Is there a reason NOT to fire

cysdude

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What stood out to me last night was our horrible red zone execution. After a big play to James White to get inside the ten. We hand of to Woody for 3 yards. Then on 2nd down we hand to Woody for a loss of 3. Then on 3rd Sam R. scrambled for a gain of one yard and we are forced to kick a field goal.
 

BallSoHard4Cy

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He needs to be fired. The play calling hasn't gotten any better from last year. 2nd and 1 should never turn into 3rd and 5 and a subsequent 3 and out.
 

Rogue52

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The story on Messingham is a classic one. Outperforms his peers at a lower level position. Management promotes him up the chain too quickly. So quickly, that he's not in a position to succeed. He fails.

Can you demote him and make sure he stays around in the position he was great at? Or will he not accept the reduction in pay which will most certainly be the case here?

Either way, he's not ready. He may be a decent coach but I'm not sure he can gameplan or play call.
 

Clonehomer

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Didn't Terry Allen get relived of play calling duties midseason? I seem to remember something happen under coach Mac to a coordinator.
 

Cyclone06

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I didn't read the whole thread but did those that are calling for coach K to immediately replace Mess see the OL play?

This. Did the coaches not coach that you can hit the opponent before he hits you? Or did the players just disregard that concept?

The defenders routinely "caught" their blockers and allowed themselves to be blocked and the o line really showed no fire off the ball. Football is a beautiful game. You get to be mean and nasty for five seconds, then you help the other guy up and do it again. No lineman appeared to be mean and nasty, at any point, last night and that is a big concern to me.

Anything on Farniok? We really need the mean and nasty it seems he generally brings.
 

vmbplayer

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Fair point. Keep Messingham?
Based on what I saw yesterday? Yes. The only quesionable offense play call I had was when we were in the red zone running it up the middle with woody when we had one on one coverage all alone on the right side.
 

cyfan964

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You can go ahead and throw me in the keep Messingham group. IMO he actually called a pretty nice game last night. He used some misdirection, a good amount of read-option, WR screens... I actually liked what I saw. To me our big weakness was the O-line. It was down right awful. I love the fact that we were passing the ball on 2nd and 1 from the middle of the field. That's one thing we've never done in the past that I was happy to see. Those are the times when you should be looking to attack. The problem is Sam had about .05 milliseconds to get the ball in the air before he had to scramble. Could we have run the ball and gotten 3 yards, sure, but I'm glad we were trying to go for more. I personally liked what I saw out of CM last night. The O-line was atrocious all night long. Defense doesn't scare me too much. That was to be expected. Wally made adjustments at halftime and we looked much better in the second half. They are a work in progress already improving. The O-line hasn't gotten better in 3 years. That is concerning.
 

TXCyclones

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I didn't read the whole thread but did those that are calling for coach K to immediately replace Mess see the OL play?

You really can't blame the o-line when the D knew EXACTLY WHICH PLAY WAS COMING EVERY TIME! Same thing as the Liberty Bowl! "Hey, Woody is in the game. Time to stack the line."
 

Boomer

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The achilles heel of a D1 HC is keeping your buddies on staff too long. Hopefully CPR doesn't make that mistake.

This. Stoops fired Jackie Shipp who had been on staff for 14 years... and Oklahoma had the best defensive line performance we've seen in 4 years last night.

CPR will do the right thing if he knows whats good for him. it sucks but its a business.
 

kingcy

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Based on what I saw yesterday? Yes. The only quesionable offense play call I had was when we were in the red zone running it up the middle with woody when we had one on one coverage all alone on the right side.

In his 14 games as OC ISU has averaged 24 points a game. It has average 16 points in the first half. Not enough points to win games. You don't question what was called in the last min of the game?
 

NorthCyd

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Let's see, reasons CPR wouldn't fire Mess...Mess has compromising pictures of CPR...If CPR fires every coach who's position group played terribly last night we wouldn't have any coaches (and by that logic he would have to fire himself)...Ummm...that's all I got
 

Die4Cy

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So you are in the "keep Messingham" camp?

Put me in the "You're a ******* idiot" camp.

If you are going to restructure an entire offense, you are going to do it in December, not after a week 1 loss. A coach being fired after 1 game, is that supposed to motivate the players? ( I picture CPR throwing his playbook up in the air sometime in the third quarter, exclaiming, "**** this ****!")

If Mess is the wrong guy, it's on CPR, so why don't you just come out and say that instead?

A Messingham firing is about as likely to happen as a CPR one, as of now. Might as well be talking about fielding a team of semi-autonomous robots, it's as likely.
 

cyismydog

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To be honest? There's not really one.

The only reason I can see, and it's probably the one that Coach Rhoads is using to justify is this: Firing a coordinator midseason and installing a new one will absolutely make the offense more inept. You can't learn an entire new system in a week. Say we fire him after the Iowa game. We have 2 weeks to prepare for Tulsa. We can install a playbook--at least part of one-- and it will work against Tulsa, because they haven't seen any it.

But when Texas watches the film from the Tulsa game, they're going to see that we only had 20 plays to call that the offense could run effectively. So they prepare for those 20 plays. Say we get another 10 installed and working well before the Texas game, great. So Texas can effectively stop 2/3rd of our playbook with no trouble.

I mean, it's a start. And by the end of the year, the offense should be functional, but it just would not be a smooth transition in season, IMO. Even though we have other coaches on staff with experience, hiring them to run the same system as Mess doesn't solve a damn thing--the offense would be just as inept. They would have to run a different system. And sure, maybe we put in "elements" of the Pistol this season, but to completely change from to it mid season would not have any better results.

I'm still of the opinion that we should fire Mess. Just bite the bullet and say **** it. We are young this season. Get a new coordinator and go through the necessary growing pains, and be tougher next year. But even if we fire Mess, the offense won't be better this year.

I find your signature and the title of this thread to be quite interesting.
 

mustangcy

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My biggest concern is that the Big 12 is full of innovative, creative and forward thinking OC's. We clearly don't have that. So we are going to overcome this by getting better talent? Well, we all know that this won't happen. ISU's only chance at having a top half offense is being innovative on that end of the ball. What do we do? Hire an OLine coach to teach our own OC about an offense that the current OC has never run....perfect. I mean, are we hurry up? A pistol offense? Spread? Who can even answer it? We absolutely no identity.
 

Judoka

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Put me in the "You're a ******* idiot" camp.

If you are going to restructure an entire offense, you are going to do it in December, not after a week 1 loss. A coach being fired after 1 game, is that supposed to motivate the players? ( I picture CPR throwing his playbook up in the air sometime in the third quarter, exclaiming, "**** this ****!")

If Mess is the wrong guy, it's on CPR, so why don't you just come out and say that instead?

A Messingham firing is about as likely to happen as a CPR one, as of now. Might as well be talking about fielding a team of semi-autonomous robots, it's as likely.

Why do you think we would install a totally new playbook if Messingham was fired or at least relieved of his OC duties? If Sturdy was promoted he would stick with the same playbook. What we need is better gameplans, better playcalling, and better adjustments made at halftime. None of that requires a new playbook.