What I saw today was that UCF had better football players than we did. - Our guys played hard, but UCF was simply better.
It is going to take longer that we’d like to restock our roster with sufficient quality depth and get them to play together consistently, sans stupid mistakes. I’m confident Dana can get that done, even if it takes fours seasons.
Herman came in and played the hand he had been dealt, which had a bunch of aces in it. His last season at UH he did a great job of recruiting - for Texas. Applewhite’s recruiting was sort of like Applewhite’s coaching. So, now Dana has to patch the roster up with transfers, JUCOs, and freshmen.
Some of you may have heard of Michael Charles Leach, who is known as the Pirate. He’s a hell of a good football coach and will end up in the College Football Hall of Fame even though he never actually played the game himself. He has rebuilt football programs at Texas Tech and Washington State and made them into winners by first running off lots of players he had inherited from the previous coach so he could replace them with players he needed to win. Kind of ruthless, you say. Well, did I mention that he’s a Pirate?
And, some of you may have heard of Kim Helton. He’s coached at four D1 schools, 4 NFL teams, and even a Canadian Football League team. He has two sons who are D1 head coaches. He’s a hell of a good football coach. But, when he became UH’s head football coach he purposely totally destroyed the program so he could rebuild it into the type of team he wanted it to be. His aggregate record during his first three seasons at UH was 4-28-1. His fourth year he won the CUSA championship.
But, Dana has not intentionally destroyed the program he inherited from Major Applewhite or run off players who he inherited when he came to UH, if they really wanted to stay and play. (Some may believe that he ran off D’riq King, who “should” be our starting QB this year, but I don’t.) - The point is that Dana will eventually get the guys he needs to beat a team like UCF, but he is not taking a quick fix approach. - And, when he does get it done, everyone will probably say that Dana is a hell of a good football coach.
Here’s the deal. I believe we need to give Dana reasonable time to complete his turnaround, you seem to think he should do it now. I doubt either will change our stand so I am going to let it go at that because this back and forth settles nothing. I will just say that if we keep changing coaches every couple of years, we will never have what we are looking for and good coaches would be reluctant to come here.
I disagree. I think we have a ton of talent. Under-coached secondary. And a QB, though talented (like Kyle Allen), does not seem to have the leadership qualities the team is desperately seeking.
Not the best example of why you destroy a team. We tied for a conference championship with a 7-5 record. We then had two 3 win seasons. His aggregate record after 4-28-1 you mentioned was 20-25 and that includes the championship season.
Kim Helton was successful his fourth year because we went from the SWC to CUSA. Please tell me we are not returning to the days of Kim Helton. Dana gets paid way too much to be a Love Coach.
What I dont like is when the announcer says your team quit. I like it even less when its a former UH player saying it. That’s on the coach. Has he lost this team already or were the players just frustrated?
Are Tulsa’s players that much better than ours? They were not only comeptitive with UCF (which we weren’t) , but beat them… again. They were also 4-8 last season. But they didn’t tank last year to be good this year.
i asked this question about tune…now i ask the same question about Dana
ps. not talking about being fired or benched…but just fan apreciation
but both seem to be given an extremely long leash longer than any previous coach, longer than any previous qb
ward was given literally no prep what so ever, zero developement (no offseason at qb)…still ended up 6-2 his 1st year QB…and yet half our board was calling for him to be benched
tune is 3 offseason in, starting 3 years …and everyone here is talking about “give him time to develop”
literally 3 years ago, we were talking about “we fire coaches at 8-4”, and despised applewhite and levine for 8-5 seasons… dana was 4-8 last season, as currently 2-2 and as of today projected to go 3-6 (with tulsa as a tossup potentially being 4-5)…and now we are talking about giving numerous years to turn it around…
im curious where this super long leash is coming from that wasnt given to some of our other coaches,
and i want to say i wholeheartedly disagree with the folks saying this is some rebuild… we have the talent to compete This Year. we were the #1 offense in college football just 2 seasons ago, all the skill player from that team are STILL on roster. QB is the difference, but Dana CHOSE not to bring any qbs in, not even a juco. The qb situation is on him. he is the one who put all his chips in Tune (Said tune was our starter for the net 2years in January, and didnt reach out to any of numerous qbs that went in the portal)
and with defense we’ve been extremely good on the run D, and for the most part and good at pressuring the qb… and even though the pass defense has struggled you cant look at damarion, marcus jones, deontay anderson, and say thats not a talented unit…
under a different coach, with this same roster coming in , i fully believe we could have been competing this year (im not saying “any other coach”…but a good one)
despite being portrayed as one here, im not a over reacter… it was 1 bad to 3 elite games…and i think it was the pace that gave us issues not so much run… conditioning was an issue
plus i think they held their own in the redzone…despite being gashed between the 20s…i still have faith in them
The thing that gets me is that they said the secondary was better and a strong point in the defense.
I also want to know why Dana gets the patience. We have all these players that are star players and were good coming from other schools. They should be making it hard for teams, no easy. They should also be buying in and feel like they can go toe to toe with anyone. 44-21 is not indicative of that.
teams use to hate playing us. Now they come here and dominate us.
I still don’t see anything from the coach that shows he is anything more than an average. His play calling is bad, he seems afraid to stick with what’s working, and what I really dislike is that he slyly insults the conference his team is in, along with the talent in it — even though he can barely beat the dregs of the AAC,. Another coach with this same team would not have put on a performance like we saw today.
Remember when we couldn’t get any sacks or pressure on Texas Tech because they were getting rid of the ball so fast? This offense is nothing near what Kliff was running.
I think Dana deserves another year to turn it around. Was not a fan of his hiring because if what I saw of him at the hurricane game vs AF at SMU.
He doesn’t have near enough pieces he needs yet, and our conference is better than most the media believes. So we need to hold on to the rope as Bum Phillips said.