National Signing Day

[307bball]

The other thing that should be abundantly clear after not winning the league in 25 years, is that were not recruiting good enough athletes to win the league.

This is the fly in the ointment!...players win games....if you don't get the top guys or build the top guys you will not win...period..I don't care who is coaching.

The talent in say 2016 was not good enough to win the league? Come on. We were a couple plays away from winning the league. IMO the talent is good enough to make a run at the league each year. Coaching has let us down.

We gave up 70 points to UNLV in 2016 and lost to Eastern Michigan on the road. We definitely had talent on the offensive side of the ball, but the defense wasn't all that great.

That 2016 defense had these guys: Cash Maluia; Logan Wilson; Marcus Epps; Rico Gafford; Carl Granderson; Tyler Hall; Andrew Wingard; Lucas Wacha; Eric Nzeocha. All of those guys have been on NFL rosters at one point. This is a terrible collection of talent on defense at Wyoming?

101st ranked defense in the country. They had a bunch of injuries up front. Gave up an average of 34 points a game. Wilson, Hall, and Maluia were freshmen, Wingard and Epps were sophomores, Gafford was in his first year at UW. Granderson only played 6 games, Nzeocha played 2, Appleby played 8. They weren't a good defense.

That 2016 team was definitely talented by Wyoming standards...the offense was even talented by MWC standards. The defense was not....The guys names that were listed were not contributing heavily ... or were being leaned on before they were ready.

I'll take talent over coaching every time...it has such an outsized impact. Wyoming's results this century are much more a reflection of the talent level of the guys on the field ... but that is true for almost every college football team. Give me a team like Alabama...with better players then their opponent at every position and I'll take whatever terrible coach....I'll beat teams at Wyoming's level until the cow's come home in that situation.

The good news is that it doesn't take that much talent to rise in the MWC...just a slight uptick will result in years like 2016.

 

[Wyovanian]

IiRC, 2016 was Stanard's last season and 2017 was Hazelton's first.

 

[LanderPoke]

IiRC, 2016 was Stanard's last season and 2017 was Hazelton's first.

Bingo

 

[Wyovanian]

IiRC, 2016 was Stanard's last season and 2017 was Hazelton's first.

Bingo

So much for the "coaching v. talent" argument.

Too many simpletons around here. It's not black-and-white this or that. It's a bit of this, a bit if that, a little luck, play, assess, adjust, repeat.

 

[307bball]

IiRC, 2016 was Stanard's last season and 2017 was Hazelton's first.

Bingo

So much for the "coaching v. talent" argument.

Too many simpletons around here. It's not black-and-white this or that. It's a bit of this, a bit if that, a little luck, play, assess, adjust, repeat.

Correct...coaching matters...talent matters...but one of those things matters way more, and it's talent. Guess who gets this?...every single coach!

Before the season begins, coaches are trying like mad to assess talent ... find the guy that other people missed on...it must be crazy making to know that your future employ depends on the whims of a bunch of 17/18 year old kids. I'm not a big fan of Lane Kiffen but that dude understands that he will never beat Nick Saban if he doesn't recruit on Alabama's level. SEC fans understand this so much that they created shadow networks to distribute money to recruits!! Why is this so hard for fans of lower tier schools (like Wyoming ... sadly) to understand or admit? This should not be construed as a reason to keep an under-performing coach. If your coach can't attract great talent you need to show him the door. We all get this when people try to diminish Bohl's championships in the FCS...we say things like "well .. it's not hard to win when you always have better talent than the opponent"...umm yeah...no sh#t. Guess what happens when the talent is roughly level or you have a slight disadvantage...you don't even get to .500. Which, coincidentally, is Wyoming's overall winning percentage this century (.406).

Are Nick Saban or Urban Meyer or Chip Kelley good coaches?...I would say they are, but you can't deny that when they were robbed of the talent advantage they enjoyed while coaching college programs...neither of them did anything in the NFL.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

I haven't looked but I'd guess that average recruiting class ranking over the last 4 to 5 years is somewhat positively correlated with MWC final standings.

I don't have time to do this but it would be interesting to look at programs who caught lightning in a bottle with their coach hire. Not something like USC hiring a new coach but urban meyer at Utah or ?. A program that was down and didn't have a strong history.. Look at their 1st 3 to 4 year recruiting classes and compare to coaches who flamed out. I wonder if the lightning in the bottle coaches significantly improved the recruiting classes which is why they were lightning in the bottle? If so how many classes did it take?

 

[307bball]

I haven't looked but I'd guess that average recruiting class ranking over the last 4 to 5 years is somewhat positively correlated with MWC final standings.

I don't have time to do this but it would be interesting to look at programs who caught lightning in a bottle with their coach hire. Not something like USC hiring a new coach but urban meyer at Utah or ?. A program that was down and didn't have a strong history.. Look at their 1st 3 to 4 year recruiting classes and compare to coaches who flamed out. I wonder if the lightning in the bottle coaches significantly improved the recruiting classes which is why they were lightning in the bottle? If so how many classes did it take?

That is a good question ragtime...how many programs would even qualify for that smaller school "lightening in a bottle distinction"? Off the top of my head I can think of:

Utah: Urban Meyer
TCU: Gary Patterson
Boise St: Hawkins? Peterson? Koetter? Not sure who to give credit here. Lots of wins by all of them.
UCF: Frost
Cincinnati: Brian Kelley

Not a big sample size in the modern era. My gut tells me that It's both coaching acumen and talent level. I do think that what Meyer did at Utah was pretty amazing from a strategy standpoint...there were some good players there but he really had some stuff on offense that was pretty revolutionary.

The more I ruminate on this topic...the more I feel like, in modern college football, talent and coaching may not be separable. At this point in the history of college football, where no stone of strategy or innovation is left unturned, the teams with the best players win. That means that the phrase "good coaching" means something different than it used to. It still means somebody with a firm grasp on the x's and o's as well as a good motivator of young men....but now, more than ever, it means an ability to attract and retain top flight talent. This has always been easier at marquis destination schools but the NCAA rules at least kept the more egregious "free agency" behavior limited. Now, unless you are a service academy, the best way to success is to upgrade the level of player playing for you. You could always come up with an innovative strategy...but the shelf life of that is miniscule....it will get copied by teams with better players by the time the next season starts and you'll be right back where you left off.

 

[flyfishwyo]

IiRC, 2016 was Stanard's last season and 2017 was Hazelton's first.

Bingo

So much for the "coaching v. talent" argument.

Too many simpletons around here. It's not black-and-white this or that. It's a bit of this, a bit if that, a little luck, play, assess, adjust, repeat.

Yep. Creating success in college football is super complex. And doing it for a long period of time is nearly impossible.

To me, it's kind of like your golf swing. You can do 75% of the swing correctly and still have a bad outcome. If you do 80% right, you can have a really good shot. Outside of the occasional train-wreck like Adazio, the difference between winning and losing usually isn't much.

 

[laxwyo]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

 

[flyfishwyo]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

That's what I saw. I know HS stats don't always show the whole picture, but that's not good.

I heard from a fairly reliable source that Bohl is hitting the transfer portal hard for a QB.

 

[LanderPoke]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

That's what I saw. I know HS stats don't always show the whole picture, but that's not good.

I heard from a fairly reliable source that Bohl is hitting the transfer portal hard for a QB.

oof. 39%? We need a qb that can play the position and complete passes, not a tremendous athlete that we plug in.

Hope your source is a good one and we can land a QB to liven up the competition.

 

[Wyotex]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

Seems like a pattern. See link below. Levi had the same completion rate his Senior year. https://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/high_school/scoreboard/?mkt=sanantonio&site=default&tpl=team&Sport=1&TeamID=228&SchoolID=&Season=2018&DistrictID=&SearchDate=12%2F17%2F21&SearchDateEnd=12%2F17%2F21&SearchLastName=&SearchFirstName=&Market=11&SearchType=Teams

 

[laxwyo]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

Seems like a pattern. See link below. Levi had the same completion rate his Senior year. https://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/high_school/scoreboard/?mkt=sanantonio&site=default&tpl=team&Sport=1&TeamID=228&SchoolID=&Season=2018&DistrictID=&SearchDate=12%2F17%2F21&SearchDateEnd=12%2F17%2F21&SearchLastName=&SearchFirstName=&Market=11&SearchType=Teams

I know we’re not a destination but you’d think some JA shine might convince some high school qb that actually slung the ball to come here. Hell, maybe coach Vigen and Bohl are QB whisperers! They turn 39% passers into 50% passers!

 

[Cowduck]

Chicken/egg problem to some degree. The programs that are recruiting well are the ones that have been historically at the top of the MWC standings - success begets success.

I haven't looked but I'd guess that average recruiting class ranking over the last 4 to 5 years is somewhat positively correlated with MWC final standings.

I don't have time to do this but it would be interesting to look at programs who caught lightning in a bottle with their coach hire. Not something like USC hiring a new coach but urban meyer at Utah or ?. A program that was down and didn't have a strong history.. Look at their 1st 3 to 4 year recruiting classes and compare to coaches who flamed out. I wonder if the lightning in the bottle coaches significantly improved the recruiting classes which is why they were lightning in the bottle? If so how many classes did it take?

 

[Subcanis]

Did I read the 7220 article correct that our Qb recruit only threw for 39% of his passes? Hell of a runner though.

Another guy with questionable accuracy but a big body to run into an eight man front.

Awesome re-engineering Craig. Nitwit.