jamario thomas

meangreendork · November 8, 2013

I remember how badly I felt for him in that NO Bowl game against Southern Miss when they put 9 people in the box. USM was just so much bigger and faster than us. Between that game and the Tulsa debacle at home in 2005, it became very clear that we had certainly fallen backwards from where we wanted to go.

That's on Dickey and a bit on the folks who decide on funding for athletics. Dickey just couldn't reload the roster with good players after his miracle class, and the guys he did get weren't good enough to keep the talent gap between us and the rest of the SBC.

TIgreen01 · November 8, 2013

That's on Dickey and a bit on the folks who decide on funding for athletics. Dickey just couldn't reload the roster with good players after his miracle class, and the guys he did get weren't good enough to keep the talent gap between us and the rest of the SBC.

This is debatable....but not by much. We couldn't replace Booger and Buckles/Jones, no question. But, in my opinion, the biggest things that derailed DD were:

1) As you said, funding was a big problem. Not being able to hang on to assistant coaches (which happens everywhere, but we were losing them for only slight pay increases that we *SHOULD* have been able to match but were too cheap to do so). This lead to more of the DD that said stupid crap like, "we're in the worst position of any team in the country". Basically, a morale buster.

2) The death of Andrew Smith. Andrew Smith would have bridged the gap after we lost Hall to graduation. He had more raw talent than Hall and led us to a bowl win that eluded Hall. We had to turn to a freshman who wasn't ready (Meager) when his backup plan (Byerly) couldn't make grades. As anyone with half a brain will understand/agree, QB is important. In DD's last 2 years, defenses did not have to honor the pass, and that led to too many stacked fronts that effectively shut down Jamario *when he was healthy*.

Edited November 8, 2013 by TIgreen01