Is Wheeler Brown making a mistake?

[Gator]

To me, turn around means Championships!

You play to win, not to just compete or be competetive

[thefriscotxaggie]

I am in with Dooms. Give you a good example my son is 13 and plays basketball and football. He has played both sports for a while and knows all the correct angles to take, but he is not very fast. 1st couple of days of basketball tryouts all the Coached had kids do was run lines and speed drills. He was middle of the pack at best. When they had there 1st scrimmage he dominated when he was in the game. Only because he knows how to compensate his lack of speed with taking the right angles. After the scrimmage they move him up from the JV team.

The Wofford game was a good example of that - I am 40 and I can still run as fast as half of those kids wofford had but they executed like a fine oiled machine and took all the right angles. Angles and techniquie is Coaching

[wart]

I cannot understand how you can under state the value of speed. What I have seen in the past several years is poor fundamentals (coaching), lack of necessary speed (recruiting), and a lack of proper techniques and knowledge of the game of football. Schemes are great but you still must have the talent to do the scheme.

[Aggie Monster]

My take is this. thefriscotxaggie is absolute correct.

Coaching beats ability. There are several cases that prove coaching beats ability. I can name an endless number of high school teams where this appiles. I mention high school because this is where coaches do the most teaching.

To me coaching DURING a game is about 20% of what it takes to have a good staff. Speed kills, but give me a discipline well coached team any day. Not saying you cant have both, but it's to many cases of average kids going to good coaching staffs and becoming great. There is also a TON of examples of kids going to weak coaching staffs and becoming irrelevant.

I know a lot of coaches personally and some suck and some are great. It shows in there teams, no matter what athletes they have from year to year. It mostly all comes from off-season work and a "practice-aholic".

[aggie62]

Guys,

Every position needs talent, technique and various levels of speed. For example, on our offensive last year we had tremendous talent and good speed at most of the skilled positions. However, the most glaring problem was the O-Line where speed is less important than size, quickness, strength, agility and technique. Many of these attributes were missing; size-wise, a good D-1 O-Lineman should be in the area of 6'3" / 320 pounds with strength and technique plus tackles need quickness of feet to block defensive ends trying to get around them to sack the QB. Regarding the QB position; its weaknesses were highlighted by our O- Line who had talent but lacked both size and good technique.

To net it out, a championship team needs all these things at all its positions.

[oleschoolaggie]

Dec 10, 2008 9:36:45 GMT -5 Aggie77 said:

Dec 10, 2008 8:55:33 GMT -5 wart said:

Ole, Maybe on my planet we look at things differently but if you believe we have the talent to be successful on the field now...... ? Which games did you watch? I don't want to argue but for us to compete regularly we need speed. There is only so much Cedric can do. Bobby Bowden always said," you either got speed or you're chasing it" and i saw a lot of chasing during the last 3 yrs of 0-11, 0-11,and 3-9.

We played a lot teams that have talent or speed equal to or lesser than ours over the last three years. What speed or talent did Howard, Coastal, WSSU, NCCU, Morgan, NSU, PVA&M, (or BCU for that matter), have the past three years that was superior to ours. In fact we have great speed at the corners, but you can't coach speed, but you can coach technique.

The problem is not the talent to be competitive, we have enough talent to be competitive, but winning championships is another issue. Do you really think FAMU went from beating us 24-21 in Tally, to beating us 45-7 in Greensboro a year later, because of talent and speed?

good points aggie77...

[DOOMS]

Georgia Tech put a 6'2" 250 pound kid at left tackle and ran for 400 yards on Miami.

I know that's a by-product of the offense they run, but I bring that up to show that you can run schemes that will allow you to win without these prototypically sized players. Instead of doing that we clamor for more "talent." A championship team needs a coach that can win with what he can get. We haven't had one of those around here. Even Hayes, as very good as he was, won by winning the recruiting battle.

We will be a lot better off when we get away from the mindset that we have to have better recruiting. We need to have better development and utilization of what we have, and that goes for a lot more than just football.

[Aggie Monster]

Its obvious we would prefer to have everything, who wouldn't. Coaching and discipline needs to be first though. Coaching up has always been what's needed to win. If you cant do that then having athletes dont mean jack.

Teams that have both win championship. Teams that have just a bunch of great athletes are an average team at best and have a bunch of 6-5 seasons.

Teams with great coaching and discipline go 8-3, go to playoffs and get put out. At least they were there though. And they beat the athletic team more often than not.

[Aggie Monster]

Dec 12, 2008 10:19:11 GMT -5 DOOMS said:

We will be a lot better off when we get away from the mindset that we have to have better recruiting. We need to have better development and utilization of what we have, and that goes for a lot more than just football.

Says it all. Its enough athletes to go around people. Trust. We just have to know what to do with the ones we get.

[oleschoolaggie]

man, why do we tend to over simplify things? the truth of the matter is that speed alone doesn't win games and coaching alone doesn't win games. there is no single "one factor" that wins games. you need a combination of all factors. speed, size, athleticism, coaching, facilities, and all of the above...

[Aggie Monster]

Dec 12, 2008 13:10:51 GMT -5 oleschoolaggie said:

man, why do we tend to over simplify things? the truth of the matter is that speed alone doesn't win games and coaching alone doesn't win games. there is no single "one factor" that wins games. you need a combination of all factors. speed, size, athleticism, coaching, facilities, and all of the above...

I tend do disagree, Rocky won in Rocky IV running mountain tops and lifting rocks, lol.

Hillside won 2 State Championships in track(late 80s and 94) and the track at the actual high school was a DIRT TRACK, a f'n DIRT track. They won the state championship sometime after that again(around 200) after the new school was built. What was the one constant during that time. Coach Blunt!

All I'm saying is that college football players skill levels are very close to each other. Not much difference between our athletes and Apps athletes. So the next thing you look at is coaching. Ours has sucked the last few years.


Yo Kev, I brought back memories with that Dirt track huh?

[oleschoolaggie]

Dec 12, 2008 14:13:09 GMT -5 Aggie Monster said:

Dec 12, 2008 13:10:51 GMT -5 oleschoolaggie said:

man, why do we tend to over simplify things? the truth of the matter is that speed alone doesn't win games and coaching alone doesn't win games. there is no single "one factor" that wins games. you need a combination of all factors. speed, size, athleticism, coaching, facilities, and all of the above...

I tend do disagree, Rocky won in Rocky IV running mountain tops and lifting rocks, lol.

Hillside won 2 State Championships in track(late 80s and 94) and the track at the actual high school was a DIRT TRACK, a f'n DIRT track. They won the state championship sometime after that again(around 200) after the new school was built. What was the one constant during that time. Coach Blunt!

All I'm saying is that college football players skill levels are very close to each other. Not much difference between our athletes and Apps athletes. So the next thing you look at is coaching. Ours has sucked the last few years.


Yo Kev, I brought back memories with that Dirt track huh?

if your philosophy were true, a coach would never have different results year in year out if talent doesn't matter. he'd coach his way to championships despite his team's talent level.

if your philosophy were true, bill hayes would have won championships immediately when he was first hired by a&t. why did it take him 3 years before he had a winning season? did it take that long for him to learn to coach? of course not! he didn't have the talent upon arrival.

and to say that there's not much difference between our athletes and Apps athletes tells me all i need to know about your judgment of football. it ain't no way in hail jerry moore would trade his roster for ours, even if he could keep edwards at qb.

yes, coaching makes a lot of difference but it can't compensate for a lack of talent, lack of funding, lack of facilities, and lack of administrators. a combination of all of those things enhances a coach's ability to win games. that's simply a fact.

butch davis wouldn't be able to bring in a top 10 recruiting class without adequate funding, facilities, and administrators. butch davis is winning games now because he has better athletes than when he arrived. no coach can coach his way to a championship without adequate talent. he doesn't have to have the best talent but he dayum sure better have good talent.

anybody who says talent doesn't make a difference to a coach's success is way off base. if talent doesn't make a difference, then why do we waste all our money giving out scholarships? why don't we just field a team of walk ons and let the coach coach his way to a championship? man, pub-leeeze...

[Aggie77]

. . . and your philosophy says all other things being equal, different coaches would achieve the same results.

Coaching isn't the only factor, but it has a greater impact than all the others combined (IMO).

[Aggie Monster]

oleschoolaggie your taking what I'm saying waaaay to literally.

Of course someone I consider to be the best coach wouldn't win EVERY year. Things change.

All I'm saying is A&T's talent/recruiting isn't reflective of what our record has been. Our talent is on parr with MEAC talent.

Football is a way of life. Your coach and team have to live it. You have to have your players believe in it. It normally takes 3-4 years to do, but if your good you become a winning program within that time.

With that being said, coaching is just like any other job. You lose hunger and get complacent and your program starts to fall off if you dont have the assistants to keep the "drive alive". A coaches drive changes from year to year. There are a bunch of GREAT coaches out there and thats why the same coach doesn't win EVERY year. Thats when it come down to talent and in-game playing calling and sometimes LUCK.

I refuse to think we've been recruiting "Lemons" on the football field. Our recruits have looked better or just as good as anyone in the MEAC for as far back as I can remember. But what happens? They spend the year with our sorry a$$ staff and end up being duds.

That's coaching. Some kids have internal drive and instinct to excel, like IRON MIKE for instance, but the majority dont. They need leadership, guidance, a regiment, an advisor, etc, etc. What they dont need is a laid back coach running practice at half speed, not evaluation strengths and weaknesses properly, not making weight room mandatory, not demanding respect, and so on. I'm not saying that's what Fobbs did, but those are just some examples.

Do you actually think our talent was that much less than the rest of the MEAC? I really need to know the answer to that question and then maybe I could see where your coming from.