Tuesday, January 10, 2012
This blog has been completely silent throughout the entire coaching search, and that was probably for the better. Anything we would have posted would have been pure speculation anyway. I spent a great deal of time every single day reading the latest rumors on the message boards about the coaching search, the rumored candidates, and the direction people believed the search committee was heading in. I’ve never been so obsessed over an impending decision. In the end, this proved to be a colossal waste of time, because it became abundantly clear pretty early on that NOBODY had any clue, what was going on. Somehow, the search committee managed to keep the entire process completely quiet, without many leaks at all. Which, in this day and age, is quite impressive and should be commended, even though it was incredibly frustrating!
Even though I knew nobody knew anything, I still couldn’t help reading. I’m not going to act like I know what went on behind the scenes, because I don’t, and only those involved do. It certainly seems like Petersen and Munchak were two of the top choices, and it appears both turned down the job. Where O’Brien was on the list, we will never know. But he is our coach now, and I’m excited about it. I will admit it was pretty underwhelming after some of the names that were rumored to be interested. But sometimes a young, hungry coach, anxious to prove himself, turns out to be a much better (and more affordable) hire than a big-name coach.
I didn’t love the hire at first, but I didn’t hate it as much as most seemed to initially. First and foremost, if he’s on Bill Belichik’s staff, he has a great football mind. No doubt about it. I know people always bring up the fact that his assistants don’t succeed as head coaches, but that doesn’t scare me at all. Just because the others failed does not mean O’Brien will fail. Everybody’s different. Doesn’t anyone remember the main reason Aaron Rodgers fell so far in the draft? It was because quarterbacks in Jeff Tedford’s system don’t succeed in the NFL: David Carr, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Kyle Boller. So 23 teams all bought into that bullshit and passed on Aaron Rodgers. So much for that thought! I’m not saying O’Brien will be the one to end this curse, I’m just saying it’s not a reason to discount all Belichik assistants. That’s just foolishness
I liked O’Brien better than Clements and Roman. He is younger than Clements and I like the fact that he is an Ivy Leaguer and from all accounts, is a man of great integrity and believes strongly in the academic side of being a college football coach. While it sucks he isn’t able to start right now, I respect the hell out of the fact that he is staying with the Patriots and not just bailing on them as many coaches do these days. As a Penn State fan, yes, it’s inconvenient, but it says a lot about his character and his loyalty, which is much more important to me in the long run. I liked the way he stated it in the press conference too, “I couldn’t come up here today and talk about commitment and loyalty, and then turn my back on the Patriots in the middle of a Super Bowl run.”
Along those same lines, after Munchak stated publicly that he had no interest in the PSU job, there were rumors floating around that he was still thinking about it. As much as I wanted him to take the job, I was not comfortable with the thought of Penn State’s coach being a guy that just a few days earlier looked into the camera and said “I am not interested in coaching at Penn State.” All the fans talk about what it means to be a “Penn State guy.” Well I don’t think being a “Penn State guy” means lying to the media, the public, and your players and bailing on them after one year. That’s why he stayed, I respect his decision. You could tell he was tempted, but the timing was not right for him. I hope he succeeds in Tennessee.
Right off the bat, though, I did have two main concerns about O’Brien: 1. Is this guy just going to bolt after a few years when another job, possibly an NFL job, opens up? 2. How is this guy going to assemble a coaching staff?
The answer to number 1 we won’t know until it happens or doesn’t happen. He has spent most of his career in college football. He seems to be big into teaching kids both on and off the field, so he seems like a better fit for college than the NFL. But we will just have to wait and see.
Here are the reasons I was concerned about him putting together a solid staff: He’s currently with New England, and promised to finish out the season with them, which could take a while, knowing how Bill Belichik operates. How much time and energy can he put toward hiring a staff? More importantly, who is he going to get? Certainly not many, if any members of the New England Patriots staff are going to pick up and leave a perennial Super Bowl contender to coach at a college in the middle of the biggest scandal in college football history. Other than that, his coaching experiences have been mainly at Duke, Maryland and Georgia Tech. All solid academic schools, but not exactly football powerhouses. Not to mention, the way things were going, it was looking like Penn State was trying to clean house, despite the fact that they had some of the best assistant coaches in the country.
Well this concern was quickly addressed in his press conference. He stated that he planned to have the entire staff in place in the next few days, which to me, clearly indicated that he had been working on this previously. I imagine part of the interviewing/hiring process consisted of questions about who his staff would be. More importantly though, was his announcement during the press conference that Larry Johnson was remaining on the staff. That was easily the best news of the day. If LJ isn’t the best defensive line coach in the country, I don’t know who is. Not to mention this helps tremendously with recruiting because he will help keep the commitments they already had for next year plus he’s just a great recruiter in general. The next piece of great news is that Ron Vanderlinden is also staying. After names like Mullen, Roman, Petersen, Clements and O’Brien were floating around, it became apparent that the coaching search was focused on bringing in an offensive minded coach (for good reason). I felt I’d be fine with a lesser known offensive minded candidate IF he retains two out of the three of Bradley, LJ and Vanderlinden. That way we could maintain Penn State’s sick defense and add a great offense. And O’Brien managed to do that. (At some point I want to dedicate a post to Tom Bradley because he is the man and deserved much better than what he got.) But back to O’Brien, I was thrilled he was able to keep those two. Even better, is the fact that he was wise enough and strong enough to let everyone else go. Nobody on the staff deserved to stay besides Bradley, LJ and Vandy. But I feared they were going to clean house and get rid of everyone. I was very happy to hear that he kept those two and got rid of the rest, that was the best way to handle it. Plus I loved the fact that people erupted in cheers at the presser when he announced LJ was staying. If O’Brien didn’t know how beloved LJ was before that moment, he certainly does now.
Then he started assembling his staff, which so far, I’m pretty pleased with. Just going off of resumes and prior experiences, my favorite pick up so far is Hixon, the wide receivers coach from the Buffalo Bills. First of all, we all know that wide receivers are the biggest prima donnas on the field. So if there is ever a position where having a former NFL coach will pay dividends in recruiting, it’s at WR. More importantly, look at the wide receivers they have at Buffalo. Stevie Johnson. David Nelson. Who are these guys? A bunch of no-name undrafted nobodies. And they have had a lot of success and scored a lot of points. Plus he coached a lot of great wideouts at LSU. So I think this is a great hire. An enormous step up from McQueary, who never even played WR.
The new o-line coach, McWhorter, has some great experience. He coached at Texas for many years, as well as Georgia and Alabama.
The biggest questions marks hires would be the TE coach and the new defensive coordinator. The TE coach only because his career has mostly been at smaller schools. But you never know. The new DC, Roof, has not had much success as a head coach at Duke or as a defensive coordinator at Auburn. For what it’s worth, Bunda’s buddy Mike, who is a scout for the Arizona Cardinals, said Roof is a great hire and is better than people give him credit for. While Auburn gave up a ton of points this year, Mike says they really only had one NFL caliber player on their defense. I guess we will see how this one plays out, but at this point, I will give O’Brien the benefit of the doubt. He wouldn’t have hired Roof if he didn’t have faith in him. Plus Roof has head coaching experience, which could come in handy.
The fact that these coaches are coming from all over the country will help with recruiting. Never before have we had strong ties to Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, New England, etc. This is completely different and should benefit recruiting. I also the fact that all of these guys decided to leave their jobs to join O’Briens staff says a lot about the respect they each have for him. Hixon left an NFL Wide Receivers coaching position for the same exact role at Penn State. McWhorter came out of retirement to join O’Brien’s staff. Roof just accepted a job A FEW WEEKS AGO at Central Florida to work for his close friend George O’Leary and is already leaving to join O’Brien’s staff. Clearly all of these guys must have a lot of respect for O’Brien. I believe they all realize the difficult position he is in, taking over a program in such turmoil, and they all are anxious to help him succeed and turn things around.
Although it’s extremely early, I’m very pleased with O’Brien so far. How successful he is depends largely upon how good his coaching staff is, and so far I like what I see. I actually have a theory… After the controversy and Erickson’s claim that Penn State would “de-emphasize football,” I don’t think Penn State could have dished out 4+ million for a coach. It would have been more bad PR and that’s the last thing this university needed. So they end up hiring a first time coach for under a million a year, and there are no bad headlines. But I have a theory that they promised O’Brien they would be willing to pay his assistants a shitload of money to help him assemble the best staff he could, which will really help him succeed. And the salaries of assistant coaches never make headlines, so there would be no bad PR there. I don’t know if that’s really what happened, but if it is, I think it was a pretty smart move and will end up paying off big time.
