East_Popcorn_State said:
I think the Pokes have talent, but the coaching wasn't there.
Sorry Pokener, you lose all credibility with this statement. The fact is the coaching was there, but the talent was not. Glenn was a terrible recruiter, but he is one of the top coaches in the country. Greg Bolling is the best WR we could come up with under Glenn's recruiting. We missed the bouknights and malcom floyds badly. Our Offense was a mediocre D1AA squad, except for Devin Moore. The whole problem is Joe Glenn's philosophy does not work at Wyoming because we don't get the best athletes. We have to have a gimmicky passing offense in order to be successful. Glenn wanted to line up and run over people without the horses to do that. If I'm Nebraska I would hire Glenn in a heartbeat, watch what he does with equal talent.
Tell me what part of the coaching was there? The run, run, run, punt coaching? There was no creativity on offense, what-so-ever. Excellent coaching can make up for poor or mediocre talent (see Air Force). To clarify, I agree that we don't have the talent to win the conference, but I still think we have the talent to go bowling, which is what I am predicting for next year. I also agree that we need a gimmicky offense to compete for the conference title.
We were a game away from being bowl eligible in '07 (we should have been 6-6, if the coaching wasn't so conservative in San Diego). We went into '08 with basically the same team minus Ford, Claffey, Medina, and Stinson. Were those guys a big enough loss that we went from being a pretty competitive team in '07 (minus Utah & BYU) and 3 pts away from being bowl eligible to being blown out by Bowling Green, losing to UNLV, CSU at home, and nearly losing to NDSU, and Ohio?
Does Youngstown State, Southern Illinois, Western Illinois, Northern Iowa, Missouri State, and South Dakota State have more talent then us? They all scored at least 23 points against NDSU. We scored 16 against a 6-5 D-1 FCS team. I know, comparing games like this is highly subjective. But, the same comparison can be made with Bowling Green and Ohio. I doubt that these teams have better offensive talent then us. We completely under-performed on offense under Glenn.
The fact is we had 7 home games this year, and nearly the same team from '07, yet we went backwards. Is Ford the sole reason we went from a miserable 322 yds/gm in '07 to 296 in '08? He was the only one we lost on offense.
Was the coaching there to stop the same bullshit turnovers that have plagued us for years? When it becomes a problem for a bevy of players, over several years, then I don't think you can pin it on the players. The prior staff didn't instill discipline or any creativity on offense. There was only a couple of bright spots on the previous staff and one of them is still here.
I'm not expecting a miraculous turn around by Dave Christensen. I expect that he can limit the turnovers, and install a creative, gimmicky offense. If we didn't have the worst turnover ratio in the country, we would have beat CSU (3 turnovers), UNLV (3 turnovers), and Air Force (5 turnovers), making our record 7-5. This is what I expect in '09