, it helped enormously that Dan O. stayed home. He never again got another QB anywhere near that level, maybe Andres had the best passing ability but we know how that ended.

RE recruited or developed players pretty well. His defenses were decent depending on the year. I looked back at their record in his first stint taking into account as best I could quality of opposition and was especially interested in how the opposition did in games we won. The 2007 and 2008 teams generally had the best margins and had a lot of our better defenders, with 2009 not being bad. They had several games, even in good years, where they gave up a ton of points, but generally only to really good teams. Bend but don’t break has it’s limits. The AAC is a wide open scoring league. If a team lags in scoring, it darn well better have a great defense, not a characteristic of Randy’s overall history even if this past season (and the one before) can be explained away. And obviously our offense has a way to go to compete with the best in our league.

I’ll probably keep my season’s tickets as lousy as the football has been. I wasn’t ecstatic when they re-hired RE, granting that Diaco had to go, and haven’t seen anything to warm my heart. I know, he’ll need the chance to get his own players and see how they execute. Given the state of the program when he came back, theoretically that will be more than the 3 years his 2 predecessors had, but you’d hope that year 3 would show some better ability to compete. I never thought I’d be depressed by an absence of long lines into the men’s room at halftime. Hopefully that changes soon even though my bladder ain’t what it used to be.

Keep in mind our D was always our bread and butter under Edsall 1.0... our O was so one dimensional which put that much more pressure on our D back then. Window of optimism here if we can get our D on track.

 

[cohenzone]

Keep in mind our D was always our bread and butter under Edsall 1.0... our O was so one dimensional which put that much more pressure on our D back then. Window of optimism here if we can get our D on track.

I don't disagree. But it was generally okay but not world beating, and if we get back to bend but don't break at best, almost every team in the AAC can move the ball and will score on us. The offense will have to play a very big part unless the D doesn't bend quite so much. Optimism and it looks like a lot of patience is all we have right now.