Tom "the turtle" Herman [Lame Duck or greatest 5d chess player ever?]

[Captain Ron 13133]

11 hours ago, mr. littlejeans said:

  Reveal hidden contents

As usual, Tom Herman knew better than the rest of us.

He always has. From the month he stepped on campus as head coach at Texas, it became plainly obvious there was no reason to question the credentials of anyone he chose to hire or the caliber of anyone he chose to play, because most of us simple-minded folk cannot even dream of comprehending all of the subtle intricacies that go into such decisions.

And so it should have come as no surprise that the ignorant, unsophisticated football-watching public completely misconstrued what happened to Herman's Longhorns in their season-opening loss to Maryland on Saturday, when what appeared to be the latest in a long line of UT humiliations was actually nothing of the sort.

Silly us. We are so naïve, so painfully uninformed, that we thought we were watching a team as unprepared to start Herman's second season as it was to start its first. Dummies that we are, we assumed that a flurry of bone-headed penalties and a rash of late-game turnovers were signs of a squad that remains as sloppy and as undisciplined as ever, but the truth is we just did not understand how much the Longhorns had improved.

Thankfully, Herman was gracious enough to break it down for the reporters covering the game in Landover, Maryland, and thereby set a country full of mouth-breathing college football watchers straight.

Sure, it might have seemed like the Longhorns made all the same mistakes they did last year, and that the offense showed no signs of progress from a season in which it ranked as one of the worst in the Big 12, but that's only because we did not notice any of the details Herman and his staff did.

"We saw a lot of development," Herman said. "I wouldn't say we failed in that area."

And although we know-nothings might have assumed it might be a unnerving to lose a second consecutive opener to a moribund program that had spent the last month mired in a scandal, and was playing for an interim head coach, and had not beaten any ranked team aside from UT in 22 tries dating to 2011, it's actually no big deal.

After all, when Herman was asked by some knee-jerk journalist to describe how big a setback the defeat was for a program that wants so desperately to be taken seriously again that it made "Prove Us Right" the team motto, he answered, "Not very."

After all, can't the world see how right the wise John Mackovic was when he referred to such temporary embarrassments as "a blip on the radar screen?"

The general public just has no perspective. Fans watch a team suffer a loss like Saturday's, which flukishly included a bunch of the symptoms of six losses last fall, and they trick themselves into seeing the continuation of a trend.

That nonsense makes Herman shake his head.

"A lot of people are going to want to say this feels a lot like last year," Herman said. "It doesn't to me."

What the rest of us need to realize is that Vince Lombardi was wrong. Winning isn't the only thing. And Bill Parcells misspoke when he said a team is what its record says it is.

Sometimes, all that matters is how good the team thinks it is. And the outside world just needs to trust the coach on that.

"We know how much better we are now than we were probably at any point last year," Herman said. "We didn't show it in the first quarter and the fourth quarter."

Minor details, those. Second-guessing anything that happens during pivotal moments in the game — which quarterback Herman uses, which plays the team runs, etc. — is pointless, just as it was to second-guess the decisions Herman made way back when he was just starting at UT.

Some of us remember the reception he got when he hired Tim Beck as offensive coordinator, despite a bit of a lackluster track record, and when he hired Casey Horny as a quality control assistant, despite his longtime association with a Baylor staff apparently unaware of what was happening in its own program.

Herman's message back then was clear. He knew better than the rest of us.

And clearly, he still does. He surely realizes that UT fans never should have expected a national contender to come anytime soon, anyway. After all, over the past 34 years, the Longhorns have finished as many seasons unranked as they have in the Top 25.

That decade-long streak of success to start the Mack Brown era? That was the outlier, not the norm.

Despite what many Longhorns continue to believe, winning football games is not their birthright. They need to realize all of this is far more complicated than it looks.

And they need to admit that when it comes to believing their own eyes or the guy who knows better, well, the choice is obvious. [/spoiler]

fucking mensa.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/texas-sports-nation/college/article/Finger-Tom-Herman-still-smarter-than-rest-of-us-13199580.php

Finger just nails it here. 

1 hour ago, Tailgate said:

Two guys walk into a strip club. One of them beats his wife, the other can’t beat anyone.

[Spankytoes 1748]

20 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Oh I don’t want him fired, what I want is what was promised and never delivered. It’s disturbing that he tried to justify the performance of the team with “well we were good in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, just not the 1st and 4th”. Oh you mean the point of the game where you set the tone and the other point where you close out the game. The same two points we were awful in last year when we couldn’t start well or close out a game or get a win? Because that’s great Tom. Maybe by OU you’ll have figured it out. 

I know people on here love to shit on aggy but we have a legitimate shot of being set back further as we lose recruits to them this year and next. We haven’t had a good QB since 2009. Almost 10 years. And laugh at them or not, they have a coach 1000 times better than ours right now. Same with OU. Same with TCU.

Why does it matter if we lose recruits to aggy if we don’t know how to coach them up anyway? MD didn’t beat us with recruits. Aggy is guaranteed to win 6 games each year with their soft ooc schedule. As long as the SEC remains top dog, we have to admit that they’ve already passed us. They have shit to show for it, but they have. The “We’re Texas” Big Bertha we beat needs to be sent to the shed...next to Adam James.

[Dbeasy 15595]

Little things that demonstrate weak coaching. Sam’s throws to the flat never had enough zip on them. He has a stronger arm than he used on those throws. He’s lucky they didn’t get picked. Good coaching would have addressed that in practices.

[Stunns38 3805]

It occurs to me that young Mr. Herman has a lot of the John Mackovic mode of communication in him. His attitude is starting to wear thin.
Take a little responsibility, Tom. We just had a car wreck, with injuries.
But I agree. I doubt anything happens until next year. I suggested that somewhere yesterday and was treated to the "everyone knows you're an aggy" routine myself. Plus a neg.
I just hope Del Conte gets his list together and keeps it well-updated. Because Texas appears to be wheel spinning with Tom Herman as head coach.
Year 2 with this kind of opening? Portent of bad days ahead.

Can’t wait until his arrogance pisses off the BODs.

[mdmost 44041]

The difference in the Charlie loss post game and the Herman loss post game is Charlie seemed like he didn’t know WTF to do to correct it. Herman seems like he knows how to fix yet it doesn’t seem to be getting fixed. We’re just all idiots because we don’t see this grand vision taking shape. That was another winnable game that you handed back to Maryland with penalties and bad play calling. It’s Tech and USC all over again. When we’ll we start to pull out these close wins that always evade us?

[Player 4611]

Herman likes his players to rotate constantly.  In one series, you will see Young and then you will see Watson. With 6.2 ypc, you need to go with the best player on the field and not who dos best in the offseason (like Porter).
Herman is too arrogant to admit his mistakes, which adds anxiety and frustration to Texas' problems.  

Even more maddening: during the pre-game interview Craig Way asked him about the RB rotation, and Tom said that whoever had the hot hand between Watson, Young, and Ingram would get the carries. He didn’t even mention Porter’s name.

You sit on a throne of lies, mensa.

[Randolph Duke 4034]

3 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

The absolute craziest aspect of this whole ordeal is how similar it is to Strongs first and second seasons

Strong’s problem was the scale and scope of managing the Texas program forced him to have delegate large portions of game prep to subordinates and he failed to stay on top of his subordinates. Charlie not having a clue what offense Watson was running going into yr 2 is a great example. 

Im not hire sure what Herman’s problems are. Patterson was a horrific AD for a coach to rely on while making the adjustment from running a mid-major to running a major program. CDC should be able to help Herman minimize distractions and keep his focus. 

I think one of Herman’s problems is he lacks the ability to be objective in his self-analysis. 

The team was poorly prepared for the game. There was no discernible offensive strategy. It seemed he was content to let the defense keep the game close and to come up with an offensive plan on the fly. 

Herman doesn’t admit his mistakes or proactively make adjustments. It seems he needs to be mired in crisis to make changes, and only then, kicking and screaming. 

 

[Spankytoes 1748]

14 minutes ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Even if we had some how pulled out a win yesterday, I would be just as pissed this morning 

I’m going to go with “false” on that one 

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

My dad is an Ex and has lived in TN for forty years and doesn't do message boards, while I live in Houston and do, and so am better tuned in than he is. He asked me a week or so what the skinny was on this year's team and I told him I thought we would be a little bit worse on D (thank to losing our best players at every level of the D) and a little better on O, thanks to a somewhat improved O-line.

My O/U on wins was 8, and I kinda thought I was being a little pessimistic because of my bias against Herman. I didn't like the guy when he was at UH -- he seemed to me like a guy who rode a good QB and a fluke recruit (Oliver) to a rep far beyond his actual results. I am pretty sure his career record without Greg Ward was 1-2...I pointed that out on the old board and dudes like Rex Kramer shouted me down. The hard-on for this guy was a little bit inexplicable to me -- UH's win over FSU came against a backup QB, and honest, smart Sooners (there are a few) said that it was less Herman's genius than them just laying an egg in that game, and I also pointed out that nobody really knew what kind of recruiter he was, because he'd never really done shit with any of his own recruits, except for the fluke that was Oliver. 

So I've been biased against him since forever. I stayed in Charlie's corner until Kansas. I still don't think it made logical sense to fire him after that debacle, but I also understand that a UT coach simply can't survive after losing a game like that. You have to just wash your hands of him and move on. My ideal solution was to promote Jeff Traylor to HC and retain Maddox / Gilbert so that there would be some continuity, and we would have three native Texans running the team / O, but I was told that Traylor, in spite of his impeccably legendary status in the most important recruiting region of our state, and his demonstrable success in college, was not our standard. I think because he's kinda cheesy-looking. Seriously. I honestly believe that people don't think Traylor can be an elite HC because you think he looks like a pastor at a Tyler megachurch rather than any results he has proven up in HS or college. And now he is recruiting against us at Arkansas, poaching more recruits out of ETX we can scarce afford to lose. Arkansas had lost that pipeline and now has it back. Great job there fellas. 

Nope, the hard-on for Herman sprouted by the end of year two of Charlie's ill-fated regime and would rage on all through year three, despite Herman's inexplicable defeats to Navy and SMU. Every excuse was made for Herman. Bad weather and injuries doomed him at Navy. Seriously. Herman himself furnished bulletin board material prior to the SMU game and then got fucking owned, but no, he was still The Answer. Here's your Golden Boy, when still at UH, Hermanoids:

Quote

We understand the price of a championship. That price is the same for Alabama as it is for Ohio State and UH. In order to pay that price, you've got to be willing to invest. There's a price for nine-win seasons and prices for eight-, seven-, six-win seasons. Those prices are a lot easier to pay.

And if you're satisfied with going 7-5 and going to the Poulan Weedeater Bowl, then great. Then you're in the wrong program and we'll find a place for you to go. I hear there's a private school up in Dallas that's really looking to try to get to seven wins. We can certainly find you a home.

Pretty good smack but not if you follow it up by losing to that private school up in Dallas 38-16. And springboard that school's coach to a historic rival, where he hires Jeff Traylor, and they are now again ransacking East Texas for recruits.

Yeah and now I have to back and tell my dad that 8 was a wildly optimistic number for wins. He knows that already. We should get 12.5 percent of the way there next weekend, maybe, so at least there is that. 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28929]

1 hour ago, bschoolprof said:

Holy shit Mensabeck.  This is a Tim Beck special - going away from the hot hand . He did it all the time at tOSU.

Both before and after he was employed there. He's the most powerful OC in college football. 

Edited September 2, 2018 by WhatTheBuck

[Treefidy 1507]

12 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

The absolute craziest aspect of this whole ordeal is how similar it is to Strongs first and second seasons

We hired a coordinator who worked for Urban and parlayed that into a few good years at a mid-major, and who had 2 wins which defined their status as "elite" on the rise.  Brought an underwhelming staff with them, a particularly shitty OC, and refused to make changes when changes were due.  Twice in a row.  

I don't think it's crazy at all they are having similar runs

[SubliminalHorn 7009]

4 minutes ago, Spankytoes said:

I’m going to go with “false” on that one 

No? We would have had no business winning that game. Of course a win is always better, but the incredibly inept play all game long would not have made me feel better about how this coaching staff prepares the team. It would still have been an ominous sign for the season. 

[Captain Ron 13133]

1 minute ago, mdmost said:

The difference in the Charlie loss post game and the Herman loss post game is Charlie seemed like he didn’t know WTF to do to correct it. Herman seems like he knows how to fix yet it doesn’t seem to be getting fixed. We’re just all idiots because we don’t see this grand vision taking shape. That was another winnable game that you handed back to Maryland with penalties and bad play calling. It’s Tech and USC all over again. When we’ll we start to pull out these close wins that always evade us?

Herman ACTS like he knows how to fix it. But the fact that nothing's getting fixed tells me he really doesn't know how to fix it. It's everything Finger said. Talk about pissing down our backs and telling us it's raining.

[XOVERX 5]

1 minute ago, Stunns38 said:

 

Can’t wait until his arrogance pisses off the BODs.

 

Absolutely.

The BMDs picked Herman, it seems, so it will be interesting to see which loss brings them to acceptance.

Having said this, I hope Mr. Herman wins out, and we're all singing his praises by year's end, in unison.

THAT, however seems highly unlikely.

I'm just getting ready for Tuesday when I am called on to explain this shitshow to my colleagues. *Dread*, lol.

Nope, I'm pretty sure we've got a few more "Herman's" in us to trash out the whole year.

[Spankytoes 1748]

No? We would have had no business winning that game. Of course a win is always better, but the incredibly inept play all game long would not have made me feel better about how this coaching staff prepares the team. It would still have been an ominous sign for the season. 

Agreed. But the season wouldn’t already be over in week 1. There would at least be hope that we knocked some cobwebs off before we started ramping up. We’re now staring down the barrel of a 1-2 start. A win is a win. It’s the difference between “Get it together Tom” and “GTFO Tom”

[SubliminalHorn 7009]

1 minute ago, Spankytoes said:

 

Agreed. But the season wouldn’t already be over in week 1. There would at least be hope that we knocked some cobwebs off before we started ramping up. We’re now staring down the barrel of a 1-2 start. A win is a win. It’s the difference between “Get it together Tom” and “GTFO Tom”

 

I hear ya. 

[Slacks 7063]

He needs some Jocko and take Extreme Ownership.
 

Good book. I recommend it. Maybe I'll send it.

[Luka Skywalker 152]

11 hours ago, ramirezut said:

His presser was arrogant as shit for losing to a fucking basketball school, but the most douchey part was when someone asked about "LJ and Colin looking dominat on some plays and dissappearing/going invisible on others".

His response: "What coverage are we talking about...right, so what coverage were they in when they went 'invisible'?

I know he won't call out players in the presser but jfc is he a touchy lil cu#t.

 

Yeah I saw that. Thought it was very strange.

[Brothahorn 10097]

Can’t wait until his arrogance pisses off the BODs.

My company damn near went broke because the owners loved what they thought the GM was. We lost serious money for 3 straight years, while this guy stole, ran off good people and played favorites.

It took a mutiny of the other managers and the bank not wanting to finance us any longer before they acted.

And these are serious guys who operate on a international level. Yet they loved the GM so much, they couldn't see the truth.

We could be stuck with Herman for a long time.

[SilasCoade 2622]

18 minutes ago, mdmost said:

The difference in the Charlie loss post game and the Herman loss post game is Charlie seemed like he didn’t know WTF to do to correct it. Herman seems like he knows how to fix yet it doesn’t seem to be getting fixed. We’re just all idiots because we don’t see this grand vision taking shape. That was another winnable game that you handed back to Maryland with penalties and bad play calling. It’s Tech and USC all over again. When we’ll we start to pull out these close wins that always evade us?

No, the difference is Charlie would never have been given the latitude to respond the way Herman does. There are a lot of parallels with the Strong and Herman regimes so far, but at least recruiting was promising and player discontent was not an issue with Strong. With Herman you get the sense it's all just barely holding together.

[Shaggy3.0 1695]

Agreed. But the season wouldn’t already be over in week 1. There would at least be hope that we knocked some cobwebs off before we started ramping up. We’re now staring down the barrel of a 1-2 start. A win is a win. It’s the difference between “Get it together Tom” and “GTFO Tom”

Are you sure a win is a win? Old shaggy had a crazy debate about our 2016 ND win. Some posters went through serious mental gymnastics to argue beating the irish was a bad win. Remember that?

It’s better for us to move on from Tom and get a real win-at-all-cost coach. I’m okay with asshole coaches who do anything to win—minus the wife beating, rape, drugs. Just get that guy.

[pyrohornIII 4846]

6 minutes ago, Treefidy said:

We hired a coordinator who worked for Urban and parlayed that into a few good years at a mid-major, and who had 2 wins which defined their status as "elite" on the rise.  Brought an underwhelming staff with them, a particularly shitty OC, and refused to make changes when changes were due.  Twice in a row.  

I don't think it's crazy at all they are having similar runs

I like Orlando and what he has done with the defense.  S&C is better.    The entire staff he brought is not inept.  It's on the offensive side of the ball mainly.  And that is his baby.  We can blame  Beck all we want, but I would not doubt that Herman was very involved in the play calling yesterday.  He sees himself as this mensa offensive guy and he puts together stuff that is just tinkertoy.  His narcissism keeps him from accepting he isn't that great offensive mind.  He has qualities in recruiting and paying respect to old players/coaches.  But they are not strong enough.  The fact he found success with the up tempo and could have easily gassed the Terps the whole second half...but he walked away from it after huge success.   That's just completely unreasonable. 

I'd like to see him canned and have the reins turned over to Orlando and Hand.

[TexasGolf 5465]

7 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

My company damn near went broke because the owners loved what they thought the GM was. We lost serious money for 3 straight years, while this guy stole, ran off good people and played favorites.

It took a mutiny of the other managers and the bank not wanting to finance us any longer before they acted.

And these are serious guys who operate on a international level. Yet they loved the GM so much, they couldn't see the truth.

We could be stuck with Herman for a long time.

He will get 3 years. 

[Slacks 7063]

The difference in the Charlie loss post game and the Herman loss post game is Charlie seemed like he didn’t know WTF to do to correct it. Herman seems like he knows how to fix yet it doesn’t seem to be getting fixed. We’re just all idiots because we don’t see this grand vision taking shape. That was another winnable game that you handed back to Maryland with penalties and bad play calling. It’s Tech and USC all over again. When we’ll we start to pull out these close wins that always evade us?

You are falling for the shitty attitude and words. Tom Herman is fucking lost right now. Our offense is fucked.

Charlie knew he had shit at OL and QB and he tried to avoid talking about it.

I'm really pissed that we didn't give the veer and shot a 2nd year to get rolling. We would have been much better last year and this year. It masks offensive player deficiencies that we have and makes the run game much easier.

But we lost to Kansas, so I get it.

I want us to run a real smashmouth spread if we're gonna run it. I don't know wtf we're running now.

[Butch Had Not 3061]

17 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

My dad is an Ex and has lived in TN for forty years and doesn't do message boards, while I live in Houston and do, and so am better tuned in than he is. He asked me a week or so what the skinny was on this year's team and I told him I thought we would be a little bit worse on D (thank to losing our best players at every level of the D) and a little better on O, thanks to a somewhat improved O-line.

My O/U on wins was 8, and I kinda thought I was being a little pessimistic because of my bias against Herman. I didn't like the guy when he was at UH -- he seemed to me like a guy who rode a good QB and a fluke recruit (Oliver) to a rep far beyond his actual results. I am pretty sure his career record without Greg Ward was 1-2...I pointed that out on the old board and dudes like Rex Kramer shouted me down. The hard-on for this guy was a little bit inexplicable to me -- UH's win over FSU came against a backup QB, and honest, smart Sooners (there are a few) said that it was less Herman's genius than them just laying an egg in that game, and I also pointed out that nobody really knew what kind of recruiter he was, because he'd never really done shit with any of his own recruits, except for the fluke that was Oliver. 

So I've been biased against him since forever. I stayed in Charlie's corner until Kansas. I still don't think it made logical sense to fire him after that debacle, but I also understand that a UT coach simply can't survive after losing a game like that. You have to just wash your hands of him and move on. My ideal solution was to promote Jeff Traylor to HC and retain Maddox / Gilbert so that there would be some continuity, and we would have three native Texans running the team / O, but I was told that Traylor, in spite of his impeccably legendary status in the most important recruiting region of our state, and his demonstrable success in college, was not our standard. I think because he's kinda cheesy-looking. Seriously. I honestly believe that people don't think Traylor can be an elite HC because you think he looks like a pastor at a Tyler megachurch rather than any results he has proven up in HS or college. And now he is recruiting against us at Arkansas, poaching more recruits out of ETX we can scarce afford to lose. Arkansas had lost that pipeline and now has it back. Great job there fellas. 

Nope, the hard-on for Herman sprouted by the end of year two of Charlie's ill-fated regime and would rage on all through year three, despite Herman's inexplicable defeats to Navy and SMU. Every excuse was made for Herman. Bad weather and injuries doomed him at Navy. Seriously. Herman himself furnished bulletin board material prior to the SMU game and then got fucking owned, but no, he was still The Answer. Here's your Golden Boy, when still at UH, Hermanoids:

Pretty good smack but not if you follow it up by losing to that private school up in Dallas 38-16. And springboard that school's coach to a historic rival, where he hires Jeff Traylor, and they are now again ransacking East Texas for recruits.

Yeah and now I have to back and tell my dad that 8 was a wildly optimistic number for wins. He knows that already. We should get 12.5 percent of the way there next weekend, maybe, so at least there is that. 

 

Don't want to piss in your cheerios but Traylor didn't prove a single thing as an on field coach here.  Special teams? That was a shit show. TE? He never had any to show any progress. His calling card is east texas recruiting and he was just a couple of years removed from corching texas high school football.  I know people love to romanticize traylor here but he wasn't a good coach. He might be now.  He might have been good here later.  But when he was here he didn't show much outside helping with norvell.

[williemackgarza 1826]

So now were aggy?
We ran out of good quaarters?

[Irish Wrist Watch 1503]

35 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

Little things that demonstrate weak coaching. Sam’s throws to the flat never had enough zip on them. He has a stronger arm than he used on those throws. He’s lucky they didn’t get picked. Good coaching would have addressed that in practices.

The alignments we used guaranteed that every fucking time we threw a ball into the flat, there would be three fucking defenders already there, or well on their way to getting there. WTF happened to swinging a back out of the backfield when all the defenders are chasing receivers downfield? Wait, you need backs for that. We never once, that I recall, ran a two-back set. And Porter? For fuck sakes, man. Wake the Fuck Up.

Shawn Watson, Act IV. The sucking sound is from the Offensive Vacuum surrounding the Forty Acres.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Irish Wrist Watch

[Jive Turkey 13002]

Herman is not getting rid of Beck.  To do so would be for Tom to admit he was wrong.  Mensa people are never wrong.  They’re smarter than us.  Tom tells us so.

Beck is here to stay.  So I’m out.  Not watching this until Beck is gone.  And that will either take Beck voluntarily quitting (haha) or CDC forcing Herman to shitcan Beck.  Not sure if that’s even CDC’s style - to get involved in personnel decisions like that which typically belong to the HC.

I just don’t want to watch a predictably vanilla, poorly executed offense.

Why didn’t Sam start running until the fourth quarter?  The entire game, he kept running that stupid “zone read” play and always handed off.  Always.  He could have kept it a few times for big yardage but didn’t.  Maybe they told him not to run so as to not get hurt.  But that fucking play isn’t as effective when the defense knows the QB isn’t keeping it..

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

My dad is an Ex and has lived in TN for forty years and doesn't do message boards, while I live in Houston and do, and so am better tuned in than he is. He asked me a week or so what the skinny was on this year's team and I told him I thought we would be a little bit worse on D (thank to losing our best players at every level of the D) and a little better on O, thanks to a somewhat improved O-line.

My O/U on wins was 8, and I kinda thought I was being a little pessimistic because of my bias against Herman. I didn't like the guy when he was at UH -- he seemed to me like a guy who rode a good QB and a fluke recruit (Oliver) to a rep far beyond his actual results. I am pretty sure his career record without Greg Ward was 1-2...I pointed that out on the old board and dudes like Rex Kramer shouted me down. The hard-on for this guy was a little bit inexplicable to me -- UH's win over FSU came against a backup QB, and honest, smart Sooners (there are a few) said that it was less Herman's genius than them just laying an egg in that game, and I also pointed out that nobody really knew what kind of recruiter he was, because he'd never really done shit with any of his own recruits, except for the fluke that was Oliver. 

So I've been biased against him since forever. I stayed in Charlie's corner until Kansas. I still don't think it made logical sense to fire him after that debacle, but I also understand that a UT coach simply can't survive after losing a game like that. You have to just wash your hands of him and move on. My ideal solution was to promote Jeff Traylor to HC and retain Maddox / Gilbert so that there would be some continuity, and we would have three native Texans running the team / O, but I was told that Traylor, in spite of his impeccably legendary status in the most important recruiting region of our state, and his demonstrable success in college, was not our standard. I think because he's kinda cheesy-looking. Seriously. I honestly believe that people don't think Traylor can be an elite HC because you think he looks like a pastor at a Tyler megachurch rather than any results he has proven up in HS or college. And now he is recruiting against us at Arkansas, poaching more recruits out of ETX we can scarce afford to lose. Arkansas had lost that pipeline and now has it back. Great job there fellas. 

Nope, the hard-on for Herman sprouted by the end of year two of Charlie's ill-fated regime and would rage on all through year three, despite Herman's inexplicable defeats to Navy and SMU. Every excuse was made for Herman. Bad weather and injuries doomed him at Navy. Seriously. Herman himself furnished bulletin board material prior to the SMU game and then got fucking owned, but no, he was still The Answer. Here's your Golden Boy, when still at UH, Hermanoids:

Pretty good smack but not if you follow it up by losing to that private school up in Dallas 38-16. And springboard that school's coach to a historic rival, where he hires Jeff Traylor, and they are now again ransacking East Texas for recruits.

Yeah and now I have to back and tell my dad that 8 was a wildly optimistic number for wins. He knows that already. We should get 12.5 percent of the way there next weekend, maybe, so at least there is that. 

 

I shouted you down because you’re a moron Charlie apologist. And just general moron. 

[BrazilHorn 6845]

When will “Never hire a OC from Nebraska” become a hard fact similar to never fight a land war vs Russia in Winter??

 

[SilasCoade 2622]

Watch Wisconsin run a RB screen and weep.

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=24540733

Should be a routine staple for a team that struggles to maintain a pocket and doesn't have a smashmouth run game.

[mdmost 44041]

13 minutes ago, Snacks said:

You are falling for the shitty attitude and words. Tom Herman is fucking lost right now. Our offense is fucked.

Charlie knew he had shit at OL and QB and he tried to avoid talking about it.

I'm really pissed that we didn't give the veer and shot a 2nd year to get rolling. We would have been much better last year and this year. It masks offensive player deficiencies that we have and makes the run game much easier.

But we lost to Kansas, so I get it.

I want us to run a real smashmouth spread if we're gonna run it. I don't know wtf we're running now.

Yes I should rephrase, Herman seems to fake that he knows how to fix things better than Charlie who just looked lost. 

The running game makes me want to vomit. So tired of the slow developing running play that gets stuffed at the line. It’s just boring. Why have Sam act like he might keep the ball if you rarely have him do it. Yet when he does keep it and gets decent pickups, you then decide that was probably it for the quarter. And Porter going in on 3rd down gives me the same queasy feeling of offensive give up as 3rd downs with Brett Robin did. I just don’t get how we can be this bad with an offensive minded HFBC. 

Edited September 2, 2018 by mdmost

[Irish Wrist Watch 1503]

3 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

When will “Never hire a OC from Nebraska” become a hard fact similar to never fight a land war vs Russia in Winter??

 

No fucking shit. T-Shirt possibility?

[UcancallmeSurly 451]

37 minutes ago, Player said:

 

 

Even more maddening: during the pre-game interview Craig Way asked him about the RB rotation, and Tom said that whoever had the hot hand between Watson, Young, and Ingram would get the carries. He didn’t even mention Porter’s name.

You sit on a throne of lies, mensa.

 

 

Never been “all in” with Herman, but not ready to write him off yet either.

when I saw Porter in the game @ crunch time, I’ll admit I likely started my journey towards “this coach isn’t ever gonna make it here”.

[GabrielsHorn 2246]

4 minutes ago, Llogg said:

Watch Wisconsin run a RB screen and weep.

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=24540733

Should be a routine staple for a team that struggles to maintain a pocket and doesn't have a smashmouth run game.

imgur

[pearlandhorn 3343]

It certainly looked like Herman started calling plays to get the team back in to the game. He was getting high fives on the sidelines after each of the 3 TDs we scored in the second quarter. 

After the break, it seemed like we went back to Beck because there was no fluidity in the plays being called.

It would be nice for the head coach to walk the walk instead of talking the talk. If he has players that aren’t cutting it, he benches them. He should be doing the same with his coaches. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

14 minutes ago, Butch Had Not said:

Don't want to piss in your cheerios but Traylor didn't prove a single thing as an on field coach here.  Special teams? That was a shit show. TE? He never had any to show any progress. His calling card is east texas recruiting and he was just a couple of years removed from corching texas high school football.  I know people love to romanticize traylor here but he wasn't a good coach. He might be now.  He might have been good here later.  But when he was here he didn't show much outside helping with norvell.

Special teams fell apart spectacularly on a few occasions but it was mostly bad snaps, and that's a matter of execution. I am sure Traylor had that dude out there snapping the ball hundreds of times a day like every other coach does but then he got the yips during games. As for TEs, we had no talent. Picasso couldn't paint if you only gave him white chalk and a dirty canvas. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

6 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Yes I should rephrase, Herman seems to fake that he knows how to fix things better than Charlie who just looked lost. 

The running game makes me want to vomit. So tired of the slow developing running play that gets stuffed at the line. It’s just boring. Why have Sam act like he might keep the ball if you rarely have him do it. Yet when he does keep it and gets decent pickups, you then decide that was probably it for the quarter. And Porter going in on 3rd down gives me the same queasy feeling of offensive give up as 3rd downs with Brett Robin did. I just don’t get how we can be this bad with an offensive minded HFBC. 

Gah this is what pisses me off the most. Herman will get an extra year because he knows how to win press conferences if not games. 

[Bruh Man 3160]

Man I almost feel physically ill this morning. I think what feels different about this loss is that I'm starting to worry that OU and A$M might start taking the edge in recruiting for the foreseeable future. I didn't feel like this the last 4-5 years but now recruits are going to start to really shy away from this program. Any slippage in talent will only make the rebuild harder for Herman. Let's face it what OU is doing right now is pretty damn impressive. Gameday will be in CS next week, if they pull off an upset they're also going to get some serious momentum. This isn't me being a debbie downer or aggy, it's the reality of the situation right now.

 

[Wally Pryor 5410]

2 hours ago, Shaggy3.0 said:

 

Since we didn’t kick tires and have a mechanic inspect the car before buying, we have a lemon.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, we hired a choad, a fucking half a momo. A fraud.

 

 

 

 

 

If tim beck is not demoted by tuesday afternoon, this guy is worse than charlie.

 

 

Do we have rex kramer’s permission to call this guy a potato?

 

 

Where's the Louisville slugger coming off the Greyhound?

 

[MaybeACoordinator 8350]

10 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I shouted you down because you’re a moron Charlie apologist. And just general moron. 

Well, on-field evidence is not exactly proving your point. I'll gladly eat my words if Herman takes us over the 8-win hump this year. 

[Bruh Man 3160]

4 minutes ago, pearlandhorn said:

It certainly looked like Herman started calling plays to get the team back in to the game. He was getting high fives on the sidelines after each of the 3 TDs we scored in the second quarter. 

After the break, it seemed like we went back to Beck because there was no fluidity in the plays being called.

It would be nice for the head coach to walk the walk instead of talking the talk. If he has players that aren’t cutting it, he benches them. He should be doing the same with his coaches. 

I could have swore reading reports during the near mutiny last November that the main issue the players had with the staff was the fact that they felt the coaches were not being held accountable. That and Herman walking by the players in the hallway and not saying a word.

[Lat22 4086]

Here is Mike Finger’s piece if you haven’t seen it  

 

 

 

As usual, Tom Herman saw what the rest of us couldn’t.

The unsophisticated football-watching public completely misconstrued what happened to Herman’s Texas Longhorns in their season-opening loss to Maryland on Saturday, when what appeared to be the latest in a long line of Texas humiliations actually was nothing of the sort.

 

This was not a repeat, nor was it a sign of things to come. And we know this because Herman said so.

The naïve among us might have thought we saw a team as unprepared to start Herman’s second season as it was to start his first. But this is because we are uninformed.

We just assumed that a flurry of bone-headed penalties and a rash of late-game turnovers were signs of a squad that remains as sloppy and as undisciplined as ever, but the truth is we are unable to comprehend exactly how much the Longhorns have improved.

Thankfully, Herman was gracious enough to break it down for reporters covering the game in Landover, Maryland, and thereby set the country straight.

 

Sure, it might have seemed like the Longhorns made all of the same mistakes they did last year, and that the offense showed no signs of progress from a season in which it ranked as one of the worst in the Big 12, but that’s only because we did not notice any of the details Herman and his staff did.

“We saw a lot of development,” Herman said. “I wouldn’t say we failed in that area.”

And although we know-nothings might have assumed it might be a unnerving to lose a second-consecutive opener to a moribund program that had spent the past month mired in a scandal, and was playing for an interim head coach, and had not beaten any ranked team aside from UT in 22 tries dating back to 2011, it’s actually not that big of a deal.

After all, when Herman was asked by a knee-jerk journalist to describe how big of a setback the defeat was for a program that wants so desperately to be taken seriously again that it made “Prove Us Right” the team motto, he answered, “Not very.”

This is what the wise John Mackovic meant when he referred to a similar temporary embarrassment as “a blip on the radar screen.” The Longhorns will get over this, and so will the fans.

The general public simply has no perspective. Fans watch a team suffer a loss like Saturday’s, which flukishly included a bunch of the same symptoms as six losses last fall, and they trick themselves into seeing the continuation of a trend.

Herman has no use for such nonsense.

“A lot of people are going to want to say this feels a lot like last year,” Herman said. “It doesn’t to me.”

To be sure, Herman did say he was angry at himself for how the Longhorns started. But he realizes there is no need to do anything drastic, like switch quarterbacks, because UT has might light years of progress since last season.

And if you’re the type of person asking for evidence of that, what happened to your sense of trust?

“We know how much better we are now than we were probably at any point last year,” Herman said. “We didn't show it in the first quarter and the fourth quarter.”

Minor details, those. Second-guessing anything that happens during pivotal moments in the game is pointless, just as it was to second-guess the decisions Herman made way back when he was just starting at UT.

Some of us remember the reception he got when he hired Tim Beck as offensive coordinator, despite a bit of a lackluster track record, and when he hired Casey Horny as a quality control assistant, despite his longtime association with a Baylor staff apparently unaware of what was happening in its own program.

Herman’s message back then was clear. He knew better than the rest of us.

Clearly, he still does. He realizes that UT fans never should have expected a national contender to arrive any time soon, anyway. After all, over the past 34 years, the Longhorns have finished as many seasons unranked as they have in the Top 25.

That decade-long streak of success to start the Mack Brown era? That was the outlier, not the norm.

Despite what many Longhorns continue to believe, winning football games is not their birthright. They have to realize all of this is far more complicated than it looks, but that better days are ahead.

And they need to admit that when it comes to believing their own eyes or the guy who knows better, well, the choice is obvious.

mfinger@express-news.net

 

[ClubWhatever 12307]

I’d like to see him publicly say he is taking over play calling and demote Beck.  Beck has value on the staff.   He can leave if he’s too proud.  But Tom should actually take the buck on playcalling instead of just pretending to when asked by reporters.   His tenure depends on fixing the offense pronto.   He needs to just accept the fact that he has to be a coordinator coach.  

[SubliminalHorn 7009]

Hm well third time’s a charm! Who’s the next up and coming mid major coach for us to hire next year???

[Shaggy3.0 1695]

Hm well third time’s a charm! Who’s the next up and coming mid major coach for us to hire next year???

Get Pete Carrol. No messing around this time.

[okiehorn 23]

1 hour ago, Revolution512 said:

It’s pretty obvious recruiting is a huge problem. On top of that, our offensive system is dog shit. Hot dog shit

How do you figure its "obvious"?  

2015- #10 in country

2016 # 7 in country 

2017- sucks due to Charlie strong fired

2018- #3 recruiting class in country 

agreed offense system sucks, Coaches dont keep the best play makers in the game 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Well, on-field evidence is not exactly proving your point. I'll gladly eat my words if Herman takes us over the 8-win hump this year. 

It has nothing to do with Herman. You fought and fought and fought for Charlie. Even here, you said we let him go too early even with the KU loss. And then said if we replaced him it ought to be with a guy like Traylor. Your posts as sweetjones and here are embarrassing. 

[Shaggy3.0 1695]

How do you figure its "obvious"?  
2015- #10 in country
2016 # 7 in country 
2017- sucks due to Charlie strong fired
2018- #3 recruiting class in country 
agreed offense system sucks, Coaches dont keep the best play makers in the game 

Now show us Maryland’s rankings for those years.
Just for the lulz.

[Shaggy3.0 1695]

It has nothing to do with Herman. You fought and fought and fought for Charlie. Even here, you said we let him go too early even with the KU loss. And then said if we replaced him it ought to be with a guy like Traylor. Your posts as sweetjones and here are embarrassing. 

Can we call Herman potato?