First I've never been a "fire Mike Stoops guy" so let's get that out of the way. I've coached for 16 years so I stay away from (or try to) emotional knee jerk reactions. The problem as I see it is that Stoops has tendencies he's developed that are easily exploited. In this age of film study those tendencies are easy to see. Let's face it, the modern game is skewed to the offense and all great defenses get lit up from time to time, even 'Bama, and TCU (the frogs get lit up a lot). However, many teams year in and year out play better defense than we do. That is in part due to how prolific our offense is and how quickly we score, which requires our opponents to be less conservative on offense and gives our defense more possessions to defend. That can't explain all of our deficiencies though because we see stats that take those factors into consideration and our defense is still porous.
I have seen improvement in the front 7 this year and I see more gap soundness, but I'm scared to death that our secondary is still subpar, including Bookie (who in his defense is still just a freshman, so he'll improve). I'm not at practice so I can't say if the secondary issue is more Stoops' schemes or if Cooks just can't coach them up, but it's not good. There are clearly issues with the scheme, but I can't help but wonder how much Cooks needs to be held accountable as well.
Question I have is do we self-scout, and if so, do we not see these tendencies as well?
The tendency issue that is being exploited by our opponents is a very real problem. As a guy who's been primarily an offensive coach I can tell you it is really easy to pick apart a defense that does not mix things up and take risks from time to time. I thought after watching the first two games that we were breaking some tendencies, but then Iowa State showed me more of the same. From a coaching perspective I don't worry about Army because we won't see that offense again all year, but we will see what Iowa State did (going vertical with big receivers), a lot.
Since I don't think Stoops is capable of breaking his tendencies, then the only answer is to fire him now, bring in Diaco as your DC, and hope that he can make enough improvement to get us to the playoffs, and with the extra time for the playoffs really implement more of his schemes. Sorry if this point has already been made, I haven't read all 500 of the other Stoops' threads, and sorry to have created the 501st thread on the topic, but it has been slightly cathartic to type out my thoughts.
I have seen improvement in the front 7 this year and I see more gap soundness, but I'm scared to death that our secondary is still subpar, including Bookie (who in his defense is still just a freshman, so he'll improve). I'm not at practice so I can't say if the secondary issue is more Stoops' schemes or if Cooks just can't coach them up, but it's not good. There are clearly issues with the scheme, but I can't help but wonder how much Cooks needs to be held accountable as well.
Question I have is do we self-scout, and if so, do we not see these tendencies as well?
The tendency issue that is being exploited by our opponents is a very real problem. As a guy who's been primarily an offensive coach I can tell you it is really easy to pick apart a defense that does not mix things up and take risks from time to time. I thought after watching the first two games that we were breaking some tendencies, but then Iowa State showed me more of the same. From a coaching perspective I don't worry about Army because we won't see that offense again all year, but we will see what Iowa State did (going vertical with big receivers), a lot.
Since I don't think Stoops is capable of breaking his tendencies, then the only answer is to fire him now, bring in Diaco as your DC, and hope that he can make enough improvement to get us to the playoffs, and with the extra time for the playoffs really implement more of his schemes. Sorry if this point has already been made, I haven't read all 500 of the other Stoops' threads, and sorry to have created the 501st thread on the topic, but it has been slightly cathartic to type out my thoughts.
