In hindsight, I wonder if it would have been way better for literally everyone if Brennan hadn’t come back last year. I think everyone was right to be elated when he did, but it seems to have helped nobody in the end sadly.
Brennan had an awful year that pretty much erased any NFL buzz around him (not that he had a bunch, but he might have gotten a shot). And his coming back raised expectations for the new staff among the fanbase, plus everyone could directly compare the QB’s production in their new system versus the prior year’s. If Brennan hadn’t come back, most people would probably be like “Sure the offense looked like a dumpster fire, but what do you expect when you lose your QB and the whole offensive line?” The vibes around the program might be a lot less negative, at least for a brief time.
I guess the one guy who really benefited from Brennan coming back was Woolfolk, cause if he had to play his first full season behind that o-line and in that new trash offense, he might be a broken man.
I think it would be great to get to a Mike Leach like program where we put up numbers on offense due to scheme and try to outgun everyone. Would probably get us to 6-8 wins consistently
Did people complain about Bronco?** Bronco was a replacement level coach. It would be like complaining about vanilla as an ice cream flavor. The only thing I complain about is people looking back fondly on the Bronco era. We beat VPI once and people acted like it was the most amazing thing they’d ever seen. We have actual decent periods in our football history to look back on. Bronco was a fine football coach, and he decided to leave, and the circumstances of him leaving kinda sucked, and now we have a new guy who most people think stinks, and if he keeps stinking, then we will get a new one.
** on second thought, I’m sure they did. But more than complain, people made fun of Bronco. Because he would do things like have a number draft, and then significant numbers of people in the fanbase would go along with the bit, and claim to think it was a great way to motivate people. Honestly, if he had gotten rid of the number draft and made Anae 10% less of a jerk, then him and his horses could have stayed forever and never had to can any D coordinator, in my book.
I’ll speak on my fondness for Bronco: I’m 23 years old. I’ve seen them beat Tech once(in my memory), and it was him. We won a Coastal division and were pretty much bowl eligible every year except for year 1. Outside of that, they’ve pretty much been absolute shit. So yeah, I’ll be happy for how that era went.
This is the perspective of someone who has earliest memories of late in Groh’s tenure. I have no memory of Welsh. So it’s hard for me to understand anything better than the Bronco era.
It wasn’t perfect, but it seems pretty damn clear 6-9(nice) wins was our ceiling in the modern era. So I’d welcome that any day of the week.
I do understand how those who remember the Welsh era weren’t as impressed. But I think the only guy who could even come close to replicating that is Dave Clawson. I feel like we sort of need to accept what we are, and enjoy when we have someone who can make us consistently average to above average.
I understand that he had an eye rolling culture aspect with him, I get that.. Respectfully, I don’t understand the “gimmicky” part. Yeah the offense was gimmicky, but they scored a s**t ton of points. I’ve never understood why we need to be traditional or “balanced”. Would we rather lose playing “complimentary football” than just score a ton of points? I certainly wouldn’t.
Here’s the nice thing I will say about Bronco: I really enjoyed watching Brice Perkins play QB. He was a lot of fun, and brought a lot of success here.
Trust me, I don’t think he’s the best thing ever. I was pretty damn frustrated with his last season, his exit, etc. But I do think we were on the right trajectory until Covid just sort of killed his will/drive. I think if that doesn’t happen, we think of him fondly. It felt like we built something consistent and sustainable in ‘18 and 19, had a rebuild in ‘20, and then ‘21 should’ve been similar to ‘18 and ‘19 except our defensive staff sucked and Bronco didn’t have the willpower to fix it.
My thoughts on Bronco were that he was a perfectly competent, slightly above average DI football coach whose quirks brought a good amount of criticism, some fair and some unnecessary. We were never going to reach our maximum potential with him at the helm, but he did a nice job stabilizing our program after the complete trainwreck that was the London regime.
I thought his major downfall happened when we switched to a 3-3-5 defense despite not having recruited anywhere near the requisite amount of playable depth needed in the secondary in order to run it successfully. After Bryce Hall went down with an injury in 2019 we never saw a quality pass defense again until Rud showed up last year. Realistically I think if we continued what BA, Beck, and Anae were building on offense along with a new DC and a philosophy that actually fit our personnel instead of whatever the hell Howell and Bronco were doing on that side of the field, we probably have a very, very good 2022 season. But that’s all hypothetical now.
I don’t mind gimmick offenses if there’s logic and deployed correctly. The lack of clock management the fact the Hoos got outgunned in plenty of those shootout games and the obvious disaster of passing the ball to your tackle are my issues with it.
The Bryce led offense was fine by me and lucky for Bronco he had someone as extraordinary as Bryce to make it work.
I know this has all been hashed and re-hashed (but I’m avoiding doing that one thing I need to do to close my computer for the week), but I was generally fine with Bronco being gone because he wasn’t going to upgrade the talent level at all (with the exception of the QB, which to be fair, is pretty important!), and I knew that getting anywhere near relevant over a longer period required better talent.
But so far, Elliott isn’t knocking it out of the park so far there, either. However, the problem with Bronco is he had some success, and still wasn’t recruiting that well. Even when VPI was relatively down. But obviously, you take decent coach and meh recruiting, over not decent coach and meh recruiting (but I’m still crossing fingers that Elliott gets to decent)
You’re putting up a Bronco statue because he finished second in the ACC one year during his tenure? (or first in the wacky coastal, which may well have been worse than second)
My problem with the Anae offense was always that it seemed like he had an absolutely genius scheme, knew how to draw up route concepts to consistently get guys open and use our best athletes in unique ways to have them hit open field. He clearly was a disciple of Leach in that regard, no question about it. But trying to get him to make ONE in-game offensive adjustment was like pulling teeth, dude would stick to whatever gameplan he drew up before kickoff and refused to veer from it at all. Can’t tell you how many times we would score 0, 3, or 7 points in the 3rd quarter simply because the opposing defense adjusted to what we were running and Anae’s stubbornness prevented us from doing anything different.
Same here lol. I certaintly get where you’re coming from with this. Bronco and staff had a certain way of being moderately successful but still finding ways to piss you off, lol.
I do agree that at the time he left and we hired Elliot, I was thrilled. If felt like a prime opportunity to shoot for the stars. I sort of fear we shot for the stars and it’s a MAJOR bust. I can admit my opinion on Bronco is biased from being tortured by this past season.