How Does Billy Save His Job?

Yes we should win no less than 8 for him to keep his job. But we know that ain’t happening. No chance in hizell this team is winning 8. I doubt even Urban Meyer could take over today and win 8 with this team, because they are way less conditioned than where he would have them.

 

Middle is lucky for us and it’s not easy.

 

This isnt a push-up, this is talent

 

Your math isn’t mathing. We already won one so he only needs to win six more. Just saying!

 

Nobody is advocating “sticking with failure”. But timing has a lot to do with pretty much everything, especially firing and hiring of coaches. I’m simply saying that firing Billy after week 3 of season 3 might make you and others feel good momentarily, kinda like punching a wall does when you’re pissed off. But it may well make more sense to hold off until the beginnings of a recovery plan are in place.

 

You are right about that kind of culture.

I took sabans comments to mean that we didn't have a culture of effort and excellence. Because if we did it would be so unacceptable to do certain things that they wouldn't happen. Things like rough the passer every game or have critical penalties on 3rd down that kill drives every game or make stupid mental mistakes like consistently having to call time out after a time out because someone doesn't line up correctly or consistently making bad decisions in the secondary.

That's how I took his comments. You can't be a good football team if you consistently do those things and if players consistently do those things it is because the coaches haven't created a culture where it isn't allowed to happen.

To him that's what an excellent program looks like and he doesn't see it with us.

I hope we can show him that we can create that culture... Just like we can create explosive plays.

 

I totally agree with those points. I don't agree with this morphed definition of the word culture that Saban is using. Culture implies bad non-football actions. If anything, Napier has cleaned up the locker room, recruited high-character people, quickly gotten rid of the few bad eggs like Cox, and improved the actual culture. What we are all concerned about is the product on the field, not the culture. Saban is still wrong and we shouldn't base our program on his opinions. He has no interest in making us better.

 

I took his comment as directed at on the field toughness. Hard to argue with

 

I think the argument is that the football actions are downstream from the culture. The culture is the atmosphere formed by the people involved--players, recruits, staff, etc--and shaped by the norms, practices, and expectations of the organization. Talent is a major part of on the field success for sure. But those "non-football actions" of how they practice, attend to details, demand excellence of one another on the field and off, tolerate or not sloppy behavior or poor decisions, all of those things show up in games as talent excels or underperforms and a team plays smart and cohesively or reactively and individually.

For example, Marco Wilson made a good football action against LSU on third down, then followed it with a foolish football action and threw that shoe. A foolish play that materially contributed to a major loss was defended by the head coach as not being that serious, and the player in question was named team captain for the next game. The latter two were non-football actions but communicated to many a culture of permissiveness or at least an insular lack of consequences. And many here have pointed to that moment and it's non football aftermath as the turning point in the team's on the field fortunes and the beginning of the end of Mullen's tenure.

As someone put it after the Miami game, the UF culture of late seems to be one of losing. A clean, high character, good egg locker room is a major part of a successful culture, but not the sum total. And something about our culture, perhaps things like repeating that individual wins and losses are secondary to following the process, could be contributing negatively and directly to the field and our record. Since few of us have any insight to the inner workings of the program, we're left with observing results and working backward to infer reasons. And when talent and character seemingly improve but the football actions don't, a culture that tolerates or inadvertently encourages those results is a strong candidate for explanation.

Saban could certainly be wrong. And you're probably right that he has no specific interest in UF being better. But he's also retired now doesn't have a specific reason to want us to be worse. He also has had a personal and working relationship with Napier and we could assume some stake in him performing competently if not doing well as a part of his own coaching tree. At the very least, he's the GOAT and if any outsider's opinion should at least be considered, you'd think it would be the guy who has created a system, culture, and results we're all chasing.

 

You're right. I keep forgetting about the Samford win for some reason.

 

It's both, but it's certainly conditioning. Meyer had his teams on a militaristic ritual with conditioning and was a conveyer belt for NFL talent because of it. Talent isn't everything as we saw with TAMU in past years.

 

Meyer could get them to buy in eventually, but it takes months to get a team into proper conditioning. Even if they bought in on Day 1.

 

That's still a bad use of the word culture, which was my only real point. "Losing" is not a culture either, it's an end result of a sum total of many things, as you mentioned. Marco Wilson's actions might venture closer to real culture issues, but, that regime is long gone and has virtually no bearing on Napier's culture. I get your point about Saban being the best college coach of all time, which I don't dispute. I respect his opinions about his old football team. I disagree that he somehow wants to foster his coaching tree legacy. Does he want Kiffin to do well? That sounds like a stretch. If his goal was to make his former grad student assistant a better head coach at UF today, why would he demean him in public? I choose to ignore the words of an outsider and focus instead on what we see with our own eyes. We are not winning and that needs to change. I don't believe it has anything to do with true culture, which has only improved since Mullen left here. We have lots of issues. Calling it a culture problem is a red herring. Coaching problem? Training problem? Execution problem? Play-calling problem? Lineup selection problem? Defensive scheme problem? Green DC problem? All possible.

 

That's your definition of culture. I was starting my interpretation of what Saban meant by needing a change in culture. As you said culture in the way you mean it is good. That's also why I'm sure Saban wasn't referring to that when he said culture. He would have no reason to do so.

Also, he's never had a bone to pick with us so I'm taking his comments at face value.

 

I think we just disagree on the concept of culture, and that's ok. I think it's fair to push back against the word being used as a nebulous catch all to describe any and all vague precursors to results that are opaque to us watching from the outside of a program. But I absolutely disagree that "losing" or at least what we might call a "losing mentality" couldn't be a part of a team's culture. I've seen it. Been around it. Been in it. A low or lack of expectation and routine excuse making that doesn't push for excellence but pats on the back for self-perceived best effort. And while I'm not asserting that's definitely the problem here, I definitely belief it exists, it may be defined as or at least part of an organization's culture, and directly and indirectly impacts the observable results. Others, including Saban, have suggested there's a culture problem here that doesn't seem to be about the character of the players or staff but the expectations from top to bottom and all around. Because norms and expectations are an essential part of how the term culture is defined in any context, I don't see how it would be obviously impossible or even inapt here.

As far as Saban's attitude is concerned, I have no idea what he really thinks about Napier or Kiffen, though I suspect he may have a different view of an assistant he fired versus one who took a promotion elsewhere. I only added my comment to say your guess he doesn't want us to do well is as good as my suggestion that he might want Napier to do well. Both are just that, guesses. And if they're both guesses with reasonable support, I chose to consider what he has to say while you don't. Again, I think both are reasonable and defensible positions.

 

Ocyrus Torrence did just fine. I mean, there’s a few players you could look at and say they’re overweight but that doesn’t really reflect on 85 guys. Tackle is getting speed rushed on first down in the first quarter. It’s not because he didn’t run enough wind sprints. Anthony Richardson came out of high school with an old entry was injured in college and now is injured in the pros. It’s easy to say he didn’t get proper strength and conditioning, but I don’t know about that.

 

Ok.