Rich Scangarello Out
- Thread starter UKCATS8
- Start date
It’s a way to blame someone else other than the guy they know and like that just won a superbowl. It’s more comfortable to blame some other guy. It’s what we did for a while with Wolford
If you've been a fan longer than five minutes you'd know it's because drew Barker broke his back after a half putting up superstar numbers. That started the entire shift to power football.
Granted I'm glad we shifted but hated it was because of that
Kentuckys first call for offensive coordinator should be:. DAN MULLEN.
A great quarterback coach, a good recruiter, and a proven play caller in the SEC.
My number one choice. We will score with him. Best we could get.
A great quarterback coach, a good recruiter, and a proven play caller in the SEC.
My number one choice. We will score with him. Best we could get.
That's fair take. Stoops and Kirby have similar philosophies, but Kirby is able to bring in top 1-2 classes each year.
To you point, I thought Coen was very aggressive last year. We ran the ball, then took deep shots off the play action. I really think Coen could have developed the intermediate passing game this year with Levis, our TE's, WR's. That would've really made us dangerous this year. (I confess to not knowing how best to evaluate the OL, other than I know when it's bad! It was bad for 75% of season!)
I just think Stoops gets bad rap about coordinators and play calling when last year was very good. 2 Coordinators have left to take better jobs. Gran pulled a Houdini and somehow made everything work. Scang wasn't terrible, but we need fresh face and optimism heading into NIL and Transfer frenzy.
It was actually 27+ against the SEC slate (not that that's a huge difference). UGA was the only great team on UK's schedule last year and they scored 13 against them (with a last second TD). Now, UGAs D was exceptional last year and nobody scored on them much. The next best teams on UK's SEC schedule last year were 7-6 UT & 7-6 Miss St & 7-6 USCjr, not exactly a murderer's row outside of UGA. I do think Coen would have done better with this year's team than Scang did, but with OL issues, Levis injuries and CROD missing the first 4 games, I'm not convinced he would have been great this year either.
The KSR guy just said he is going to be the first call by Kentucky to see if he is interested
So one injury to a QB caused him to change his offensive philosophy for 3 years? I can understand making changes that year but we never tried to shift back to what we thought after that 1 half against Southern Miss.
I think coen would've done better too. He's just better. If you can somehow get him back, great. It just isn't likely.
So people can't or shouldn't compare last year to this year. The comparison needs to be scang vs who is available that we can get. The difference in offensive production wasn't nearly what people thought. Especially given the special teams woes (that probably cost us 3-6 points per sec game), depleted ol, hobbled QB, 4 games with no crod, and much improved opponent defenses.
Making yet another change necessitates a grand slam. This is 4 different OCS in 4 years. Not a recipe for sustained success
Here’s what I hate. Signing day is a couple of weeks away and we are out an OC, and we have that idiotic job posting law in KY that will cause it to take a damn month for us to name an OC.
Not great but if they know who it is, the players they are recruiting will also know, they will just make it official at a later date.
Coen is a pipe dream…he couldn’t get out of Lexington fast enough. He had no designs on hanging around college football. He’s a pro coach.
Im not sure what direction he goes from here.
Brian Hartline makes the most sense. He’s got the Ohio connections that CMS loves. Not sure what his interest level is though.
Mullen is interesting, has the resume, experience, and all the credentials. Not entirely sure how his offensive style, philosophy, overall personality etc fits with stoops. We’re talking about a guy who’s run the show and called whatever the f play he’s wanted for well over a decade. Not sure if that is going to fit with CMS.
Maybe look into tcu OC who tore it up for Dykes at SMU and this year obviously.
Uncle Bob…I mean why not ask…
Im not sure what direction he goes from here.
Brian Hartline makes the most sense. He’s got the Ohio connections that CMS loves. Not sure what his interest level is though.
Mullen is interesting, has the resume, experience, and all the credentials. Not entirely sure how his offensive style, philosophy, overall personality etc fits with stoops. We’re talking about a guy who’s run the show and called whatever the f play he’s wanted for well over a decade. Not sure if that is going to fit with CMS.
Maybe look into tcu OC who tore it up for Dykes at SMU and this year obviously.
Uncle Bob…I mean why not ask…
Regardless of any "offensive woes" our record would be 2 games better if not for special teams. Yes, our offense was offensive compared to its potential, but our biggest problem this year was special teams. Next on the list is not getting the ball out of the QBs hands quickly enough (hand in hand with not getting the plays in fast enough, imo). If Levis recognized when to get rid of the ball (and we were competent on ST), then there's no injury to his foot against Ole Miss. THEN there's likely no loss to SC.
Then the OL issues begin to be minimized with Levis recognizing defensive fronts, assignments, and that his time in the pocket is up.
Then the lack of quick (or any) progression through reads is up there on my list as well. If QB is struggling with progressions, you make them easier to read by putting them closer in proximity on the field.
If the line is struggling with protection in blitz packages, have at least one hot read ready at all times and go up tempo. Use play action, rollouts, cut blocks, slants, center screens, and rpo to take advantage of the defense's aggressiveness and make them slow down or think.
If ST didn’t lack discipline, we got the ball out of the QBs hands quickly, and take what the defense is giving us, we have 3 more wins. 10-2 right now. Most of our disappointment in our record has very little to do with our OL or our offense in general. It has more to do with ST and discipline across the board. We'd have several more return TDs also. Vandy doesn't score the last TD...
And don't let it bother you that I'm wanting to see this posted again, lest it get lost in the early pages
Yeah, I think you can make the case that Scang was on a short leash and maybe was a bit of a company man who was intimidated somewhat by Stoops imposing his offensive system on him. Who knows for sure... The job may have been too big for him.
@JBHolmesfan … don’t forget the context. We had not been to bowl game in a long time and people were already calling for new coach. Boom/Snell/Smitty combination got us to a bowl game and it was successful. TD Terry was a step up in QB and the running game was successful. Our quickest way to a defeat were interceptions (turn overs) and there was zero room for error.
TD Terry was still a bottom tier QB in SEC and we probably hit our ceiling w/o changes. (It did get us first 10 win season in 40 yrs!!!!!) Gran was labeled as run only OC and Stoops made the change. Levis and Coen took us to another level. The right OC is needed for us to get to top of SEC East. I’d be thrilled with Coen’s return, but I doubt it happens. I prefer the Pro-style offense because I personally think it’s how we attract the best QB, and I think football is driven by QB play more than anything else. Stoops has had program heading in right direction for several years now and I think he’s determined to see the top of the mtn!
I hope we don't waste time on Coen. He's an NFL guy and I seriously doubt he wants to come back to Kentucky and do it again. Probably will cost us a shot at someone else we could have had and we end up stuck getting someone underwhelming. Next year could go downward fast.
How are you that dense. You couldn't run the same offense with Stephen Johnson and Terry Wilson. We lost Jarren Williams and Mac Jones when we thought we had them locked up. The point is to win games , and running the ball with Benny, C Rod was what worked. He changed his offense to suit the talent on offense, what any good coordinator would do.
JB, you are a more knowledgeable fan than that!
Barker was injured in ‘16, and we lost two QB’s in 2019, resulting in LBJ putting the program on his back and coming within 9 yards of breaking the SEC QB rushing record in only 7 starts.
Those three injuries affected (but did not ruin) four successive seasons: 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Barker could have played those three) and 2019, when Bowden put on Superman’s cape.
1 injury takes nearly half a decade to recover from, but I’m the dense one. Why not recruit a different QB that fits the style then? No one forced us to take Stephen Johnson or Terry Wilson. Recruit to the scheme you want to run like everyone else does. This isn’t high school where you have to deal with whoever signs up to your school. We could’ve went out and find a QB that fit what Gran wanted to do. He didn’t have an issue with that UC. Surely he could’ve done it at UK.
What Gran did in 19 was incredible. I’m arguing that Barker getting hurt set the program back so much Gran could never run the offense he wanted at UC. I’m not buying that. My opinion is that Stoops didn’t want Gran running the offense he ran at UC and he adapted as best he could to that.
Once Barker was hurt he never had a QB to run that offense. This isn’t that hard.
We all know you don’t like Stoops but the QB injuries/transfers/decommits forced Gran to use what he had, and that was a good OLine and great running backs.
Then shame on the staff for not getting a QB to run the offense. Recruit a QB to fit the offense you want. Every other school does it.
I don’t know what happens behind the scenes with recruiting strategies and such, but I’d be willing to bet “don’t recruit a QB for our system” wasn‘t one of those strategies.
You‘re making yourself look bad here.
Lol they recovered from the I jury in a couple games. Stephen Johnson did some good things, and TW after him. Twice they had to go Juco route to get a QB late in cycle, and they got the best they could, and both those guys won a lot of games. Those that follow know that.
You're not going to score a lot if the strategy is to control the ball & thus keep the D off the field. One year we were better than 60th. Seems pretty clear don't you think?
How would fans have reacted if they moved immediately away from offense that just won 10 games for FIRST TIME IN 40 YEARS? Think about that logic for a minute.
I'm certainly not accusing you of being dense, but put yourself in Stoops's shoes. How does he make quick pivot from doing something successful that hadn't been done since Nixon was in ofc?
Now, I do believe he and Gran both knew how other schools were using it against them in recruiting. (I think Gran knew this as well as anyone. I still think Gran deserves MUCH, MUCH credit for Stoops success. He made chicken salad out of of cs, then fell on the grenade when other schools used it against him.)
Stoops pivoted from Gran to Coen .... this was huge success. (Another 10 win season and attractive to recruits!!!) Coen gets dream job with Super Bowl winning team with a head coach that's put out several young NFL head coaches. Stoops reached into NFL looking for similar scheme and hoping for similar results. It didn't happen for a long list of reasons.
I'm not sure what more you want from Stoops. I don't think he holds the offense back, and I think he wants something similar to last year knowing he has more playmakers. He made bowl games and created his job security with an offense that was put together (because of injuries) with a power running game, strong offensive line and a very good defense. I think he's using his equity trying to take UK to the top of the east. It would be easy for him to continue with running QB, and lean on the offensive line for 6-7 wins a game. Just my guess, but I'm guessing Stoops gets us to 9-10 wins consistently, or flames out with 1-2 bad 4-5 win seasons. I don't think he's going to play it safe and keep us at 7 wins a year! He's aiming for top of the mountain. The OC hire and QB recruiting are huge pieces of the puzzle. (BTW - I don't expect UK to keep White, but one more year.) Saban wants him. Other top 5 programs will offer him. Plus, he'll get good HC offers soon. I just hope we keep him one more year!
