Potential coaching candidates

[maroonmania]

Personally not ready to fire Mullen yet. But if we must in a year or two, would Cam Cameron be ready and/or desirable?

I personally say that anyone who thinks Mullen would be fired after this season is nuts. Not saying whether we would be better off if we did just saying its not going to happen after 3 straight bowl seasons with 2 of those having 8+ wins. Only even slight possibility would be if we don't win another game from here on out and get trounced in the Egg Bowl. Next year is THE year to truly judge Mullen in my book. We finally will have a QB with experience that runs the system Mullen wants and we essentially only lose ONE true impact player after this season (Gabe Jackson) and have a ton of returning young talent to go with a much more favorable schedule. In fact, I would say if Mullen can't get us to the 9 win plateau next year I don't know when, if ever, he will be able to do it.

I will say that our leash may not be as long as it used to be given the 100 million dollars we have dumped into the program in upgrades Mullen wanted over the past couple of years. The fans have sold out the stadium for a number of years now and donated to get Mullen most of what he's asked for. Its time for Mullen himself to pony up with a high quality team.

[CadaverDawg]

I personally say that anyone who thinks Mullen would be fired after this season is nuts. Not saying whether we would be better off if we did just saying its not going to happen after 3 straight bowl seasons with 2 of those having 8+ wins. Only even slight possibility would be if we don't win another game from here on out and get trounced in the Egg Bowl. Next year is THE year to truly judge Mullen in my book. We finally will have a QB with experience that runs the system Mullen wants and we essentially only lose ONE true impact player after this season (Gabe Jackson) and have a ton of returning young talent to go with a much more favorable schedule. In fact, I would say if Mullen can't get us to the 9 win plateau next year I don't know when, if ever, he will be able to do it.

I will say that our leash may not be as long as it used to be given the 100 million dollars we have dumped into the program in upgrades Mullen wanted over the past couple of years. The fans have sold out the stadium for a number of years now and donated to get Mullen most of what he's asked for. Its time for Mullen himself to pony up with a high quality team.

I tend to agree with you, but if he only wins 4-5 games this year, would we be just delaying the inevitable by giving him that schedule next year? Winning 6-7 games next year will be easy for anybody, so it will do nothing but give a false sense of how good Mullen is.

[trob115]

IF we only win 4 games this year, I will be on the fire Mullen train. If we cannot beat a terrible Arkansas team, who USM hung with, we need to re-evaluate some things. If we don't beat ole miss, we maybe looking for a new coach. I for one have not seen any second half adjustments in the last 2 years under mullen.

[maroonmania]

I tend to agree with you, but if he only wins 4-5 games this year, would we be just delaying the inevitable by giving him that schedule next year? Winning 6-7 games next year will be easy for anybody, so it will do nothing but give a false sense of how good Mullen is.

IF we win say 4 this year and THEN win say even 7 next year with a MUCH easier schedule, then I think we would be much more justified to make a change than after one subpar year this year. I mean we made fun of OM for canning Cutcliffe after one bad year and we would be doing the same. And personally I would actually like to see Mullen at least ONE season have a veteran competent dual threat guy to run the offense the entire year to see what happens and we should get that next year. I know we had Relf but all of us knew that Relf came with certain limitations. Its amazing that Relf ever improved himself to the level he did in the passing game.

[civildawg]

I hope that everybody saying next year is mullen's judgment year really means it. What happens when we win 6 games next year and win a bowl game? People will be saying dan needs more time. No he freaking doesn't next year we better win 8 or 9 or Dan needs to pack his bags

[CadaverDawg]

I hope that everybody saying next year is mullen's judgment year really means it. What happens when we win 6 games next year and win a bowl game? People will be saying dan needs more time. No he freaking doesn't next year we better win 8 or 9 or Dan needs to pack his bags

Exactly. This is what scares me about giving him next year.

[maroonmania]

Exactly. This is what scares me about giving him next year.

There is really nothing to be scared of, I mean Mullen has won 8 games twice in the last four years no matter what happens this year. Its not like giving a consistent "3-win a year Croom" an extra year. The ONLY reason, I REPEAT, the ONLY reason to be worried about trying to make a move this year would be that our administration is convinced that Hud is the man we've GOT to have for the long term and we are gravely concerned we will miss our window with him if we don't nab him before some other big program picks him up. Other than that I don't see any downside to giving Mullen another year. We may be VERY pleasantly surprised when we are running the true Mullen offense full time with a competent dual threat QB. I mean if anyone on this board thinks we are consistently going to win in the range of 9 to 10 games a year with a different coach (unless the SEC West goes through a down cycle of some sort) then I'm afraid that's probably not realistic. We didn't do that even in Jackie's hayday when the SEC was not nearly as strong as it is now.

[CadaverDawg]

There is really nothing to be scared of, I mean Mullen has won 8 games twice in the last four years no matter what happens this year. Its not like giving a consistent "3-win a year Croom" an extra year. The ONLY reason, I REPEAT, the ONLY reason to be worried about trying to make a move this year would be that our administration is convinced that Hud is the man we've GOT to have for the long term and we are gravely concerned we will miss our window with him if we don't nab him before some other big program picks him up. Other than that I don't see any downside to giving Mullen another year. We may be VERY pleasantly surprised when we are running the true Mullen offense full time with a competent dual threat QB. I mean if anyone on this board thinks we are consistently going to win in the range of 9 to 10 games a year with a different coach (unless the SEC West goes through a down cycle of some sort) then I'm afraid that's probably not realistic. We didn't do that even in Jackie's hayday when the SEC was not nearly as strong as it is now.

maroon, I'm sorry but I simply disagree. Do you see the lack of improvement and effort over the last 10-12 games? We've shown glimpses of better offensive play, but the coaching decisions have been just as bad. Recruiting has gotten slightly better, but nothing great, and in the meantime Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and others are improving. We can't just sit back and say that Mullen has won 8 games before, no need to worry. Mullen has beaten nobody that is really that good in the grand scheme of things. You have to look back to a 14-12 loss against USC to even find the last time we were truly competitive against a good team. And that was a loss.

So yes, there is something to be afraid of. It's that Mullen can cruise to an easy 6-7 wins next year without truly making us better or our team living up to its' potential, and then we would have to keep him although deep down the writing would already be on the wall.

Just look back at our schedule and results over the last 10-12 games. Think about those games and how we looked. And tell me you aren't even slightly worried about the direction we're headed right now. We can't let wins over weak teams and Only weak teams, cover our eyes to what is really going on