I defended Sawvel quite a bit from the moment of his hire and through some of the bad times. Thought he needed time, experience, and a better OC. Also thought we had a few coin-toss games with weird shenanigans that just didn't go our way...games that happened to be ones that would barely go our way under Craig.
The beginning of this season I had finally lost all hope, and y'all finally got me on board with canning him.
Of course that's when he finally seems to turn the corner.
I still have my doubts. This year's Border War was inexcusable. The Jay Johnson hire was inexcusable and I raged against it from the get-go (in spite of some pushback here). The program dropoff when he was handed almost the exact same players and staff that Craig went 9-4 with the previous year was inexcusable. And tbh, what started this turnaround was a weak schedule, full stop.
But then again, I go back and look at some of my previous points in defending him. We saw a shit team with nothing left to play for somehow upset Wazzu on the road. We upset Fresno State. We had a crazy game on a hail-covered field where we inexplicably gave up two returns for TDs; like how often does that really happen? We got slaughtered by an ASU team that actually turned out to be better than anyone thought they'd be. We gave BYU fits for a full half before getting gassed. We've seen flashes of what could be, marred by some costly mistakes and WTF games.
And now we're beating teams with a pulse, but we're also trying really hard to give those games away late. We cannot keep running up 20-25 point leads and still having to sweat the outcome; it's ridiculous. BUT...we're still winning?
I don't know what the fuck to think about Jay Sawvel anymore.