u guys are tripping. Randy is a DC....thats it, in all his years here he never had a defense as bad as D'no had last season. The worst we finished under Randy was #35 in 2007 at 5-7 and we remember how bad that team was. 2 players drafted or something like that. Golden is standing by No'D which is puzzling but give him the benefit of the doubt i think for now.
On the other hand randy was a terrible head coach, he was not a CEO, didnt delegate well nor did he hire the right people. And even tho he hated Shapiro he obviously wasnt in control when we see how many players were breaking the rules. He also fell off the cliff recruiting and there was always one or two positions with glaring holes going into the season...something we dont see under Golden. We have good numbers everywhere we just need players to step up and become difference makers now. Inside the U had a article where only 5 scrub defensive players left from our defensive class of 15 from 2010 from Shannon's last class. That is crazy.
In saying that Golden will have to own this soon enough, this is his third year and after year 3 its his team. with 3 1/2 recruiting classes, sanctions and all. Its yours now.
I could see us going 12-0, we dont need to become Bama great on defense...the most important thing will be to get TOs....we did a decent job last season and if we keep improving we could have a team like OK St had 2 years ago. magnificent offense and opportunistic defense and they went 12-1 i think. We could do it.
Didn't last year's team just have one guy drafted and they went 7-5?
A couple of things factor in to why our defense was so horrific last year. 1.) Obviously inexperience. We were playing a lot of sophomore's and freshman, and even the junior's we were playing hadn't been on the field much in their careers. 2.) D'Onofrio's/Golden's defensive scheme is tough to figure out and play within, for anyone. But for guys who have taken minimal snaps in college football? It turns into what we had last season. 3.) Our roster sucked *** last season on the defensive side of the ball. The freshman and sophomore's we had playing were brought in by Golden. A team full of freshman and sophomore's isn't going to lead you places in college football-especially defensively- as a matter of fact it's quite opposite. We had to play a bunch of young guys because we had no choice. Our senior class was historically bad both talent wise and depth wise (wasn't there like 5 seniors on the team?) and our junior class isn't much better if you exclude Allen Hurns, Stephen Morris, Brandon Linder, and Curtis Porter. So out of four good seniors on the roster, only one plays defense. So last year we had one good defensive player that was an upperclassmen, and he was hurt almost the entire season.
So to simplify it, last season just a perfect storm coming together and kicking our defense in the ***. It all starts with having a poor assembled roster. Last season our junior and senior classes were horrible, which is a direct result of terrible recruiting by Randy Shannon. That forced Golden and D'Onofrio to play all of the young guys they brought in their first two seasons which turned out terribly because from everything I read and hear you can't expect freshman and sophomore's to pick up that scheme. Certain guys can like Deon Bush, but he is the rare exception. We can't put together a defense full of guys like Deon Bush. Most freshman need time to develop physically and mentally when they get to college before they can consistently contribute positively on the football field. They should have made variations to the scheme to help the younger guys adjust better, and the roster was pure *** because of Randy's inability to land highly ranked guys, so then he turned his focus to "hidden gems" from the god knows where and got them to come to Miami, and then we have the this senior class, and last year's senior class.
:stormwarning:
