TheUpperHand

Not as bad as he hated Asiantii Woulard -- he broke the mans foot.

Who's Beatrice and what's she got to do with USF Football?

For the first two years, Taggart insisted on implementing the Stanford offense, which we didn't have the offensive line for. He also tried forcing pre snap motions which did more harm than good and resulted in many false start penalties. We went 6-18 the first two years. Harlan made it publicly known at the end of 2014 that he would be having a conversation with Taggart about the direction of the program. Taggart fired OC Wulff and DC Bresnahan and hired Joe Kinnan as a consultant to build the GCO. We started 1-3 in 2015 and there were rumors Taggart would be canned if he lost against Syracuse. The switch flipped in that game and we went 7-2 to end the season. If Taggart would have stayed the course and forced the Stanford offense in 2015, he'd be gone.

Brett rhymes with ECU

That's cuz this is personal and a revenge game for USF. It was 17-17 at the half the last time we played. They tried to poach Leavitt. Saban talked trash about the players we took during the '07 season. Texas caught Alabama looking ahead to us. Either that or vegas is trying to get more money laid down on the game, but I dunno. I like the revenge narrative better,

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

He's making $5.5 million vs Golesh's $2.5 million. His assistant pool is slightly higher ($5 million vs $4.5 million). His buyout is $15 million vs Golesh's $3 million. Other stipulations: Sanders is permitted to wear Nike on the sidelines vs CUs Under Armor. We have an Adidas contract. Would we have risked our contract with our apparel provider? Guaranteed contract renegotiation after Year 3. $200,000 private jet allowance. $100,000 for six wins (Golesh gets $10,000 for eight wins). $100,000 more for each win after six (Golesh gets nothing more). $75,000/$150,000 to play/win conference championship (Golesh gets $25,000/$50,000) $150,000 for a bowl appearance (Golesh gets $25,000/$50,000 to appear/win) $75,000 for conference coach of the year (Golesh gets nothing more). Sanders' son must be allowed to be the starting QB Let's say in an alternate timeline, we bag Deion Sanders and he wins 9 games, a conference title, and win a bowl game. That will cost us $11.5 million. If Golesh does the same, it costs us $7.1 million. Plus a much larger buyout if he fails to perform as well as a possible bent over the barrel situation after Year 3 during contract negotiations. That's not even taking into account the fact that we would have had to beat not match CUs offer to Saders. That's a lot of risk to put into a guy who has performed only at the FCS level. After Game 1, I think it's clear that Sanders performed well above expectations and it's looking like a real smart move. Would I prefer to have him over CAG right now? Probably -- his ego rubs me the wrong way as well as the way he played the negotiation situation. But he got results and he overhauled the team with some great talent. But time will tell down the stretch whether it would have been worth tying over unheard of resources in him. Also, consider this: the ceiling for CU is a lot higher than USF. They've got Oregon, Utah, USC, etc. on their schedule. If they win 10 games, they're a Top-10 team. We have Charlotte, Rice, FAU, etc. If we win 10 games, we might be Top 20 at best. Do we need an $11 million+ per year staff for that type of schedule? I don't know that the payoff in the AAC would be worth it.

Also the difference in talent levels between the two teams: 2020 Recruiting: Tenn #11, USF #110 2021 Recruiting: Tenn #22, USF #65 2022 Recruiting: Tenn #17, USF #90 Tennessee was an SEC team coming off a three win season playing against a MAC team coming off a 4 win season. We're an AAC team coming off a one win season playing a CUSA team coming off a nine win season.

Yep. Through his first 3 starts, Brown is doing better than Grothe, Daniels, and Flowers at the same points during their careers. The funny thing is, in all 3 cases, the third game was statistically the worst of the first three starts, from a QB rating standpoint (83.1, 92.1, 99.3, 86.0 respectively for the aforementioned players) so this isn't unprecedented. This is also BBs first game in the new system. There's no reason to pull the plug on him, yet. We've already done the approach of switching QBs every week or benching one every time the game doesn't go our way. Then the complaints start rolling in that QB by Committee doesn't work. We've got to trust the coach to do their thing and set your expectations way low for this season. CAG has a lot of work to do to implement his system and fix CJS' mess. I'll say it over and over again: expecting to win this game was too much. We wouldn't have beaten this team last year, why would one offseason make that much of a difference? This was a 9-win team contending for a conference title with a QB on award watch lists. We lost a handful of talent to the portal, and brought some in so the team is still trying to gel in a new system. We're a one win team with a brand new first-time coach. This isn't Tom Herman taking over a 5-win FAU team or Deion Sanders taking over a Big 12 team where 5 star recruits are falling over themselves to play for him. No coach in USF history has ever improved the team in Year 1 from their predecessor. Heck, outside of Jim Leavitt and Willie Taggart, no coach has ever improved the team, period. Cmp Att Pct Yds TD Int Rate Att Yds Avg TD Brown 49 79 62.0% 546 5 3 133.4 52 345 6.6 5 Daniels 35 73 47.9% 631 5 4 132.2 49 232 4.7 1 Grothe 53 91 58.2% 672 4 5 123.8 55 221 4.0 1 Flowers 34 59 57.6% 326 5 3 121.8 45 186 4.1 2

Not as rank as last year

I would like to think that he would have accepted if we offered him a job. He's making less than a third of what CAG is and I can't imagine FAU is much better of a job. I believe when the idea of hiring Herman was floated here, there were concerns that it would be a repeat of Strong (fell upwards to Texas and then flamed out). I didn't agree with that because he never had a losing season. There were questions about his Florida connections, but looks like FAU didn't care about that.

We’ve been #2 for the better part of a decade.

We got bodied by McNeese State (also a ranked FCS team) in 2013 and a couple weeks later by FAU. CWT still got time to do his thing and it ended up paying off. Woolard kept his job even after the disastrous decision to extend CSH. You can make an argument for firing VPMK for the CJS hire or the extension of multiple failing coaches. You can’t do the same because of a HC who is in Game 2. That’s pushing the sins of CJS onto the next HC and not fair at all. He’s doing the best he can with a new team and system. Even the GCO took four games to start motoring and that was with freak show athletes at the skill positions. The FAMU/FAU outcomes should not be the deciding factors of VPMKs employment. Had he kept CJS on and we lost to them in Year 4, then yes. But now we have to let CAG cook and see how it works out.

But…but…deioniscoming assured me it was a done deal.

Not true. CAG got through the entire postgame presser without mentioning Clemson. Pretty sure CJS never achieved that.

I think the desire to fire a coach after one game is something we'll never fix.

It could certainly be argued that, but UTSA and Memphis can make that case. UTSA beat WKU last year and won CUSA. We've only beat Memphis once in the past six tries and they're closer to the caliber of the teams that we lost to the Big XII than the ones that came in to replace them. Those will be good late season barometers as to whether we improved from this game. At least CAG is building the culture early.

****, guys. The bar was set low then y’all get mad when we tripped over it in game 1. I went back to the posts following the McNeese loss in CWTs opener and there was less complaining than this. Two years to see if we’re on the right track. We saw improvement in Year 2 of CWT and saw that CCS, CSH, and CJS weren’t gonna cut it. Repeat: You need two years to see the trajectory and three years to give them a fair chance. C. H. I. L. L.

Just bumping this HoF post.

Can’t answer until the next round of GRIT scores are published.

We’d better show some improvement and beat Alabama or I’m off the CAG train!

Almost beat is still a loss. Can’t make excuses for CJS and demonize CAG for games that we haven’t played yet.

Florida A&M, UTSA, UConn, Rice, Charlotte, UAB, FAU. All were CUSA or worse last year. Not saying we’ll beat those teams, but I wouldn’t call our schedule a murderers row or, under ordinary circumstances, an unrealistic expectation to beat those teams.

No better or worse than I thought. Not a fan or detractor of CAG. So much of the Coach Go enthusiasm is gone after one game. Maybe they’d prefer we go back to 2013 when we debuted a HC by losing at home to an FCS team by more than 30 points?