I wish who ever planned the Ole Miss game would have done the planning all season.
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I wish who ever planned the Ole Miss game would have done the planning all season.
I think each DC was a different instance and circumstance.
Torbush- Washed up. Basically here because he has some head coaching experience and Dan had none at the time.
Manny I- Was good. Hired away by Texas.
Wilson- Hired because he was the co-DC. Biggest offender of bend but don't break IMO. Not a good DC.
Collins- Good DC. I think 1A\1B was his brainchild and when it hurt us against Bama and Ole Miss in 2014 Dan got pissed and let him go. Good DC. Dumb idea.
Manny II- Good DC who got distracted at the end with the Dan to Miami stuff and ended up in Miami. Without Dan.
Sirmon- LOL WTF?
I suspect Dan had the most input on Torbush, Wilson, and Sirmon. Maybe Collins to a lesser degree but I think a lot of it was "if your idea doesn't work and costs us some games your ass is gone" type of deal.
Freeze was not in control of the D. Wrong thread.
I think I agree with you. If Mullen was pulling the strings and dictating what schemes each DC had to run, I'm not sure that the stats and styles would've varied so much year to year. I'm sure he's involved in the defense to some extent every year, as he should be as the head coach. He admits as much in the offseason when he says that while the DCs change, his overarching defensive philosophy -- "11 guys running [to] the ball," an aggressive, disruptive, "attacking" style -- doesn't. But how each individual DC tries to get the job does indeed seem to change with each new hire.
Your comment on Torbush, Wilson, and Sirmon is interesting, especially on Torbush. When he hired Torbush, it looks like Mullen thought he was getting a guy that would implement an "attacking" style defense, at least based on how all our players were raving about Torbush implementing "a blitzing defense" that would let the defenders play with their "hair on fire" (http://newsok.com/article/feed/72852). But then I recall after the Auburn loss in 2009 that Mullen absolutely torched the defensive coaching staff in his post-game press conference. Maybe he started to rethink Torbush mid-season and then got more hands on as the year progressed.
Agreed. Diaz was awesome at MTSU and at La. Tech and improved both drastically in a single season. Hell, he took one of the worst defenses in college football at La. Tech. and made it a top 25 defense in 2014. He had one amazing year at Texas (making Muschamp's good 2010 defense elite in 2011), one mediocre year (but still with a top 40 or 50 defense with average to above-average in-conference stats), and then got canned after a terrible game early in his third season. Actually, his 2015 year with us may be the outlier, with below-average to bad in-conference stats and mediocre national ones. Because in 2016 at Miami, he was back on track. Miami was mediocre-to-bad in 2015. 12th in the ACC in both scoring D and total D in conference games. In a single season, Diaz got them to 4th in both categories, and ended up with top 15 rankings nationally in the S&P+ and FEI rankings. That's a massive turnaround, especially with only 61% of Miami's 2015 defensive production returning.
I'm interested to see how he fares in the long term under Richt since's he's never stayed at one place very long.
Manny walked into a shit show. Mack Brown let the culture run the program. A bunch of 5* divas with little work ethic or team support. But, that's on him. He made a terrible decision. If he would have stuck it out will Mullen till 2014 we would have been in the playoffs.