For reasons, both professional and personal, I believe Sark is the guy. If he is left alone to do his job, a historical impossibility on the Forty, I believe he will be a generational hire.
I also think that despite all of the film that he watched and all the team meetings that he had, that when it came time for Spring Practice, he was absolutely stunned at level of talent, the lack of depth, the lack of leadership and the lack of attitude that was basically "Coach, I will do anything to be as good and as successful as you can make me, "TURN ME INTO A CHAMPION. PLEASE COACH!!", I didn't come here to drown in an ocean of 7 years of Missouri Valley leadership from a pair of Group of Five coaches whose claims to fame were beating a really good Florida team in the Sugar Bowl while at UL, and beating teams with Kevin Sumlin recruits at UH.
I think what Sark has done is remarkable. So many of the just ******* stupid, no one is running the store, (penalties, special teams, apparent ignorance of the rules) have been cut dramatically. Still far too many, but the number is clearly lower. That didn't just magically happen. The offense, while a major over haul of a scheme is always ugly, is far more productive and less predictable than since Mack's first 4 years. And he gets everything out of it that he can as soon as he can, because he has no depth stock piled and OL that is horrible. Which is why, against good teams, the O is outta gas in the 4th. The look on his face when OSU blew up the 4th down, when he just closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest, said it all. He had exactly the play he wanted against OSU's defense, they swere spread sideline to sideline, the gaps were huge, there was only one way the play could not work. And OSU blew up the lineman two yards behind the line and crushed Casey to the ground. The O had nothing left. Outta gas. No depth. You can't fake that. And BTW, 48 points should win any game on the floor of the Cotton Bowl. I don't care when you score the damn points. It's still 48 damn points.
As for the defense, frankly holding OSU to one TD from scrimmage until the final minutes is pretty good. Because the defense is horrible. Not just horrible. Big 12 horrible. Everyone kidded themselves for 15 years that scores in this league were so out of sight because the offenses were so great. Uhuh. That's why OU averages giving up 41.6 points a game in the CFP. And only TCU, Texas and OSU were competitive in bowl games. It will take at least three great recruiting classes to get an average defense and sadly we won't be playing the Kansas schools then.
Everyone likes to flop it out on the table and measure it against OU, and people are bent because Sark's team faded and lost a gut punch game (for me, the worst since 14-3). Because of the overlap of Riley as OC before taking over as head coach, OU has been running, coaching, recruiting and teaching the same offensive scheme for 22 years. Sark has been on campus 10 months. It was a one TD game. Today, Casey doesn't throw the INT to make it 17-10, it's likely a different game. We got the best defensive effort of the season until, the O was outta gas. If the INT isn't a 10 or 14 point swing, it likely doesnt matter that we are outta gas.
I think that Baylor, ISU and KSU are all dangerous. We gave the guy a middle of the pack program from a conference that without it's two flagship schools, is barely the AAC. This didn't just happen. Look at the last dozen years and our record against KSU, TCU and the Oklahoma schools. It's not pretty.
Nick Saban didn't turn his offense over to this guy, just for the hell of it. He has plenty of honeymoon left. If not, there are plenty of other Group of Five coaches out there that can finish driving the program into the ground.
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