Son of Spiriki

No matter if it was Seth or if it's Eric or if it's whomever is next, it's going to take more than a heater for a few games to get people outside of die hard supporters fired up enough to start showing up to games. Ideally, we'd see three consecutive seasons where we win more than we lose and we look competitive in our losses. The last time we had three consecutive seasons with a winning record was 20 years ago, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

🎯 In addition to our aggressively underwhelming overall record in both the regular season and in the postseason in the last couple of decades, the last time we had a head coach who left of his own accord and not because he was fired, his contract expired, he disagreed with the administration, or he was serving as an interim, was 1980. That coach was Jerry Moore. A head coach hasn't succeeded here and moved on to lead a bigger program thanks to that success in 44 years.

It's that thing I buy at the corner store whenever I need to wash my windows. Best shine ever with newspaper instead of a microfiber towel!

OUR MEAN GREEN ARE 4-1!!!! OK, so maybe it doesn't feel like we're 4-1, but I'll take it, no matter how weird it feels. If you'd told me halfway through the second quarter of tonight's game that we'd not just win by double digits, but in a blowout, I would have taken that bet and felt like I was laughing all the way to the bank. We went from a team that was executing poorly, that looked tentative, to a team that could do no wrong on the offensive side of the ball. It was an astonishing adjustment. Three ongoing things I worry about with this team: 1. OL penalties. Good lord those guys get flagged a lot. It's not as noticeable when you're piling on points, but these kinds of consistent holding penalties will sink us in a competitive game. 2. Not stopping the run. Tulsa was running against us; thankfully, we ran up the score and forced them away from it until garbage time. In a competitive game, that will once more be a problem. 3. Bad QB inflation. Evan Svoboda and Kirk Francis are not good QBs. I'm sure they're good people* and their families love them, but being loved by your family doesn't make you a good QB. How much of what we've seen defensively these last two weeks is inflation due to facing back-to-back bad QBs? I'm sure there's some inflation in there, but I hope there was also some confidence building, too. One ongoing thing I'm not worried about with this team: 1. The RB room. Season in, season out, across different coaching regimes, Patrick Cobbs' ability to coach up all the RBs on our roster is nothing short of astounding. In the first three weeks, we lose Ragsdale, Price, and Harris to injuries. Up step two freshmen in McGill and Sibley and K-State transfer Porter and the offense just keeps rolling. As much turnover as we have whenever a new head coach shows up, as much turnover as we have in offensive coordinators, what Patrick Cobbs has consistently done with our RBs is phenomenal. * Maybe not Francis. Did y'all see his laughable flopping tonight?! Even the Tulsa fans sitting next to me laughed at him. That would work great in England or Spain or Italy, but not here.

The old thing: tackling. My goodness these guys have problems wrapping up opposing players and bringing them down! After the last sack & fumble on Rogers, Tecza went for a late afternoon 21 yard stroll that would have been embarassing in a junior high tackling drill to put the game away. I'm beginning to think that tackling is something that our coaches can't teach. That's a problem. The new thing: play calling on blitzes and blocking on blitzes. I'm in Denton, and I'm convinced I could drive 45 minutes in any direction from here and find at least six or seven high school teams that blitz better than Navy did today. They didn't disguise their blitzes well and good night did they ever take forever to develop, but their success literally cost us the game. Some of the effectiveness of the blitz is on Rogers; he didn't have a feel for pressure from the edge. The failure to adjust to those blitzes is mostly on the offensive coaches. Whether you're talking Cooper, Cobbs, Davis, and/or Morris, each one bears some responsibility for this failure to adjust. Half of Navy's sacks were by LBs or DBs; several pressures that resulted in sacks by Navy's DL involved blitzes from DBs. When DBs are creating chaos in blitzes and/or getting home in blitzes, that means there's gaps in the defense. In those gaps are opportunities to catch a ball in space and do something with it *IF* there's a playcall to take advantage of that opportunity. All in all, I think this one was the most frustrating loss so far because it was so winnable. We should have beaten FIU, but Navy was far more winnable than FIU, and we found ways to squander the opportunity for a W. I see one other shot for a W in our remaining games, next week when we host Temple, but after that, I think the window closes.

We're 7.5 point dogs and the money line is moving against us. TIME TO WIN THE BYE!

I've modded a couple of large, exceptionally ornery Facebook groups as well as modding smaller groups across a multitude of platforms across the last 20 years. I don't have any insight into GMG's moderation policies, but as someone who has referred lots of online pie fights in my past mod roles, I'd ask you to take a second to think about the title of this thread versus the title of the thread being referenced by this thread. There's a whole world of difference between "So we really can't criticize the head coach, eh?" and "FIRE ERIC MORRIS." The gap between criticizing the head coach in Week Three of his first season and calling for the head coach to be fired in Week Three of his first season is not trivial. My hunch is that if the thread referenced in this one were titled something like "Eric Morris Needs to Improve" or "Five Things Eric Morris Has To Fix," it would still be up. Maybe I'm wrong, but I bet it would still be up. No matter how much we may disagree in our Mean Green football opinions, all of us are here by choice. If you find the site moderation to be too onerous or the mod policies to be too vague or opaque, then get some friends together and go start a Facebook group or build your own forum site with the moderation policies you desire.

...made me miss the professionals at Stadium. What a brutally amateurish production.

Individually and as a team, Army executes exceptionally well. They're proof that you don't have to stack your team with four stars and the occasional five to be relevant. Maybe a couple of seasons of getting the 3-3-5 rolled by Army & Navy might move the needle on the need to consistently have some beef up front.

Good. Rogers deserves his shot at QB1. I like Stone Earle, but our experience so far in Games 1 & 2 indicates that Rogers gives us our best chance to win. With our worst in FBS defense, we can't afford turnovers and have to make the most of every offensive possession, and that's Rogers.

I had LA Tech and Navy as the two remaining games on our schedule where I thought we were toss ups for a win. After seeing Navy give Memphis a hell of a game tonight, I'm moving them into the likely loss column. That was a surprisingly good game.

Winning may attract a few back, but we're not going to get most of them back. I can't speak for prior generations of Denton ISD alums nor generations since I graduated, but I can tell you conclusively that, for my generation of DHS grads, folks who had athletic scholarship opportunities to get out of town took them and never looked back. It had nothing to do with UNT winning or losing; it had everything to do with wanting to get out of Denton and go live somewhere else/see somewhere else for a few years on someone else's dime. I've said this in other threads, but it bears repeating: for a lot of these young people, this is their best...and possibly last...opportunity to go forth and see the world before they start their post-collegiate adult lives. Yes, we have a ton of local talent at BHS, DHS, GHS, and RHS. Just because it's local talent doesn't mean that it's ours to lose. What I'd prefer to see us do is go harder after regional talent in the portal. We're doing that, and it's netted us some solid players. I think that would be a more fruitful approach than to try to repeal the laws of nature and keep or lure Denton talent.

I was on the fence about going to the Frisco Bowl. To be honest, I've not been a very good Mean Green fan this year. Loved seeing the guys compete, but was also strongly demotivated by another season of what we came to expect from a Seth-led team. Most of my decision to go to the Frisco Bowl this year came down to seeing one of my friends and high school classmates who came into town. Last year's Frisco Football Classic was the second lowest point of my time as a Mean Green football fan, the first being Homecoming 2015. At the Football Classic last year, not only did what happened between the lines stink, but I also got COVID. My case was thankfully mild, but it meant that I couldn't visit my mom, who had recently moved into a memory care facility, for Christmas. I understood the risks and made my choice, but, not going to lie, getting COVID for that pathetic excuse of a game really soured me on attending Mean Green games. So, backstory aside, I saw a lot to dream on last night in Frisco. Yes, there's a lot of work to do, too, but that's the first bowl game loss since the Heart of Dallas Bowl against Army that felt like the Green were ready for it. The guys showed a lot of heart last night, and a lot of fight, literally and figuratively. Even after Aune's 2nd pick put them in such a bad position, they didn't get down, didn't mail it in. Things to dream on: the offensive line had a great game. Boise's defensive line wasn't much of a factor after the 1st quarter. Goodness, do we have some talented WRs! Adeye and Ragsdale had an outstanding game running between the tackles. Bernardo Rodriguez bailed out the long snapper on both of his first two punts. I really liked what Stone Earle did in his limited snaps. As they have at several times over the last two seasons, the combination of the defense getting gashed and Austin Aune doing Aune things were too much for the team to overcome. In fairness to Aune, he threw two great passes for TDs. I believe you can't talk about his eye-popping numbers this season without also talking about the backbreaking turnovers that came with them. His second INT of the game felt like it was the difference maker in the back-and-forth of the second half. I wish him well in all of his future endeavors, but I also never want to see him take another snap as our QB. Coach Morris has a lot of work ahead of him on the defensive side of the ball. I love Phil Bennett the person, but man...that defense was tough to watch in the second half. Unlike my feeling last year as I left Frisco, this year I was hopeful for our future next season. At the least, I am hopeful that we're not going to be stuck in the doldrums for another season. I don't expect to see everything fixed at once, but I do expect to see improvement. Go Mean Green!

I wondered if there was some kind of discipline issue with him barely playing in the first half. I don't remember seeing him on the field until late in the 2nd quarter and unless I missed it, I don't think he got a target until the 3rd quarter. He was dressed and on the sideline the entire time, and him being so limited in the first half felt like a major WTF. He's so much fun and such a disruptive difference maker when he's on the field.

It's not about cause; it's about accountability and leadership. Art Briles never told any of his players to go out and get some. Art Briles didn't supervise battery, rapes, or sexual assaults. Art Briles, as head coach of the Baylor Bears, oversaw the recruiting of these players and was leading the program at the time they committed these crimes. There was extensive documentation of why Art Briles was fired, and it all boils down to this: a loss of institutional control. That loss of institutional control started was centered on the football team but more broadly included the former AD, now Liberty's AD, Ian McCaw and the former Chancellor and President of the university Ken Starr. If you'd like to read the summary of the Pepper Hamilton report, it's here: https://www.baylor.edu/thefacts/doc.php/266596.pdf A head coach in any sport at any level is responsible for their team and accountable for their team's culture. That's exceptionally true of FBS football programs. A head coach isn't only responsible for what goes on in between the lines on Saturdays; they're also responsible for the attitude and culture around the team off the field. It's chasing success at all costs in the former that led to a toxic disaster in the latter. If you're in public university leadership, you simply cannot bring a person with that kind of record into the fold. Hiring someone with that background opens the athletics program and the university at large up a whole elective dimension of institutional risk. My feeling about Briles as a coach is that if he wasn't going to get a shot at Liberty, it's never going to happen. The set up there was the most ideal setup in FBS college football for him: a small, culturally-conservative school coming off a successful run with another former FBS college football coach with ample personal baggage of his own and the presence of the former Baylor AD who hired him at Baylor and should, in principle, know him better than just about anyone. From everything I've read, Briles was never seriously considered. If the guy who hired you at Baylor won't hire you again at an institution that's practically tailored for you, that sends a quiet but profound message to the rest of the college football world about you.