Remember the last time we fired a 9-win coach? We got Bill Callahan and his really competent Defensive Coordinator!
When Soiich was in trouble, he fired Craig Bohl the DC then. That was a good move if disregard Bohl's subsequent sucesses as a coach.
Bo was supposed to be defensive guru and he did a good job as the DC. Since Papukis has been the DC, we have had troubles against good teams.IMO, the Blackshirts have died. They are no more. I think Bo had something to do with it when held off awarding the shirts. It used to be the first string got the blackshirts and they had to fight to keep them. Bo has changed the schemes in the Big 12 and apparently again in the BIg 10. I think its okay. The players seem to me to lack basic techniques and that is weak coaching. You don't tackle like you are blocking someone. You have to take their legs out by wrapping them up and then eliminating the YAC. I suspect that we don't have enough full speed live contact drills since many of our defenders don't take the right angles, wrap up legs, play off blocks, turn the play back inside well, cover the back side, penetrate to brerak up the play, etc.
I wonder if we are playing a sound defense scheme but tweaking the defenders' play so much that they don't recognize their defense anymore? Are we matching athlete against athlete or are we outhinking what we do? I think Bo hired his friends for assistants and they lacked the experience to do the job. Now, six years later, they are still learning. Bo has grown in the job IMO. Grown enough is the question and how long do we wait?
I think Bo is a good coach but needs to reassess the way he has the coaches organized and maybe replace some coordinators.
I think Tim Beck has done a good job overall. His playcalling gets perplexing several times during a game. I think he needs to go back to a running game with some passing. The biggest problem in mind is the offensive line that is not competent. We must recruit better and do more individual technique coaching with more full speed contact drills for experience. I think the weak offensive line has been our major problem since the late 90's. IMO, that was time that we started to have domination problems during games with good teams.
I have read many complaints in this forum about passing too much. I disagree strongly with that position. I remember several decades not of power run and option football that drew defenses overmanning the box and daring us to pass. We often failed to win because we did not have a credible passing attack. Part of the problem, when you are identified as run team, passing quaterbacks and receivers dreaming of a pro career to go passing teams. When our run game is stalling, we need to have a credible effective short and medium pass game to force the defenses to back off- then go back to the run. Long ball passing is a low percentage game that Tim Beck seems to like. He or our Qbacks seem to like short passes in the flats for little gains- wasted plays IMO. The 7-point area is found in the north-south direction- not the east-west direction.
We need better (agile, smart, strong and faster) linemen, more technique coaching and some new experienced assistants.
Question: I heard an Omaha radio show where it was said that the former players are against Scott Frost coming back? Anyone know why? Was he not popular with his team mates as a QB?