Solar

Jeez man. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I can't believe we didn't have anyone on our roster to call plays that doesn't have a history of sucking at doing it. Things aren't going to magically get better here. Frankly the best strategy going forward is to put the play sheet on a poster and have one of Lanning's kids throw darts at it. Or just have the position coaches take turns calling plays for a half. At least that would give us the element of surprise. I'm not really joking.

I feel sorry for Dante coming back on whim and having it blow up so spectacularly. It should be clear to the scouts he wasn't getting coached properly and certainly being cheap shot out of a season doesn't make him injury prone. I hope he falls to the mid to late part of the draft to a great team. I not super optimistic about his chances in the NFL given his inability to process his entire field of vision, but he's a good dude that has done things the right way and deserves a shot at the next level. And regardless of how things turn out he will make more money than he could ever hope to learn how to spend.

When you've got Dan in your ear chewing every time you turn the ball over in games and practice you quickly become the check down king. And we don't know that Mehringer wasn't biasing DR to take the short throws too. Mehringer alone was bad enough for us to lose, but he definitely got help from the QB and Dan's conservatism, missing 4 of our top 5 WRs and inconsistent OL blocking.

I see several 9-3 teams making the playoffs, because there won't be enough Power 2, 10 and 2 or better teams. If we were to win out which includes beating Ohio State, we would be in consideration for sure. It's just not really in the cards with the under coached talent we have. Just changing the OC won't be enough.

I don't know about that. There will be a lot of high level teams looking for an OC at the end of the year. The sooner we can find someone the better. Someone like Locksley the HC for Maryland that was a Natty OC at Bama was just fired. A situation like that could be advantageous for us looking. I think Douglas will be interim OC.

Well in that case it ain't rat poison either, but it's unpredictable how players will handle it. Some will resent being on this team and be on the way out of they aren't NFL bound next year. Some will take advantage of the opportunity to make name for themselves with the upheaval, but they will probably use that to jump ship here. I'm struggling to be positive here, but this damage is like an ACL tear. We are out for the season and hoping to make full recovery by next year.

He also put more value into being clever than into being wise, which is also a recipe for failure.

Agree with all of this. The fire Dan crowd just isn't thinking critically enough about the circumstances. Dan's ceiling is high. He's proven that. The college football landscape is getting more parity every year for the next 5 years. Firing a coach to find someone else that can guarantee a Natty is a fools errand. Look what happened at Penn State if you want to see the risk of firing someone that has been really successful, because you feel that winning Natties is the standard. And I've always felt Penn State is our best comp, not Ohio State or Michigan. We are a tier 1.5 school and I enjoy us when we are in the championship discussion.

Agree to a T.

Even if we want Chip I'm not sure he wants to come back. It's worth a call, but I wouldn't expect it to go anywhere.

Well fire Kai too and replace him with Leftwich.

Dan Lanning's is going to need every bit of his sports psychologist's abilities to keep this team engaged and motivated now that we have nothing to play for other than a bowl game. No more "We still have all of our goals in front of us" to remind the team to get back on the horse. Every person on this roster that stuck around an extra year to win a Natty is going to have to dig deep realizing that at the very least they are still playing to save their draft stock. Perhaps the silver lining will be checking sports media seeing that nobody is covering us anymore now that we are irrelevant. No more rat poison at least.

Agreed. 10 points with a roster full of 4 and 5 star players against the statistical 90-100th ranked defense in the country that played FCS G5 and B1G teams. In the words of the great orator Clark W Griswald: "WORSE! How could it get any worse!?...Take a look around you Ellen! We're at the threshold of Hell!" I think we can only improve by putting someone else. I'm hopeful of this. Illinois replaced their DC, and even though our O is trash I doubt they played worse than before.

The defense is working about as good as the MINT scheme will let it. Hampton has a (short) prior record of success as a DC. What specifically are you seeing at this point that would warrant him being replaced with someone else? I get that the first 2 games they were trying to find their own motivation, but since then they've played pretty good.. The Illini changed up their play calling in the second half to attack the edges and use their bruiser RB up the middle. As a team that offense isn't exciting but they are incredibly consistent and don't shoot themselves in the foot. Their QB was good enough to help his team score. I specifically saw Lanning with the defensive play call sheet in his hand before the 75 yard score. So that one is on him, and maybe you could argue that if Hampton was good enough DL wouldn't have to be helping him, but he was always helping Tosh too, so by that measure you wouldn't want Tosh back. Dan needs to change his scheme on defense, but the coaching staff at every level is good enough to give us a championship caliber defense. The offense is obviously a disaster. The only coaches to retain there are the RB and WR coaches. We also need to replace whoever backfilled that personnel manager Stein took with him, because we whiffed in the entire portal roster while Kentucky knocked it out of the park like we used to do.

QB an OL position coaches are B.A.D. QBs all show regression and OLs with multiple years in the program still don't know how to play.

I agree with firing Mehringer as a sign of accountability within the organization for results, and it's also a sign to the players that it isn't all their fault. I am not yet convinced our OL players and QBs are bad. Their position coaches have not done their jobs. Coaches like this are where players leave from to go rehabilitate their careers.

It's almost inconceivable to have 426 yards and 10 points without a ton of turnovers. But it bears out what I predicted before the game that our O would be very inconsistent. We stalled out drives and missed 3 or 4 field goals.

I don't know. Until the offensive coaches are replaced we don't know what anybody's upside is on this team. Moore was regressing into a shell before he was injured. Thomas is worse. Smith isn't any better than either of those. How do we know Raila couldn't be good with better OC and QB coaches? Same is true for the OL. How do we know any of them are truly bad?

Dan's salary keeps going up and perhaps Dan diverted funds into NIL thinking he had a good staff on the cheap he could promote from within.

I think that is the only play Dan has at the moment.

Okay post game interview Lanning asked straight up replacing the OC is on the table, and Dan Responded that all options are on the table with us clearly not playing to our potential.

I just mean that judging by the hires Dan makes, that coaches that can recruit is non negotiable and therefore coming at the expense of coaches that can coach. We don't know the coaching budget Dan has to work with.

No improvement? That implies we are staying level. We are getting worse every week and it will not stop until Mehringer, Terry and Kai are gone.

We just scored 10 points against the 92nd ranked defense. This offense is worse every week. Scoring zero against Michigan and Ohio State is probable. Mehringer will not survive the season.

It's hard to recruit to Oregon compared to the other blue bloods when the money is equal. So you are forced to pick coaches that can recruit over coaches that can coach, and here we are.