My one observation on coaches “yelling” at Virginia type players, especially during a game in front of people and on TV etc. There is a fine line. Yelling when you are getting a guy going or encouraging is very differeng than yelling to criticize. Players know when they F up etc. Teach and encourage and if it dont work, shit, bench em and go next up
I have always thought of 95 percent of Virginia student athletes extremely motivated, intelligent, and coachable. Maybe things have changed there but overall I doubt it. I cant imagine a coach “yelling” at Ray Savage or Sean Moore in game etc.
And this is not being soft. I just think these guys expect to be treated like adults Again if it is effort then thats different
We missed out on several o line kids. Previous staff frankly did a piss poor job of shoring that position up. I love 2J, recruits seem to love him but don’t want to play for him, sound familiar?
I really expected to see in summer camp a few d line kids to flip over to the o line.
I look at an offense the way you look at a house.
You can have all the bells and whistle’s inside and look great from the outside, curb appeal etc, but if it’s built on a crappy, unsecured foundation it’s not worth a damn. Our OLine is our foundation.
Generally I think you’re right, but I also think the cultural differences between football and basketball really show through here. For better or for worst that’s part of the culture in football especially in college where the coaches are king. Sure it can work the other way and you can be Tony Dungy and stay calm cool all the time and get what you want, but that aint easy. Even CTB curses behind closed doors.
That’s preferred approach for sure but I think that comes with experience tough to swallow/handle those emotions correctly. Especially when you’re coming from a role where you were basically encouraged to fly off.
Not sure if I made my point very well. But it definitely takes a mature leader heavy team to get to the place where coaches dont need to scream at them in public so to speak. Listen to Cov talk about what his group was about in 1990 or so. Would be cool to hear him speak to this I think
I actually went back and listened to the Elliott presser that someone linked yesterday (complaining about the fact that you can’t hear the reporter’s question – he’s right, they should fix that – do we need a capital campaign to buy a couple wireless mics or something?), and I thought it was interesting that Elliott brought up, relatively unprompted, something about not allowing fights in practice, while most programs do.
I’m not sure if that was shade against the previous regime, or random, or what. But my brain certainly went to an unfortunate incident at the beginning of the Bronco regime involving Anae’s son, if my memory isn’t muddled, and I’m not sure if I have a point, and I’m even less sure that my memory is right, and I know it was a classic he said / he said incident, so who knows what happened, and anyway … what’s my point? Do I have one? Do I know the first thing about a football locker room? Sure don’t. I don’t even like it when people jostle me, to be honest. Maybe I should only talk hoops…
This reminds me of a situation when I was young in my career. My first season as an HC I had a veteran team and a very talented team. I often joked I was a Bobby Bowden style coach, a GM, I set the plans and sat back at training and watched my assistants do their thing and just injected myself where I wanted.
Fast forward a year an a playoff run later, I had an almost all new team and a new staff, and essentially had to coach for the first time. I was overbearing screaming ranting, on the sidelines in training, and everywhere else. The team didn’t have leadership so I tried to assume it. The result was my worst season as a HC, my only losing season ever.
I had a mentor point out everything Fresh is talking about and I started to change my approach and empower the players more in season 3 and we saw a very slow but gradual change where we narrowly missed the playoffs finishing off the yr winning 4/5. All that came about because I built a relationship with a few key players and gave them the power. But that ain’t easy. It took a lot of outside of practice meetings, beers, talks to build that trust both ways.
I’m totally with you on the WR effort, specifically the incidents in the ODU game that the announcers were pointing out. On one incompletion, the pass was knocked away from (I think) Thompson by the guy who was covering Wicks because Wicks was supposed to run a clear out route to get his man out of the play, but Wicks didn’t run hard or something.
One thing that’s been in the back of my mind is a scouting assessment of one of our WRs in a recent draft, maybe Dubois. The guy was saying that we ran a pretty simple route tree, so it was hard to determine how the WR would translate into running the full NFL route tree.
I wonder if some of our struggles relate to Armstrong and the WRs learning a more complex route tree so they’re not making the same reads on some plays so the timing’s off or Brennen’s holding the ball longer to make sure a guy’s open instead of trusting that the guy will run the same route he thinks the WR should run and throwing the ball on time.
You do have to wonder about Elliott’s offense looking at how much DJU struggled last year vs how good he looks so far this year.
Think you just raised 2 sides to the same coin and both are very important.
The simple route trees thing is interesting and falls inline with the idea that Anae’s scheme had the team essentially playing back yard ball, and under Coach Elliott they are being asked to fit in a system that is asking more of them physically and mentally.
The flip side of it is what is Clemson doing this year? DJU looks much better this year than he did last year. Is that because the scheme has a few new wrinkles or has a year of learning playing and growing allowed him to grasp a playbook? I haven’t studied Clemson close enough to know which is right. But I believe both are possible and probable.
The regression from BA and Wicks is one of the worst regressions I’ve seen from college athletes and has me unfortunately confident will not work out. Players just don’t go from all league to below starter level in one offseason. And I was someone fairly high on Elliott before the season.
Still hope they can turn around the rest of the new season and that the new facilities jump start recruiting. If we can get that going it’s still going to be a long couple of seasons but there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Our offense went from top 10 to 99th (out of 130) in one year. It’s not nothing. Even if you account for new scheme and the oline it’s bad. FCS teams are fielding better offenses.
There’s culture, and then there’s attitude. I have plenty of concerns and criticisms about coach E, and ultimately responsibility for the team’s behavior falls on the coaches, but this kind of behavior reflects very poorly on the player’s attitudes and it seems the veteran core are the biggest offenders. A guy flying off the handle into an uncontrollable rage isn’t about “cultural differences.” A guy refusing to speak to his head coach is just not acceptable. QB1 is visibly checked out. The “officers” bear the blame, for sure, but a unit can’t function without its NCOs, and our senior player leadership seem to have quit on the team and the program. This year is a write-off already. Frankly it looks like we all just have to wait for the coaches to clean house after the season and reboot and see what happens.
I remember a video the basketball team put out a few years ago, and they were asking Ty, Kyle, and DeAndre to share things most people didn’t know about CTB. IIRC, Ty said that CTB was a shark at ping-pong, Kyle said CTB’s favorite dessert was a fluffer-nutter cookie from somewhere, and DeAndre said (and this is the reason I’m telling this) CTB didn’t seem like he’d be a yeller, but he can really yell.
As you say, staying cool coaching big time sports gets the better of everyone now and then.
2J was rolling in to recruit sporting an XXXL UVA t-shirt and baggy pants. Looked like someone’s Uncle who doesn’t get off the couch much. His appearance hardly conveys a man on top of his game who persuades a recruit to come onboard to an unclear situation. So, after our coach quit on the team, the entire OL decided they could do the same. It was too late in the cycle to do anything about it and 2J was not going to pull a rabbit out of his t-shirt. Honestly, probably the most destructive thing that could happen to a team is the complete and unexpected departure of an OL at the end of a season.
Yeah, but that chin is absolutely epic and makes up for it. It enters the room, hugs everyone and explains why he’s there before 2J even gets there. Thanos was like “wow, that’s a big chin”.
When I said cultural in reference to Faumui, I’m not talking about team culture, I’m referencing actual culture. He’s an Islander from Hawaii. It’s a different cultural background and as a result of his experiences he takes different actions. Bronco, is more accustomed to that than Coach Elliott. Not saying it’s good, or was handled properly.