Addazio's update

Addazio gave a standard, post-season, pre-bowl media update Friday. Most of it is on guys getting healthy and using the bowl game practice. Towards the end he gets around to Loeffler's departure and the future of the offense. Here are some takeaways:

1. He reminded everyone that it is HIS offense. He did this when Day left and seemingly goes back to that theme anytime someone questions credit or ownership of the offense. He explained that it is collaborative, but that he sets the tone and philosophy.

2. He wants a QB/passing game guy. That seems pretty standard. Loeffler had QB responsibilities. It would make sense that his replacement does too.

3. He looks to the Rams as a model...and says BC has already been doing that. Copying the Rams is admirable. They're one of the most dynamic teams in any level of football. But the overlaps are not obvious. Yes, both teams use big, bruising backs as a centerpiece and both play uptempo. But The Rams passing game is much more aggressive with downfield throws.

If he is thinking Rams, there are plenty of names on the Rams staff who might be good fits as OC, including:
-- Shane Waldron. Numerous ties to the Boston area. Coached with UMass, Patriots and Notre Dame and was even a high school coach at BB&N.
-- Liam Coen. Former UMass QB. Coached all over New England FCS schools.
-- Jedd Fisch. No obvious ties to Addazio but has been an OC at the college and NFL level many, many times.
-- Zac Taylor. No obvious ties to Addazio, but has been involved in offense at the college and NFL level.

4. Loeffler will be part of bowl prep. Addazio didn't say Loeffler will be calling plays, but I think it is implied. Typically college coaches finish out their old season while prepping for their new job.

Ryan Day will be the new Offensive Coordinator

Long-time readers and my critics can hopefully chuckle at this post's headline. I don't think think anyone expected the twists and turns it took to get the job. His results in Temple were not good and there are many BC fans that think he is all hype, but I like the move. My hope is that Addazio will give him free reign and we will finally have a consistent and competent offense.

Day got screwed by Gene and Spaz. He could be coaching in many other places, but he wants to be at BC. Obviously as Bates has just explained, that desire to win at BC means a lot to the administration. 

I will obviously have more opinion as this all develops. 

If you can't get Steve Logan, you might as well turn to Doug Martin

Earlier this week when Doug Martin interviewed for the OC position, I had the following email exchange with a guy who knows Jags and Steve Logan.

Me: Given his connection to Jags and Logan, would Doug Martin actually take a job under Spaz and Gene?

Him: Very little chance.

That exchange shows the gossip and speculation is often a bad predictor. But now that Doug Martin is our new Offensive Coordinator, the question should be asked: why?

Why after picking Spaz over Steve Logan three years ago and scrapping his offense are we bringing in a Logan-disciple? Why are we changing offenses from a more prostyle to spread when we have been recruiting players into a prostyle scheme for three years. And why would a guy who clearly can get an inside opinion on all the nonsense that goes on between Flip and Spaz take the job?

When guessing about unanswerable questions, I revert to Occam's razor. My guess is that Gene and Spaz talked to a lot of guys and felt that Martin was the best candidate willing to take the job. Switching from prostyle to a more modern spread might lead to growing pains, but production was so bad there was no reason to lock into the other scheme. Also, I am sure Martin feels he can adapt his scheme to the current BC personnel. As for Martin taking the job...Jags and Logan both liked what BC represents and the type of kids you coach at BC. Logan's son even worked for Gene. Regardless of how things ended they probably spoke highly of BC as a program. Martin might know there are issues and Spaz is on the hot seat, but all things being equal, he is being well paid to coach at a BCS program.

There are a million things to analyze as far as what Martin will do, but these are my short Day 1 thoughts. Some are good. Some are not.

-- I like that Martin is a well know personality in Ohio. He won't be a key recruiter, but he can help our efforts, especially in Northeast Ohio.
-- I've always liked Martin's ability to find under the radar skill guys like Joshua Cribbs, Eugene Jarvis, and Julian Edelman.
-- I like that his offense has been pretty consistent. Martin is no Mike Leach, but I think he is our best OC since Steve Logan.
-- I wonder what he will want to do with the offensive line. Do we go back to a more strict zone blocking scheme?
-- Will the other staffers support him or does he have input on staff changes?
-- Why didn't the players know more about the pending change (see the twitter responses)?
-- How will we use our deep roster of Tight Ends?
-- Does he want a QB who can run or will he adapt year to year based on player's strengths (like Logan did with Ryan and Crane)?

I thought keeping Brock in place was the best solution for BC's 2012 season. Now I am talking myself into the Martin hire. If he can recapture any of the Logan magic, we could be a surprise team in 2012. But my fear is that his two new bosses Coach Flip and Coach Spaz will screw it up in some other way.

We hardly knew ya, Mike Faragalli; the coaching rumor mill keeps turning

Earlier this week Spaz hinted to the Herald that he would hire a new offensive coordinator to replace Dave Brock.

Wednesday, numerous message board posters on Eagle Action claimed that current Virginia Running Backs Coach Mike Faragalli would be named the new offensive coordinator and play caller. By late morning the football coaching sites were claiming a done deal too.

Spaz was on the road recruiting (with Dave Brock) so there wasn't any official confirmation. But by late Wednesday the earlier rumors were being shot down. The afternoon updates were worse as the reports said Spaz offered Faragalli and the Running Backs coach turned the job down.

Now we are back to square one. Based on the rumors and the fact that he is still on staff, I hope that BC has been upfront with Brock. Letting him twist in the wind would be unkind and leave BC looking stupid if the end of with Brock as OC again. For now let's hope he is onboard with the change and ready to help BC win again.

The struggles to land Faragalli -- when this would be an obvious step up from position coach to coordinator -- speaks to the challenges BC will have filling the spot. Being Offensive Coordinator at BC is not that great a job right now. Outsiders will wonder about our talent level, the Gene-Spaz relationship, Spaz's track record with Coordinators, Spaz's future, what happened with Rogers, the cost of living in Boston, and inheriting a bunch of position coaches. With all those issues, BC will have a hard time convincing someone with a stable job to take the risk with Spaz.

There plenty of good coaches looking for work. BC will find someone. But based on whats happened so far I don't think we will have an A-List blockbuster hire. Instead we will hire a coordinator who has as many questions as BC does. Until then, we will let you know what the rumor mill is saying.

No ignoring offensive failure

As defenders and critics of Spaz get more entrenched in their respective stances, I suggest we look at the objective issues. The biggest is the failure of the offensive side of the ball under Spaz. In an era of video game scoring, BC remains unable to put points on the board. In 30 games against FBS opponents, Spaz's teams have only scored more than 20 points nine times. They are averaging over that time 18.5 against FBS opponents. BC has failed to exceed 20 points for nine-straight FBS games. We were fortunate that Spaz's first two teams used defense to cover up this glaring issue. That's not the case of late.

Now there are a whole host of reasons as to why the offense has struggled. But all those issues cannot rationalize the end results. We are failing on offense. We are failing in how we plan it, how we execute it, how we teach it, and how we practice. When the parts are greater than the whole and areas of weakness are not addressed through recruiting or schemes, then you are failing.

Spaz's background has been defense. But as head coach it is also his job to empower the offensive decision makers and help them build for success. We are not doing that.

Focus on the positive. Let's hope we get better soon, but ignoring the elephant in the room is not going to change the scoreboard.

Rogers from a Notre Dame perspective

I asked the Notre Dame fans from the defunct Irish blog Blue-Gray Sky for their thoughts on our new Offensive Coordinator Kevin Rogers. What follows is a string of quotes from them. Please note I am not cherry picking what they wrote.

I have to confess I have very little immediate recall on Rogers, other than embarrassing clips like this:

I always blamed Davie and not any of the offensive coaches.

The offense was good enough in 1999 to win all those close games.

The Rogers offense was effective at times, but horrible in others. He ran far too many qb draws, so many that it was easily predictable. 2nd and 3? Qb draw. 3rd and long? Qb draw. First and goal inside the five? Qb draw. 3rd and 78, qb draw... U get the picture...

"Failed Expectations"

The guy was brought in to make Jarious Jackson and Carlyle Holiday the second comings of McMabb and instead installed a vanilla offense with no sense of clock management. It always seemed like he had all the pieces but he could never really put them together. Now, how much of that is Rogers and how much is Davie? Couldn't tell you. However, we were unnecessarily mediocre under him, I will say that much.

I remember shotgun with 2 backs being a big part of what we did.

The straight-armed, telegraphed hand-off never bothered me. What bothered me was using the straight-armed, telegraphed hand-off without a counter play or play action off it.

I can't wait until Rogers calls Y-hide to beat us at home, and ND fans everywhere explode because they knew it was coming, but Kelly admits they didn't see it in any of the tape/film in preparing for the game.

I remember a common knock being our lack of an offensive identity. Shotgun, option, wishbone, power I . . . we were like the menu at one of those greasy fast food joints that tries to serve every conceivable kind of food.

Really, we had some amazing players on that team and a smattering of cleverly designed/called plays here and there.

If you ask some offensive players from that era they'll tell you that they believe (as Rogers believed) that he was often hamstrung by Davie, who was too hands-on for his own good.

Its funny to look at the careers of people like Rogers - if you took out his ND tenure, you'd think he was a pretty decent offensive coach, given his success at places like Syracuse and Va Tech. As fans, we often joke that people "didn't forget how to coach when they got to South Bend," but for someone like Rogers I really wonder if that's true...

Straight-armed telegraphed running plays

Here's how every Notre Dame running play looked under Rogers.

1) QB gets the ball from center and turns in the direction of the running play
2) QB extends arms out as far and as straight as possible towards RB
3) QB walks towards running back until RB takes ball.

It should be noted that this was especially ineffective on long-developing run plays. I remember it being explained at the time as making it as easy as possible for the backs to handle handoffs or something. It completely telegraphed every play. If ND didn't do this sequence, they weren't running the ball. Bleh.

He's a victim of staying at ND for a year too long. He was offered the OC job under Stoops and stayed, getting tuition and stuff for his kids covered. Ditto a few other big ones. He was offered a few small head jobs but didn't go, and I think he was offered the Rutgers job as well.

Instead of waiting to see where the dust settled after they pulled the plug on Davie -- who I can confirm absolutely bludgeoned the offense, including some technique issues many people talk about -- he took a job with Frank Beamer the next day, even though it was a position coach job and a really stubborn decision. From there he took the reins on some offensive stuff, but was stuck behind Steinspring, who's a complete idiot.

The negativity of ND Nation and how sour it went really wore on him, his family, everybody.

He did a pretty good job w/the Vikings O, interviewed for the OC position w/the Bears, but they gave it to Martz, and then this year happened, hence him needing a new job. Went back to college I'm assuming because of the labor situation, and I suspect he'll do well at B.C.

OC rumors and other links

Since I am the guy who said our new OC would be Ryan Day my updates probably come off as hedging. That's not the intention. I am just trying to pass on what I know. Here is the latest: Minnesota Vikings QB coach Kevin Rogers got a serious look. Don't know if this means much in the big picture. I still think Day gets it. Rogers might make sense in that he could be a comprise candidate with ties to Gene and Spaz. Gene's son was a GA for Rogers at Notre Dame and Spaz has known Rogers going back to his Navy days. Personally I would rather see Day or Brock get the job than an outsider whose best days are behind him. I expect this all to conclude after signing day.

Just after Michigan made their push, Miami went hard after BC QB commitment Christian Suntrup. So far he still plans on being an Eagle. I will be relieved when he finally signs.

After a great week in practice, Anthony Castonzo struggled in the actual Senior Bowl. But we should note that he was playing out of position at guard. I think his practices, experience at BC and personality will keep him as a first round pick.