Matt jones twitter space
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No but I'm sure you'll hear pretty much the same thing today on KSR.
Oh boy on the edge of my seat to hear what the self anointed ky guru of sports has to say about the state of the program 🙄
Yeah, folks on the Wildcat Lair Football Forum are much more in tune. 😆
A lot of folks don't like Gran but our best years under Stoops were when he was on staff. Coincidence? I think not. I think he is Stoops version of John Robic.
He said that this week only Don Franklin Ford is offering a free memory foam mattress with a purchase of a 2025 F-150
Gran was a heck of a RB coach but his passing game concepts as an OC here were terrible. And on top of that his recruiting was terrible. Just about every single recruit he got out of Florida was a flop.
Marrow was a terrible position coach but I do think he had an eye for talent. It sounds like Stoops started trusting Gran more on the evaluation side and look where it's gotten us since he came back on board.
When gran here, we finally got over the hump. Then went on to consistently high win totals.
Of course fans, like you, complained we didn't throw enough. So now we are here. Hope you all are pleased.
Not throwing enough and barely being able to complete a forward pass are two different things. When Terry Wilson was throwing for 18 yards against Vandy, 71 yards against MSU, 78 yards against CMU or 38 yards against Mizzou, you didn't think that would work long term did you?
I was very vocal to my fellow UK friends that I didn't think we needed to reinvent the wheel but had to have some semblance of a passing game. Stoops went way overboard when he tried to completely change the offense to an outside zone blocking scheme when what we were doing was great. We just needed a complimentary passing game to keep us moving forward. Instead, he hired another incompetent OC, changed our blocking schemes, killed our running game and made the BBW a joke because the OL we recruited best were the road graders and not the finesse type we tried switching to. The OL has been a mess ever since.
We needed to do what won 8-10 games consistently at UK. Instead fans threw a fit and now we're here.
I did and thought it was instructive because it was spin free. The Gran information actually was said on the podcast but it was accredited to Nick Roush. I was unaware that Marrow had as extensive relationship with Joe Kraft which was expanded on a little as well and while Jones didn't believe that meant you'd see some donation shift to UofL, it potentially hinders resources going into UK's football program.
I'll go MoneyBall on this and say while it's a big PR blow in the context of a college football rivalry, getting him off the books might not be so bad if he's had a diminished role within the program the last two years as Roush stated.
I'll go MoneyBall on this and say while it's a big PR blow in the context of a college football rivalry, getting him off the books might not be so bad if he's had a diminished role within the program the last two years as Roush stated.
If you're not moving forward, you're going in reverse, which is where we are now. And don't blame the fans. This is all on Stoops. He has had plenty of accomplished OC's before they came here, sucked while here and then became good again once they weren't under Stoops' command.
Brown was a star at TTU. Dawson was a spread OC at WVU and Stoops brought him here to play ball control and run the ball up the middle. They didn't see eye to eye and Dawson moved on. He's a star again at Miami and just produced the number one draft pick. Gran could coordinate a run game with the best of them but our passing game was almost non existent. Coen had one good year here because he had Levis and Wandale and a battering ram in CRod. He was not good his second term here. He is now a HC in the NFL. Skank was a disaster all the way around. Hamdan is a disaster all the way around.
There is only one common denominator with all the inept offense and lack of developing a HS QB. Stoops. Direct your anger elsewhere, pal.
The previous poster who's blaming fans for the current state of our football program.
A question I have is didn't Stoops clearly communicate what schemes and types of players he wanted to the staff? If so, there shouldn't have been THAT much animosity and disagreement as to recruiting, should there? I can see where VM and EG might disagree on priorities, but the overall philosophy should have been consistent. And, Stoops surely knows which staff member recruited which players so it would be pretty easy to evaluate who's talent 'eye' was better - Gran's or Vince's - right? As someone said above, many of Gran's FL recruits were underwhelming. In the last few years, I'm not sure Vince's were much better. And, I'm pretty sure EG and VM didn't disagree about EVERY recruit. But, there should be a group of players that Stoops can look at that were clearly Vince's and others that were clearly Eddie's to compare. Plus, the ones we decided to not recruit went somewhere - how did they fare? Wouldn't that be part of the annual review process and quality control? If you consistently rely on one person's opinion and it has proven faulty in many, many cases only a complete idiot would continue to rely so much on that person's opinion, yes?
When Gran was the HC at Cincy, his offense there was really good and fun to watch. He was never able to duplicate that at UK. Better competition obviously in the SEC contributed to that. But appeared to me UK never really tried. Now did Gran never have the talent to execute it, or did Stoops prefer to grind it out running the ball?
Lets be clear, the optics of this are bad because of the timing. Matt Jones is going to make it seems like the end of the world to drive clicks on his site. But the truth is, with NIL and profit sharing, his recruiting ability is negated. As the conference carousal turns, the decision will look even worse for VM, as the ACC is going to collapse sooner than later and the BIG10/SEC aren't taking Louisville.
The sooner UK can cut ties with Stoops, the sooner they can hire someone like Jon Sumrall, Will Stein, Glenn Schumann, or Brian Hartline to inject some juice into the program.
The sooner UK can cut ties with Stoops, the sooner they can hire someone like Jon Sumrall, Will Stein, Glenn Schumann, or Brian Hartline to inject some juice into the program.
stoops should never have left the style he understood and was good at.
Oh we went in reverse alright.
Did you watch the first half of the southern miss game before Barker broke his back? Iirc 300+ yards and 3 tds in the first half.
If that isnt throwing the ball, i don't know what is.
Sports fans are funny. Good enough is never good enough. Take a program that has a pretty pitiful history, bring in a coach that in due time is winning 8-10 games a year, and the response slowly but surely morphs from "this is great" to "not good enough." The 24/7 hyper focus now on sports (and everything in life, really) from social media and even legacy media - and for football it's worse because you have 7 straight days of that between games and then an entire offseason - naturally results in complaints festering and rising to the top and eventually drowning out everything else. There's just too much time, which allows everyone to focus on a bad play or series of plays or a bad loss. "Yeah, but in the old days we only won 4 games a year" or whatever just isn't a winning argument in those circumstances. Human nature I guess.
Gran was a good RB recruiter, developer, and ground game guy but that’s about it.
Marrow likeable guy, good with young folks and people in general. Most definitely helped bring in better talent.
In this era of football if your right hand men are a RB coach and TE coach, then I think we’ve seen what that leads to over time.
If passing game guys aren’t the decision makers from recruiting, development, scheme, offensive culture building etc…that’s going to lead to all the inconsistent, impotent, lacking of any kind of pop offenses that we’ve seen.
Even the couple of good seasons of ground game…it took all time RBs and defensive talent. Even with those it was still a white knuckle, grind your teeth, let’s see if the kicker can make a couple to barely pull out the win.
Just look around the league and game over all. I’m not saying everyone is “air raid” but I think an overwhelming majority of consistently good-great programs have passing game guys running the O. Especially if the HC is a DC by trade.
The teams leaning ground game, I’ll bet most have passing game guys as OC.
Marrow likeable guy, good with young folks and people in general. Most definitely helped bring in better talent.
In this era of football if your right hand men are a RB coach and TE coach, then I think we’ve seen what that leads to over time.
If passing game guys aren’t the decision makers from recruiting, development, scheme, offensive culture building etc…that’s going to lead to all the inconsistent, impotent, lacking of any kind of pop offenses that we’ve seen.
Even the couple of good seasons of ground game…it took all time RBs and defensive talent. Even with those it was still a white knuckle, grind your teeth, let’s see if the kicker can make a couple to barely pull out the win.
Just look around the league and game over all. I’m not saying everyone is “air raid” but I think an overwhelming majority of consistently good-great programs have passing game guys running the O. Especially if the HC is a DC by trade.
The teams leaning ground game, I’ll bet most have passing game guys as OC.
You can discuss schemes, player types, and the playbook, but it doesn't matter if a coach doesn't relinquish control.
Nobody wants to be micro managed. Imagine being coerced or forced to play a certain way, then shouldering the blame for the outcome. There's a reason our assistant coaching turnover is unusually high.
This is officially a transition season. The writing is on the wall whenever your lead recruiter leaves for the rival program this close to season kickoff. This will be Stoops final season and UK will heavily pursue Sumerall and possibly Neal Brown.
It's to another degree "funny" here in KY. Fans wanted regular bowl games, and said it would never happen. We could count on one hand the number of bowl gamed most could remember UK playing in.
Then Brooks, while never getting full support nor facility upgrades, took us to 6 in a row, beating programs like Clemson, Georgia, National Champ LSU, and FSU. Just a fluke turned to not good enough. Ran him out of town.
Hit rock bottom again. "Fans" just wanted to return to bowl games and be competitive.
Stoops came in and got the Brooks treatment. Everyone wanted him fired from day one. "Wasn't good enough." "He'll NEVER get anything done here."
Took us to 8 straight? Bowl games.
Beat programs like UF, PSU, VT, Iowa, etc. Led us to 1st 2, 10 win seasons in 40 yrs, 2, 2nd place SEC East finishes. Fans want something different. Tries to accommodate that change, sht goes in reverse. Hmm that's weird.
If UK fans could've accepted what they really are in terms of football, it would've made a world of difference. They might have enjoyed some of these seasons. They just aren't capable.
The Craft's are UK all the way. They won't shift money to Louisville, but what I could see them doing is holding back, like I believe they were starting to do with Cal, but with Stoops now if we don't see some remarkable improvements.
Brown was pretty solid for the couple of year he was here, considering what he had to work with at the time. It was enough to earn him the Head Coaching job at Troy. As far as Gran goes, he had a pretty potent high octane passing game when he was at UC before he came here. not sure what happened there other than he tailored the offense to our strength which was in the backfield at the time.
We won a Citrus bowl with Gran as OC.....and another Citrus bowl with Coen as OC....hard to say it was all Gran.
- The 2018 Citrus bowl team with Gran as OC....had a top 10 UK defense that really was the catalyst and Bennie pound/ground was the ohter staple.
- The 2021 Citrus bowl team with Coen as OC....UK's D was not a top 20 D and Wandale had the single best receiver season in UK history...
So you could really make the case...the Coen impact was superior to the Gran impact as a single part of the team.
Hope that's the case. I see Sumrall as priority one in the coaching search and he would crawl to Lexington if it was offered. I think Neal Brown could come in as OC and Associate Head Coach or something like that. He's at Texas now, not sure what his role is or if it's one of those type roles that Saban used to hire coaches that needed some redemption for.
What style? ball control and grind it out on the field. who wants to watch boring stall ball? Play to win or get out of here . Big difference on playing to win and playing not to lose stoops prefers the latter and the fans want a team that has a good defense and a high octane air it out offense . Not pee wee league football decisions 🙄
I may be in the minority, but winning 10 games 10-7 would be OK with me. I honestly don't care the style of play IF we're winning. Now, play 'not to lose' and/or 'stall ball' and lose? No thank you. I believe that UK's offensive scheme should be 'different' than many other SEC schools. It's unlikely we'll be able to outrecruit the bigger, elite schools for the athletes needed to play NFL-style offensive football. We're not going to get the 4* QBs, OL, WRs and RBs in sufficient numbers to out-NFL Bama, TX, Georgia, Florida, etc.
But, an offensive scheme that is hard to prepare for, that is different schematically than almost all of our opponents might be a long-term answer. Use RPO/designed QB runs, design the passing portion for shorter routes based on YAC, inside zone blocking, etc. I believe we could then recruit plenty of players who want to play in the SEC who don't have the ideal NFL measurables and, thus, aren't heavily recruited by the elites. In the past, Stoops had success with big, physical OL who maybe weren't highly sought after but fit into our system very well. Mobile QBs that put pressure on a defense. Shorter, ball control passing attack to reduce the time our OL has to hold blocks. Physical running backs who can move the pile and pick up the extra yard or two that can make a huge difference. It has worked in the past and I don't see why it couldn't now. It surely has to be better than what we've seen the past few years on offense with no identity, a poor (and porous) OL who can seem to run or pass block effectively, QBs who stand in the pocket holding the ball way too long, long throws down the field that have little chance of success when shorter routes are overlooked or not prioritized, etc. Is Hamdan (or Gran or...?) the guy to design such an offense? I have my doubts but am willing to give BH one more year to prove his worth.
You do understand that grind it out football allows you to control the clock and help the defense, I am sure. Electric offense got you a worn out defense that spent 40 minutes on the field and was dead at the fourth quarter. Exciting losses, no doubt, though.
And on top of that, clearly stoops doesn't know how to do what you want. Your asking a plow horse to run the derby. If you want the derby, get a different horse.
I for one like winning more than i care about how we do it.
Howd coen do his second round here? After we installed his outside zone and had his more athletic linemen? Also remember we didn't look good on O his first stint until he stopped demanding outside zone.
We sold our soul to try to install the mcvey outside zone. I get why we did it, but it was a poor decision because it was completely opposite of the very strong brand built for this program.
I feel you. the worst part is how they force us to tune in and listen. Like, we don't have a choice or anything
I have listened to the show once. I tried to another time and realized the host and show sucked.
I think he is funny as hell on ESPN... but his UK and KSR takes seem bad most of the time. From tweets...I have never listened...it seems like it is always CYA and excuses. The Rausch guy tweeted VM not leaving for sure about an hour before it was announced. Then it is suddenly, MJ knew this for months.
Don't piss on my leg and call it rain
The foundation was there for Coen. He doesn't deserve much credit for the product so much as bringing Levis in. Without him as OC we don't get Levis. Don't think that makes the case for impact as much as recruiting. Wandale and Levis walking into a great situation with the OL and running game was the catalyst.
