If Stepford had a football coach, his name would be Nick Saban. Someone who not only recruits, but judges talent pristinely, as recently pointed out by Mike Leach. Someone who interacts comfortably and humbly with wealthy alumni. Someone who looks ridiculously good from all angles and at all ages on national television. Someone whose face will someday be in Merriam-Webster next to the word "coach." Someone who, on game days, ummmmm. Well, truth be told, even Nick Saban isn't robotically perfect every game day.
Ah, the game days. Today's rant is in response to last weekend's various inexplicable coaching decisions made in the heat of game day battles. All of the recruiting, superb training regimens, and intricately designed offenses and defenses can't save football teams when coaches go into brain freeze at the most inopportune times. Here for your perusal are game day decisions too unfathomable to have been made by human football coaches with IQs above 60. Yet somehow, they happened.
Steve Addazio -- Colorado State at Utah State
I don't have words for what transpired to end the Colorado State/Utah State game, but I will try. On a night when CSU played badly with half a dozen crucial offsides penalties and multiple strategical screw-ups (like failing to recover a gimmick Utah State kickoff at the end of the first half), the Rams, a team not designed for comebacks, came back.
They cut a nine-point deficit with five minutes left to two, then had a first down at the Utah State 20 with no timeouts and 11 seconds left. All they had to do was spike the ball. It was too much for Addazio, who somehow sent the field goal unit onto the field without first spiking the ball to stop the clock. A clusterfuck fire drill ensued with players running back and forth on and off the sideline, and the kicker rushing his set-up and steps in a mad dash to get the kick away. The kick sailed left as time expired.
Afterward, Addazio explained that nobody had sent the FG team onto the field. They just went, he said, on their own. Holy hell, man, how disorganized can you be? Then Addazio tried to impose his view of reality on everyone else. The kick missed, he said, so it didn't matter that his team was playing musical chairs for 11 seconds. We are to presume, according to Addazio, that with a normal routine, the kicker would have missed anyway.
And oh yes, the game was for first place in the Mountain West.
Addazio gets the "Idiot of the Week" both for his end game management and his presser. Considering how hard his team fought, his inability to manage his team in crunch time is the most egregious coaching error I have seen in 40 years. It has been my experience that when teams play their brains out, as CSU did, and the coaching staff blows the game, the teams do not recover for a long while, if at all. Penn State took a month to right themselves after last season's Indiana loss.
Evidently, I wasn't the only Ram viewer to note the Addazio mess. Footballscoop.com took note. Liz Roscher for Yahoo Sports did a fine summary with her, "Baffling, chaotic last-second blunder costs Colorado State win over Utah State." She was as critical as me, if somewhat less apoplectic.
I also noticed a rush on twitter to procure variations of www.FireSteveAddazio.com. Already some twitter handles state the same. Good to know it wasn't just me.
Western Kentucky at Florida International
With six minutes left in the game, WKU led FIU 31-12 and had a first down at the FIU one-and-a-half. I suppose the WKU offensive coordinator wanted to pad his personal "I coach this offense" stats. Or he wanted to pad his quarterback's personal resume with another TD. So WKU elected to pass on first down. Just one issue. With six minutes left, FIU was going to almost certainly balls-out blitz, which they did, planting the QB back at the 10. Western Kentucky winds up throwing an incomplete pass, kicking a field goal with four minutes left, and then had to defend for the final four minutes. FIU runs a bunch of plays and goes the length of the field to score.
The WKU head coach and offensive coordinator get an "Imbecile of the Week" rating for this. They use no clock with a first and goal inside the two, and they force their defense to play a lengthy possession. Not only are their defenders at risk for injury, but they are also at risk for a bevy of meaningless plays, each of which carries the potential for a targeting call, which could bench any defender the following game.
Meanwhile, I'm sure the defensive coordinator appreciated his own OC not eating any clock at all. The OC tried to pad his own resume while degrading the DC's resume. It's as I always say. In college football, offensive coordinators are the root of all evil.
Tennessee at Alabama
And finally, the Tennessee Vols. I just want to point out one strange moment in a strange game. The Volunteers are down 21 on the road at Alabama with seven minutes left. They face fourth-and-five from their own 30. They elect to go for it. Why they do this, I cannot tell you. They are not playing Akron at home. They are playing Alabama on the road. Facing fourth-and-five on their own 30 with seven minutes left, they have less than a 1 in 10,000 chance to win the game. So why do it?
People have volunteered (ahem) various explanations. They boil down to "winners never quit and quitters never win" melded to the Jim Carrey line from Dumb and Dumber, "So you're telling me there's a chance!?!"
I respond to the folks making these arguments with a simple rhetorical question. What do you think is more likely? (A) Tennessee converts fourth-and-five from their 30 with seven minutes left and goes on to win the game or (B) the Vols' starting QB gets hurt in the next seven minutes?
The "winners never quit" crowd tends to shut up.
What earned the Tennessee coaching staff my "Morons of the Week" award is that after Alabama had stopped them on fourth-and-five (of course) and scored three minutes later, the Vols got the ball back and were immediately faced with the identical down and distance from the same yard line. And they punted.
I thought winners never quit?
Conclusion
If coaches don't have a clock management specialist on staff, they risk looking like Steve Addazio, blowing first place because they choked as a head coach.
If athletic directors allow coaches to hire offensive coordinators based on yards and points instead of wins, you get the irrational, team-sabotaging decisions displayed by Western Kentucky and Tennessee.
Bob Dietz
October 28, 2021
