Jordan Hicks "I feel a lot of ownership on obviously what happened this past week. It's the players. We have to be able to go out there and execute the scheme that is designed to stop the plays." On how do they fix it in four days: "Every time you guys ask me this question, I've answered it the same way. It's little things. It has always been the little things that have cost us, whether it's angles, leverage, somebody giving up their outside shoulder, or letting the ball run around when they're supposed to have their outside shoulder free. At some point we have to start focusing on the little things. I was under the impression we were doing that, but there has to be some accountability there upon yourself, with the players, to be able to know that I'm not going to let the other person down, I'm going to do something about this. I think that's where it starts." Jackson Jeffcoat "Being a leader on this team, you have to take responsibility for what happens on your defense. I think it's more on us than you can put on any of the coaches. We need to take responsibility for this. We'll get it corrected.We see our mistake. We saw what happened. We are taking accountability for it. We know we're responsible for it. Like I said, we're going to get it corrected, get it going in practice starting tomorrow." The Link
If that helps you sleep at night... I think the one thing we've learned over the past 3+ seasons is that talk is cheap. This group, as talented as they are on paper, should not be giving up record breaking performances to unranked opponents, period. The culture must change.
I am not convinced that top ten recruiting classes, year after year, somehow lose their talent and ability so quickly. I do think that the last three years have reflected gross misjudgement by the coaches in recruiting and player development at some positions: quarterback. The UT kid who transferred to Tulsa, Conner Wood at Colorado come to mind. And now its evident that the coaches have not developed toughness and fundamentals that have elevated to the level of division one college ball. That is the key, coaching good, talented players up to the division one level.
It's true, the little fundamentals are HUGE if you have lost application of them in your play. They will get you beat and put at a huge disadvantage so quickly. HOWEVER, what I don't feel in ANY of these words they spoke is any feeling that they need to play with attitude and aggression that is clearly lacking. When you get abused that bad by a no better than decent team, you ALLOW IT. It means your attitude is soft. Even pretty good teams with flaws likely have too much fire and pride to allow another team to do something that demeaning to them. Fix the attitude first. Meaning show up to every practice f**king pissed off. And do not stop being pissed off. Show up Saturday and take it out on your opponent. Then look at both films. The results of doing the little things with hunger, will, and aggression VS. the pansy, sloppy effort. Then make a decision who you wanna be for each and every game for the rest of the year. Don't just tell me we are a good team and it's as simple as correcting little techniques. It went way beyond that, and good teams don't allow a BYU to mudhole them and break rushing records. Maybe you can be a good team, but only with the right attitude, hunger, will, and techniques in your play.
You can be pissed off all you want, but if you're fooled, out of position, or on your ***, you're still not going to make that tackle or block
Of course you can't just be pissed and that fixes it. Just as if you also contently apply your correct technique against a talented team with more aggression and swagger in their sound play, you're going down. My point was show up pissed and eager to learn from the new coach so you can unleash your fury correctly come Saturday. Controlled aggression. They go hand in hand is what I meant. Yet if you show up with the "I'm not gonna take this losing ____ anymore, so let's fix it and unleash the fury" attitude...you are now on the right track.
I understand the accountability thing 100% but its just rhetoric. You mean to tell me that it has taken 3 years to learn what apparently hasn't been learned correctly? Bad Angles, bad Tackling, missed assignments... I am mean Come On. These kids have either been miss coached or just don't listen to instruction very well. Will they get it fixed... hell I don't know. I do like that some of the Seniors have stepped up and taken some of the blame but when you have 11 plus players all making similar mistakes on both sides of the ball game in and game out... "Come on Man!!!" Remember that Players take the attitudes of their head coach.. Kind of sounds like Mack Brown pumping sunshine for poor performance if you ask me.
If you need an example of what's wrong, look at the team that kicked our asses on Saturday. Some of them may get a shot at the NFL (two on their defense come to mind) but over all, they are not that talented. They were, however, motivated and prepared. When is the last time you would have used those terms, motivated and prepared, to describe our football team? They can't coach themselves, and no one else seems interested in doing it. Yes, they need to take ownership of their lackluster performances, but top tier teams do not have this problem week in and week out. There just seems to be a malaise to the whole program.
I'm with Macanudo- You can have all the motivation and pissed-offtedness and attitude and swagger in the world, but if your coaches consistently put you in schemes that has you out of position, and relies on only 1 guy having a shot at tackling D1 athletes in space, it doesn't matter how bad you want it. As for bad angles, I guess it has to be worked on some at this level, but isn't a lot of that instinct? And haven't these guys been playing football for 12-15 years by now? Come on. The biggest elephant in the room for me is that last I checked, Mack Brown is still a football coach. Doesn't he see what's being taught, and what's being game planned? If he didn't agree with it, he should've had the balls to correct it a long time ago. It's easy to point fingers and fire manny now, but what about recognizing issues long before we get blown out by a middle of the pack BYU team? EP
These guys are mouthing the same phrases and words that have dribbled out of Mack's mouth for years. Blah, blah, we'll fix it, blah. Mean, tough, football players win games. We all have our lists of those guys who have come through here and left their legacies. We remember them because they took no crap, attacked, didn't quit, and made their mommas proud. How many of those types do you see on this squad?
Then the player who repeatedly falls in front of ball carriers shouldn't be on the field. I think the coaches are the ones who are making that call. If someone does something incorrectly, teach them. If they continue to do it, bench them. As for Mack's coaching, I suspect he stops in on position meetings and asks an occasional question so they know he's there and he probably asks his coaches to be sure and consider this, and don't forget about that, but as far as making the position coaches show him how they intend to fix the butterfly tackling, or making a coordinator show him and explain to him the strategy and the plan for a particular game, I just don't see that happening. And as long as there are enough of the right kind of people handling the delegated authority it works. He seems to have run out of those folks. Unless you think 17 and 18 year old boys know all they will ever need to know about the game, someone needs to be coaching them up. I don't blame the kids. I saw the same problems before any of these kids were even in high school.
I think these guys have ultimately learned from the best (Mack Brown). Leadership and accountability for them (and him and his staff) is about the cliches you're able to cite. In winning organizations, leadership/accountability is 110% about actions.
"I agree, but I also expect that by the time you're at this level of football, you shouldn't need a coach to teach you that falling on the ground hoping that the runner's quad hitting your shoulder as you fall will make him go the ground isn't a valid tackling technique." The fact is that our team, as a whole, is not playing championship Division One football, and hasn't for many seasons this century. The team has an 11-15 conference record the last three years. Think about that. A three year losing record in this conference. And only two B12 Championships in 15 years. The kids coming here out of high school are playing very high level high school ball. They have to be coached up IN EVERY WAY to play D-1 championship football: strength, conditioning, fundamentals, etc. This obviously has not been accomplished here on any consistent basis as evidenced by a dearth of championships. And also by the all too frequent *** whippings Mack's teams suffer. Any high school player, 5 or 4 or 3 stars, must be coached up smart, hard and tough to be able to play at championship levels in college.
Amen. Everybody who ever played got better every year they played largely because some angry old man made them do it right or do it again. You don't just finish up learning the game in 12th grade.
Really, I think its more like muscle memory, a term I didn't even know when it was being done to me. Coaches knew that to do it right in the games we had to do it a lot in practice. I don't think that changes much from level to level. It seems Manny in particular, but the whole staff generally, just assumes the fundamentals take care of themselves which I strongly disagree with.
