Quote:Gutted? Or poorly coached?


We were within 7 points of 6 of our losses. Our defense was terrible, but the fact that no adjustments were made and o'Brian punked Bradley by exposing how ridiculously predictable our defensive tendencies are kinda renders this argument of a gutted defense as rather weak.

I'm not saying the defence was built, but keeping us within 7 means they weren't gutted...


You asked further up the thread how many more wins would a good coach have brought in... there were several games that we left on the table.


Not only that, but it's a team game, with multiple aspects, offense, defense and special teams.

While the defence was clearly weak, there were 6 games where we weren't being blown out and within striking distance. Good coaching makes the difference -- public service announcement--- this is my opinion.

Not necessarily.  It could mean the offense performed well enough to keep us within that frame.

 

Your closing statements about the 6 games that weren't blowouts and within striking distance are interesting.  Good coaching can make a difference, I concede that.

 

But arguably two of those games were decided by bad shotgun snaps.  Did Bradley and company coach Wiz to mess up those snaps?  If so, why weren't the snaps bad until late in the year?  If something were wrong with the coaching in the close games that made the difference, and the plays that made a difference in those games were caused by bad coaching, then consider the following theories:

 

1) The coaching was consistently bad all year on the C snaps from shotgun, which means the bad techniques, etc., were being taught all year, which means the same mistakes should have been seen all year.  Yet we didn't see the bad snaps until the end of the year.  Why not?

 

2)  The coaching on the C snaps from shotgun were usually pretty good, as evidenced from the lack of bad shotgun snaps until the end of the year.  If this is the case, why would the coaches deviate from a technique that worked all year to an untested technique?  For that matter, after the second botched snap, Wiz did not have a bad shotgun snap the rest of the year, which means assuming the coaches saw the link between the change to bad technique and the bad result and returned to the good technique previously taught, wouldn't that mean they were capable of making the adjustments so many assert are not being made?

 

3)  The coaching was consistently bad all year on the C snaps from shotgun, but it took Wizniewski, an experienced player, most of the season to absorb that bad coaching.  If it is possible that it takes a while for coached techniques (good or bad) to set in, and that transition period had an effect on field performance, then is it reasonable to assume that Bradley and his staff could coach young players properly and it take a while for his coaching to take hold, which means they may perform better later rather than sooner?

 

4)  Maybe the negative plays had nothing to do with coaching.  Perhaps Wiz botched those snaps on his own, whether due to injury that impacted his performance, or due to a lack of concentration, or some other error.  In this case, why does Bradley get the blame for this?

---