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2025 season...

WyoVaquero

Well-known member
This season is over. What changes do we expect in '25? Is there as mass overhaul of the roster(transfers in and out). Would Burman actually admit a mistake and fire Sawvel after one year? If Sawvel stays, does he shake up the staff?
 
This season is over. What changes do we expect in '25? Is there as mass overhaul of the roster(transfers in and out). Would Burman actually admit a mistake and fire Sawvel after one year? If Sawvel stays, does he shake up the staff?
I doubt anything changes
 
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This season is over. What changes do we expect in '25? Is there as mass overhaul of the roster(transfers in and out). Would Burman actually admit a mistake and fire Sawvel after one year? If Sawvel stays, does he shake up the staff?
My crystal ball:

We lose many of our 2 deep to graduation. Very senior/graduate laden team. So the team will look much different next year regardless.

I expect Chris Durr and John Michael-Gyllenborg to leave this mess because they will have options and NIL potential . Tyler King probably stays but he could have options. I expect Evan Svoboda to ‘test’ the market but come to realize that Idaho State is his only option as a senior who has demonstrated an inability to throw an accurate ball. What Kaden Anderson does depends a lot on the next 4 games. I expect the rest of the returning team to largely return because they won’t really have much in terms of suitors in FBS.

Burman won’t fire Sawvel after this 1-11 season. Burman will let us know that he had a ‘stern’ talking to Sawvel and that ‘Sawvel knows the increased expectations.’ Just lip service to cover himself most likely.

The BOT and President won’t make a change at AD. We’ve seen their prerogative over the years. They will point to football attendance and the money brought in this year as to the ‘success’ of the program.

Bouknight and a few others on staff who have options depart the sinking ship. Sawvel doesn’t fire any staff because as clueless as he appears at times, he realizes no one is coming to this knowing that they will be gone in a year when the entire staff is relieved prior to the 2026 season.

Wyoming football finishes with back to back 1-11 seasons.
 
Having spoken to a member of the BOT, Ore's crystal ball seems to be quite well calibrated.

Next year will be an unmitigated disaster. Graduation, transfers, and an underwhelming recruiting class following this year's poopshow of a season will leave us decimated at nearly every position next year. 1-11 may be a remarkable feat to be honest.

The design of PBJ's contract and the current uncertainty surrounding UW and the state budget will lead to even bigger problems in 2026. My guess is that the UW athletics "kicker" in the budget is axed, in addition to UW losing its "block grant" - leading the legislature to gut "unnecessary" expense lines like athletics, especially after they pass more property tax cuts and are forced to provide some backfill to local governments that suffer reduced revenues as a result. The fact that we are uncompetitive, and an ugly football team will mean that UW will have even fewer friends when the slashing and burning hits after the 2025 season.

Previous hiring flubs were mostly survivable - as we know from Edwards, Vic, DC, and, hopefully, Linder. This one may have lasting and devastating effects on good ol' UW and our beloved Pokes. Elections, coaching hires, and contracts have consequences - and we are on the cusp of having to embrace some pretty ugly repercussions, I fear. Burman is presiding over the possible, functional end of UW athletics as we know them.
 
Our conference schedule was so weak this year, a bohl team is 6-1 but probably drops 1 other to some crappy team. The fact we have only won 1 makes me want to cry.
 
Why couldn't Bohl have stuck around for one more year. What a puss
He gave us 10 years and yet still half the fanbase was calling for his firing because he wasn’t beating the much more flush NIL program Boise and was ‘only’ taking us to Arizona bowls. I personally don’t believe that’s a fair critique to call him ‘a puss.’ He really did build a pretty solid program here all things considered …a program that Sawvel and staff dismantled in one offseason.

What I do believe is fair to critique Bohl about is the timing of his retirement announcement. If we were going to have a head coaching search, it put us way behind because most teams had already filled vacancies and/or fired staffs.
 
He gave us 10 years and yet still half the fanbase was calling for his firing because he wasn’t beating the much more flush NIL program Boise and was ‘only’ taking us to Arizona bowls. I personally don’t believe that’s a fair critique to call him ‘a puss.’ He really did build a pretty solid program here all things considered …a program that Sawvel and staff dismantled in one offseason.

What I do believe is fair to critique Bohl about is the timing of his retirement announcement. If we were going to have a head coaching search, it put us way behind because most teams had already filled vacancies and/or fired staffs.
My only real complaint is Bohl refused to seriously address the inability to use the passing game as an effective weapon.

Against the stronger defenses (which generally came against winning programs) we were unable to score effectively. His run heavy offense was designed to use the pass as a secondary option if the run failed to produce forcing the team to use it in obvious situations.

I do believe Bohl could have been in the 8-10 win range instead of the 6-8 if he had invested in better passing QB’s instead of his focus on run first worry about the pass only when forced to use it strategy. He might have even competed for conference championships if his passing game had been a bit more potent.

Part of our problem this year is directly related to Bohl’s refusal to groom a QB that could pass the ball effectively. Svoboda was groomed for two years under Bohl and would have been the next struggle to get to 6 wins in Bohl’s rush offense. Opposing DC’s had to salivate at the 8-9 in the box defense success strategy clearly obvious in game tapes. We saw it in the 1st and goal failure loss to Utard State when we totally showed what play we were going to run because we were afraid to spread the defense out until forced to on 3rd down and over 5 yards to score.
 
My only real complaint is Bohl refused to seriously address the inability to use the passing game as an effective weapon.

Against the stronger defenses (which generally came against winning programs) we were unable to score effectively. His run heavy offense was designed to use the pass as a secondary option if the run failed to produce forcing the team to use it in obvious situations.

I do believe Bohl could have been in the 8-10 win range instead of the 6-8 if he had invested in better passing QB’s instead of his focus on run first worry about the pass only when forced to use it strategy. He might have even competed for conference championships if his passing game had been a bit more potent.

Part of our problem this year is directly related to Bohl’s refusal to groom a QB that could pass the ball effectively. Svoboda was groomed for two years under Bohl and would have been the next struggle to get to 6 wins in Bohl’s rush offense. Opposing DC’s had to salivate at the 8-9 in the box defense success strategy clearly obvious in game tapes. We saw it in the 1st and goal failure loss to Utard State when we totally showed what play we were going to run because we were afraid to spread the defense out until forced to on 3rd down and over 5 yards to score.
This debate was definitely something we debated a lot on here over the years. One must also keep in mind that Bohl’s game theory strategy was to keep games close by limiting turnovers, limiting penalties, keep the clock moving to limit possessions and hope to wear out the opponent so Wyoming’s last game possession would result in points and a close win. Simply throwing the ball more or finding a better throwing QB isn’t necessarily consistent with that strategy.

Sure - maybe there is an extra game or two we win by being more effective throwing the ball…but there’s also probably a game or two we lose by throwing an extra pick-6 or the like. I’d say we are seeing this year just how detrimental bad interceptions and dumb penalties can be to Wyoming’s chances to win when we dont necessarily have a team that completely outclasses the opponent in terms of athletic talent.

As much as Bohl’s tendencies drove me crazy - - there really was a method to the madness. And it’s more apparent now than ever.
 
He gave us 10 years and yet still half the fanbase was calling for his firing because he wasn’t beating the much more flush NIL program Boise and was ‘only’ taking us to Arizona bowls. I personally don’t believe that’s a fair critique to call him ‘a puss.’ He really did build a pretty solid program here all things considered …a program that Sawvel and staff dismantled in one offseason.

What I do believe is fair to critique Bohl about is the timing of his retirement announcement. If we were going to have a head coaching search, it put us way behind because most teams had already filled vacancies and/or fired staffs.
He had a chance to go out with another 9 win or 10 win season and really cement his legacy as a good, if not great, Wyoming coach.

Instead he chose to ruin our program with nepotism and manipulation
 
This debate was definitely something we debated a lot on here over the years. One must also keep in mind that Bohl’s game theory strategy was to keep games close by limiting turnovers, limiting penalties, keep the clock moving to limit possessions and hope to wear out the opponent so Wyoming’s last game possession would result in points and a close win. Simply throwing the ball more or finding a better throwing QB isn’t necessarily consistent with that strategy.

Sure - maybe there is an extra game or two we win by being more effective throwing the ball…but there’s also probably a game or two we lose by throwing an extra pick-6 or the like. I’d say we are seeing this year just how detrimental bad interceptions and dumb penalties can be to Wyoming’s chances to win when we dont necessarily have a team that completely outclasses the opponent in terms of athletic talent.

As much as Bohl’s tendencies drove me crazy - - there really was a method to the madness. And it’s more apparent now than ever.
This.

Even in our best seasons under Bohl, we were not a particularly talented football team. We were just very good at not inflicting damage to ourselves through turnovers and penalties.

It was always interesting to me to look at the data based computer ranking systems like Sagarin, Massey-Peabody, S&P+, Fremeau Efficiency Index. They never liked Wyoming, even in the seasons that we won a lot of games. We were almost always the lowest ranked team at any given win total. Not that those ranking systems are perfect by any means, but it does point to Bohl repeatedly being able to extract a win total above and beyond what our talent level should have achieved.
 
This.

Even in our best seasons under Bohl, we were not a particularly talented football team. We were just very good at not inflicting damage to ourselves through turnovers and penalties.

It was always interesting to me to look at the data based computer ranking systems like Sagarin, Massey-Peabody, S&P+, Fremeau Efficiency Index. They never liked Wyoming, even in the seasons that we won a lot of games. We were almost always the lowest ranked team at any given win total. Not that those ranking systems are perfect by any means, but it does point to Bohl repeatedly being able to extract a win total above and beyond what our talent level should have achieved.
This is because even when we won 6, 7 or 8 games, we were a bounce or two from only winning 3,4 or 5 games
 
Bohl had an offense problem. He was very close to being great but the O limited him. One of his best years (JA) was when the O was good and the D was less than the Bohl average. I've always thought that was ironic.
 

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