Mornin Mates...
Today's Topic = Breaking the Mold
Is hiring a 32 year old to be your next head football coach and then hiring a bunch of assistant coaches with ties to the Valley, state and university all that revolutionary..??
Our friend Greg Hansen thinks so and feels that it will be very interesting and entertaining to watch what the "forever mediocre" Sun Devils do using this new, breaking the mold, coaching model, instead of the tried and true model that most schools use when hiring a new head coach....
As we all know, all of our previous head coaches have had prior head coaching experience and you have to go all the way back to Larry Marmie to find an ASU head coach that did not have prior head coaching experience and that certainly did not turn out all that well...
Hansen goes on to say that, on paper, the Sun Devils have the "least impressive coaching staff in the PAC" based on this new model, although I'm not sure about that since our past staff wasn't all that good using the old tried and true model and Colorado, Stanford and even Arizona wasn't all that good using that model, either...
The strength of this staff will be their recruiting abilities, per Hansen, but will they be able to develop the talent and elevate it enough to break the "mediocre" mold that the Sun Devil have been in for the longest time...
I think that is a reasonable question but I also know that Talent Is Destiny and you better have enough of it on hand or suffer the consequences during each football season...
The issue now is that the way talent is defined and addressed through development are far different today than they were just a short time ago...
The portal talent is defined by what players have done at various levels of college competition now and not primarily in high school systems, as before...
So, you ask yourself if a Big Sky Player of the Year carry's the same weight as, perhaps, a SEC POY would at the same position...
Last year, under Herm, and because of the looming NCAA investigation, the Sun Devils took a lot of iffy, fill in players, in my opinion, that ultimately led to our horrible past football season...
I was hopeful that things would turn out but taking players from the likes of the Big Sky Conference or bench mates, at more major programs, sure didn't inspire a lot of confidence...
And, now, a year later, Herm did not leave a lot of PAC level talent on the roster with which Dilly has to operate moving forward...
But, we also know, I think, that we could have had about 2-3 more wins this past season if Herm had chosen a different QB from the start and not relied on a QB, who hadn't proven much in terms of wins at his previous school...
Thankfully, he chose the wrong guy which lead to our loss to E Michigan and his subsequent resignation, from the program, that was under fire from all directions...
I don't know if the cupboard is entirely bare but it sure isn't full of proven big time PAC talent, either...
Which leaves our new coach and his staff in a very precarious situation but not an impossible one, in my estimation, since I believe, that the way they will define their talent needs will be far different from that of our former coach and his staff...
Our new Big Sky POY from Sac State certainly doesn't meet the NFL measurements that Herm and his staff employed, when choosing their talent needs, but he may have an "IT" factor at RB that will mesh nicely with our new offensive scheme under Dilly and Beau...
And, that "mesh factor" is going to be critically important as we move forward under this new head coach and his football philosophy...
Now, changing gears a little bit, even though our talent cupboard appears very limited, what about those at Colorado and Stanford, who also have new coaches...
It appears that Prime Time has hired some tried and true assistant coaches and is not into player entitlements...so how will that play out..??
We don't have to play Stanford this year that is a huge mess right now but do have to play Cal that doesn't appear to have an abundance of talent, either...
We also don't have to face the Beavers, that got to 10 wins this season with a bowl victory yesterday, which is pretty remarkable, given that they don't get a lot of highly rated talent to play in Corvallis, under Jonathan Smith, but they sure as heck play as a team together, so that its individual parts don't define it...
However, we do have to face Fresno State next season, that walloped Wazzu yesterday, under Jeff Tedford, that is a proven big time coach, that gets his players to "mesh" well and play as a whole rather than a bunch of individuals...
So, that's what I'm going to be looking for moving forward under Dilly and his Activate the Valley coaching staff...
Will the whole add up to more than its individual parts..??
We aren't going to match up with teams like USC, Utah and Oregon on paper but I'm pretty sure that we will have enough talent to compete with and, perhaps, beat the rest of the teams in the PAC that we will face next season...
The transfer portal and NIL deal are revolutionary in scope, so it makes sense to me that a school like ASU needs to proceed with a revolutionary coaching model with which to get out of its "forever mediocre" or pretty average position within the conference and beyond...
I will await your feedback, as always...
What do we have to lose at this point..??
Not a darn thing, if you ask me...
G'day Mates and Go Devils!!!
Today's Topic = Breaking the Mold
Is hiring a 32 year old to be your next head football coach and then hiring a bunch of assistant coaches with ties to the Valley, state and university all that revolutionary..??
Our friend Greg Hansen thinks so and feels that it will be very interesting and entertaining to watch what the "forever mediocre" Sun Devils do using this new, breaking the mold, coaching model, instead of the tried and true model that most schools use when hiring a new head coach....
As we all know, all of our previous head coaches have had prior head coaching experience and you have to go all the way back to Larry Marmie to find an ASU head coach that did not have prior head coaching experience and that certainly did not turn out all that well...
Hansen goes on to say that, on paper, the Sun Devils have the "least impressive coaching staff in the PAC" based on this new model, although I'm not sure about that since our past staff wasn't all that good using the old tried and true model and Colorado, Stanford and even Arizona wasn't all that good using that model, either...
The strength of this staff will be their recruiting abilities, per Hansen, but will they be able to develop the talent and elevate it enough to break the "mediocre" mold that the Sun Devil have been in for the longest time...
I think that is a reasonable question but I also know that Talent Is Destiny and you better have enough of it on hand or suffer the consequences during each football season...
The issue now is that the way talent is defined and addressed through development are far different today than they were just a short time ago...
The portal talent is defined by what players have done at various levels of college competition now and not primarily in high school systems, as before...
So, you ask yourself if a Big Sky Player of the Year carry's the same weight as, perhaps, a SEC POY would at the same position...
Last year, under Herm, and because of the looming NCAA investigation, the Sun Devils took a lot of iffy, fill in players, in my opinion, that ultimately led to our horrible past football season...
I was hopeful that things would turn out but taking players from the likes of the Big Sky Conference or bench mates, at more major programs, sure didn't inspire a lot of confidence...
And, now, a year later, Herm did not leave a lot of PAC level talent on the roster with which Dilly has to operate moving forward...
But, we also know, I think, that we could have had about 2-3 more wins this past season if Herm had chosen a different QB from the start and not relied on a QB, who hadn't proven much in terms of wins at his previous school...
Thankfully, he chose the wrong guy which lead to our loss to E Michigan and his subsequent resignation, from the program, that was under fire from all directions...
I don't know if the cupboard is entirely bare but it sure isn't full of proven big time PAC talent, either...
Which leaves our new coach and his staff in a very precarious situation but not an impossible one, in my estimation, since I believe, that the way they will define their talent needs will be far different from that of our former coach and his staff...
Our new Big Sky POY from Sac State certainly doesn't meet the NFL measurements that Herm and his staff employed, when choosing their talent needs, but he may have an "IT" factor at RB that will mesh nicely with our new offensive scheme under Dilly and Beau...
And, that "mesh factor" is going to be critically important as we move forward under this new head coach and his football philosophy...
Now, changing gears a little bit, even though our talent cupboard appears very limited, what about those at Colorado and Stanford, who also have new coaches...
It appears that Prime Time has hired some tried and true assistant coaches and is not into player entitlements...so how will that play out..??
We don't have to play Stanford this year that is a huge mess right now but do have to play Cal that doesn't appear to have an abundance of talent, either...
We also don't have to face the Beavers, that got to 10 wins this season with a bowl victory yesterday, which is pretty remarkable, given that they don't get a lot of highly rated talent to play in Corvallis, under Jonathan Smith, but they sure as heck play as a team together, so that its individual parts don't define it...
However, we do have to face Fresno State next season, that walloped Wazzu yesterday, under Jeff Tedford, that is a proven big time coach, that gets his players to "mesh" well and play as a whole rather than a bunch of individuals...
So, that's what I'm going to be looking for moving forward under Dilly and his Activate the Valley coaching staff...
Will the whole add up to more than its individual parts..??
We aren't going to match up with teams like USC, Utah and Oregon on paper but I'm pretty sure that we will have enough talent to compete with and, perhaps, beat the rest of the teams in the PAC that we will face next season...
The transfer portal and NIL deal are revolutionary in scope, so it makes sense to me that a school like ASU needs to proceed with a revolutionary coaching model with which to get out of its "forever mediocre" or pretty average position within the conference and beyond...
I will await your feedback, as always...
What do we have to lose at this point..??
Not a darn thing, if you ask me...
G'day Mates and Go Devils!!!
