Three underlying reasons why college teams have surprise breakout seasons
How many times have we heard the statement “I never saw that coming” after college football teams have much better seasons than expected? Before the start of each season, we all look for the obvious strengths and weaknesses of each team, beginning with returning starters, QB, coach, etc. But I believe there are 3 underlying factors that can determine if
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3 thoughts on “Three underlying reasons why college teams have surprise breakout seasons”
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I believe the “fit” factor is very important when these new coaches/coordinators take over. You allude to this with your Clemson example. They had several veteran players on hand and they also had a new QB (Taj Boyd) who was a good fit for the offense. Having Sammie Watkins certainly didn’t hurt matters either.
However there are also many examples of poor fits in these situations whereby the coaching change does not work out. Pitt comes to mind this past season. Graham tried to make his system of offense work with Wannstedt’s power run game personnel. It was a disaster.
I think the key here is we don’t see too much of a drastic change to your offense. Clemson wasn’t what I would call a ultra-conservative team in the first place. So bringing in a new coordinator to give them a little push over the hump was all they needed. And of course he had the common sense and experience to know what type of player he needed at QB. Whereas another inferior coordinator might have gone another direction.
As for Todd Graham at Pittsburgh, I believe that was a little different story. To me, there is a huge differnce between bringing in a coordinator to make a change and tweek the offense while in many cases still using the same OL, QB & RB coaches, and bringing in a new head coach that is more than likely going to junk everything the team was doing before and install his own programs and new coordinators. One of the hardest things to do in college football is to take over a program that has had a longtime head coach who has put his stamp all over the program. It’s almost impossible to improve significantly in the first season for a new coach. Replacing Ralph Friedgen at Maryland this past season was a good example of what I’m talking about. Even a mediocre coach like Lloyd Carr was hard to replace. Just ask Rich Rod. The ONLY times that I’ve seen it done with success is when a particualr team is bringing back a very good defensive unit that has stayed pretty much intact. Many times they can take up the slack while the offense is learning it’s new schemes. But it’s still a very tough situation. Longtime head coaches (good or bad) can be very difficult to replace. I believe Graham will have a much better chance in his first year at ASU than he did at Pitt. Mainly because Erickson wasn’t really there long enough to put his stamp on the team. Big difference.