STRING’S SUNDAY MORNING THOUGHTS
· Yahoo Sports
Tbh before this season started I thought this was the year I made a clean break from writing for GBH. It’s been a good 15 year run and it’s time to just be done.
And then yesterday happens…and here I am again on a Sunday morning needing to process my thoughts. I hate it but we are who we are.
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THIS LOSS WAS MADE IN THE OFFSEASON
I think it’s important to not be too critical because this is one loss not 5 but this is a big loss. And much of this loss happened in the offseason through replacement of critical coaching staff pieces. Bateman, replaced by Hemphill, Chaos, replaced by ERob, Klein, replaced by Wiggins/Joey Lynch…all contributed to where are today. DL was unproductive. Offense was called fine but QB play left everything to be lacking. Defense overall was not to our standard.
Side note. I cant excuse anything I saw on the field yesterday but I can explain the offense’s performance. The defensive let down is inexcusable.
Back to the point here. We had a decent enough first staff. The single most important thing a HC will do is maintain a good staff and it looks like Elko fell short here. We made comfort hires and it showed up on the field this past weekend. That is both a short term (this season because we’re locked in) and long term (will cover that next) issue.
WHO MAKES THE NEXT DECISIONS
Stephen Covey said that thing are made twice. First in the mind as a vision plan or blueprint and then physically through action. If we’re going to agree that the hires that we made were perhaps part of the issue then we have to think about the process we used to get here. We, as an institution, allowed for this offensive staff to be put together as it is. We, as an institution, allowed for this defensive staff to be put together as is. Who gets to make the next set of decisions given how these are trending through three games? Even if the decision is to commit to what we have…who makes that decision? Does Elko have the credibility at this point to make that decision on his own? Should he?
ELKO
I like Mike Elko. I think he’s a systemic thinker. I think he values culture. I think he is a good leader of a program in the NIL era. I think he is an excellent defensive mind. I think Elko is an overfunctioner and is trying to do too much by having influence over both the offense and the defense while trying to make critical fourth down play calls in key situations. I think that’s too much for anyone to handle and I think we need to review how many in game decisions run through our head coach because it seems like all of them, big or small, run through him.
MARCEL
He is who he is. I cant defend yesterday’s performance. I can only look to the future and hope that the coaching staff recognizes that there is a distant blueprint on how to set Marcel up to be successful against a Blake Baker defense. I also dont think benching him is the solution because, while Brady Hart and Casuga might be good someday, I do not think that day is today. I dont think you make that choice unless you have to.
LAST THING.
I go back to Elko’s opening press conference as Texas A&M coach. In it he said “I think I embrace my process as a head coach. I think that’s one of the things I told Ross in this process is I believe in who I am. I believe in my process for making decisions. We won’t always make the right one. But when we make the wrong one, we’re going to identify it, we’re going to evaluate it, we’re going to fix it, and we’re going to move forward and not second guess what we’re doing and believe in who we are and know that we have what it takes to build a blueprint for the best program in the country.”
He clearly outlined the process by which he can get out of the situation we are currently in. This is predicated on him identifying that perhaps he did make a bad decision here. Maybe he didnt. Maybe this is a one off game and we go 11-1. But regardless, we clearly did not make the right decisions for this game. We need to identify it, evaluate it, and we need to fix it. Those are Coach Elko’s words and we need to hold him to them.