Saturday, September 15, 2012

Fire Spaz (2012 edition)

I know it is early and we are only 1-2 but I think it is time to start calling for Spaz's job again. All the same old problems resurfaced today's loss. Anemic offense (once again unable to score more than two TDs), bend but don't break defense to the extreme, and sloppy, sloppy play (drops, penalties and missed tackles). I hoped Doug Martin and Chase Rettig would make this season fun. Instead I just feel bad for them. Chase Rettig is the Job of BC quarterbacks. The guys around him drop or fumble away scores, his defense can't get the other team off the field and we cannot run the ball.

Spaz is not going to fix things. I still think we are better than we are playing, but this guy is not making the adjustments to take advantage of our manageable schedule.

I will have second viewing thoughts and grades up late Sunday night. I might have a vent before then. I am frustrated but feel like this whole lame duck season has been a waste of everyone's time. That game wasn't fun to watch and I fear we are going to have this empty feeling over and over again this fall.


Even Job thinks Chase Rettig is catching some tough breaks.

39 comments:

Tim said...

Spaz is now 17-21 against FBS teams.

William said...

What about yet another end of half drive that results in opponent's points. How many times do we need to see an opponent get the ball back with 2 minutes to go in the half, Spaz goes ultra conservative, and it results in points?

Spaz hasn't learned a thing in 3+ years of HC.

I see zero reason for him to stay.

Might as well start cleaning house now.

-Claver2010

Knucklehead said...

Spaz should be let go because he is not a good head coach.

HOWEVER,THIS GAME WAS LOST BY THE PLAYERS.

The Miami game was also lost by the players.

Too many dropped passes today according to the radio broadcast. The Finch fumble was egregious in its incompetence.

Lets put it this way, if Spaz were losing games this way last season he would not be number one on coaching hot seat. The bad losses last season were his fault. These games are on the players.

These players ought to thank their lucky stars that the majority of people in the Boston media do not care about BC football because some of them would be run out of town for their mistakes in the big college football towns. Sorry but, Amidon and Finch are who I am referring to specifically. They need to learn to control the ball when it is in their hands.

Ridiculous.

Not even getting started on the Defense. Just frustrating.

Knucklehead said...

We are completely irrelevant by the way.

Look at the Globe sports section today. One story, like five paragraphs, buried in the back around stories about UMASS and Harvard. The Big Ten Network showed the UMASS Michigan game. The game was not on the biggest cable provider in the Hometown market(Boston).

We are completely irrelevant and out shadowed in New England by UMASS. Who SUCKS.

I'm pissed.

Ryan said...

Spaz DID lose this game. Who is in charge of this inept defense? Who recruited these hapless players? Sorry, it all falls on him when they do not perform. If we have one game with fumbleitis, sure, maybe the players eat that one. Not when it's every game over 3 years though.

eagleboston said...

Well, a lameduck DeFilippo is not going to do anything so the earliest Spaz could get fired is October 1st. But, what are the chances an interim AD does the dirty business of firing a coach? My guess is Spaz finishes out the season and the new AD fires him. Let's hope the recruits hang with us until a new coach is hired.

Knucklehead said...

McGovern is running the same defense that has been run at Boston College for years. These players were all recruited by other schools. The starting WR and RB for B.C High could catch and hold the ball better than these guys.

One more thing. Rettig is GREAT. He will be a first round draft pick barring unforeseen circumstances.

Would it kill him to throw his fastball 95mph as oppossed to 100mph though? Needs to put some touch on the ball

brog33 said...

Although Spaz didn't make any bonehead decisions today, this loss is on him. We can't recruit anymore. Our talent level is awful. Outside of Rettig and KPL I dont see anyone making a big play.

Knucklehead said...

Eagleboston,

That is exactly correct. That is why it makes NOOOOOO sense to trash Spaz. He is going to be fired.

Calling for him to be fired is like spiking the punch that has already been spiked.



Ryan said...

Spaz is still employed here and is doing more damage to this program every week. So yes, we will continue to hammer him. Go buy him a drink to make him feel better.

Knucklehead said...
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Knucklehead said...

I don't want him to feel better.

I want the players held accountable when they should be.

200K free ride to a Top 30 University and you cannot hold the ball, catch the ball, throw it properly or stop someone on third down?

All that stuff is on the player and cannot be REALLY be coached.

And the players do not suck they just eff-up when it matters most. We really could be 3-0.

William said...
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William said...
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ATL_eagle said...

I think the drops and fumbles can be corrected via coaching. But if you are blaming the players, that is on Spaz too. This is Year 4 and 85% of the roster is officially his and he and Siravo were around for the last few "Jags recruits."

Ryan said...

Player blame = spaz blame at this point. You recruit and coach them, no more excuses. Sleep in the bed you make.

Benjamin said...

The loss to Miami was disappointing, but not disheartening.

This loss was disappointing and disheartening.

I would say our players couldn't execute today. Outside of Rettig, Amidon, and KPL,no one executed well. The fumbles are intolerable. The drops are ridiculous. The missed tackles hurt.

Knucklehead said...

If we were losing 35-10 and there was an obvious mis-match in talent then I would be on-board for blaming Spaz for having crummy players. The fact is that the players are not crummy. We are in these games. The PLAYERS need to make the g.damn plays.

Spaz has not called pooch kick-offs, has not meddled in Martin's offense and has not blown games like last season.

Even the bend but don't break defense which is irritating has been effective. If the offense could play a clean game . . . only2-3 dropped passes and 1-2 turnovers that do not crush a drive or give the opponent points then we have these games.

It is not Spaz/Martin dropping the passes and fumbling the ball.

At this point Spaz needs to bench Finch.

ATL_eagle said...

Knucklehead:

We gave up 538 total yards and allowed 97 total plays. It is not about players making plays. It is about not having the right schemes for Colter -- two years in a row!!!!

Scoop said...

ATL, I don't think schemes have much to do with it. I don't think our team could stop Colter & Mark even if they knew what play was coming. It's a talent issue. We have a roster made up of mid-level MAC players and a few three-star players. This bunch is two and three steps too slow on almost every play, besides the fact they can't tackle, catch, block and run to daylight. In other words, they suck big time. The coach sucks big time, most of his assistants suck, the AD sucks, the facilities suck, the game experience sucks, the whole program sucks from the top down. Everyone shares in the blame.

mod34b said...

The defense was the absolute worst. Defensive game plan is bad, bad, bad. We can't tackle. Wow.

I cringe at the thought of our our worst-in-the-FBs defense (or so it seems) trying to stop FSU, GT, Clemson. DL is surpringly awful. Real stinkers

We can't run because we can't block. Seems like Bollman only had enough time to teach the guys to pass block and never got to run blocking. WTF.

The shitty line pay is on the coaches, the drops are on the coaches, the fumbles too. The drops and fumbles are purely mental errors that are correctable/preventable by good coaching. Offensive and defensive game strategy is an abomination.

I fear that this was such a bad performance today that the players will lose heart and things are going to go downhill fast. The players must now realize they are a bad football team coached by incompetents.

I am on board with firing Spaz now as a gesture of hope. A fish rots from the head first. Our fish's head is long since rotted.

GDF: Why did you do this to BC?

Jasmine said...

this game put me to sleep

Knucklehead said...

The game kept me up all night.

Knucklehead said...

Atl,
Boston College football has been burned by dual threat quarterbacks for generations from Major Harris to Mike Vick to Kain effing-Colter.

It is not a surprise that NW went up and down the field on the Defense. Did the defense play Great in the redzone? YES. Several drives for scores by NW only 5 field goals given up. That kept Boston College in the game.

Dropped passes and the fumble were the difference.

Dropping passes and fumbles in a game CANNOT be coached out of a player. A coach can focus on them but a player has to make the play when it matters. These guys have proven they can make the plays at this level. They need to make them more consistently because as has always been the case with Boston College the margin for error is thin.

mod34b said...


For those that think this is more of a talent issue (outclassed by more highly regarded  NWUrecruits ) think again.  

Just  look at the Rivals recruiting data over the last 5 classes. BC has out recruited NWU by a wide margin.   BC's bad play is coaching issue 

Rivals Team Recruiting Ranks 

2008>>>BC 33  -- NWU 73
2009>>>BC 70 -- NWU 58
2010>>>BC 47 -- NWU 77
2011>>>BC 38 -- NWU 87
2012>>>>BC 63  -- NWU 60

Average over last 5 classes

BC >>>>48th rank
NWU>>>> 71st rank

mod34b said...

Knucklehead says: "Dropping passes and fumbles in a game CANNOT be coached out of a player."

So wrong. Just look at Tiki Barber of the Giants a few years back. He was coached about his fumbling and he improved dramatically. Fumbling and drops are mental/concentration issues.

How about bad tackling?
How about bad play calling?
How about bad defensive strategy?

Knucklehead said...

In the radio broadcast yesterday St. Pierre mentioned that the coaching stafff was working with Finch et al on ball protection and that it was a matter of them taking the coaching to the game. The coach cannot take the handoff and wrap has hand around the tip of the ball for the backs. They need to do it.

As for Barber. He was coached by Coughlin how to protect the ball and then applied what he learned to the games by minimizing his fumbles. Our backs have not done that yet.

It is the players when it comes to dropped passes and fumbles. And those issues are the reason for the Miami and NW losses.

The recruiting rankings only further my argument. It is not Spazs' deficient recruiting. It is that the players who have not performed THIS SEASON.

Again, LAST SEASON was an unmitigated disaster because of Spaz. This season Spaz has been mitigated by the new coaching hires. The players have yet to play a good game.

Knucklehead said...

In the radio broadcast yesterday St. Pierre mentioned that the coaching stafff was working with Finch et al on ball protection and that it was a matter of them taking the coaching to the game. The coach cannot take the handoff and wrap has hand around the tip of the ball for the backs. They need to do it.

As for Barber. He was coached by Coughlin how to protect the ball and then applied what he learned to the games by minimizing his fumbles. Our backs have not done that yet.

It is the players when it comes to dropped passes and fumbles. And those issues are the reason for the Miami and NW losses.

The recruiting rankings only further my argument. It is not Spazs' deficient recruiting. It is that the players who have not performed THIS SEASON.

Again, LAST SEASON was an unmitigated disaster because of Spaz. This season Spaz has been mitigated by the new coaching hires. The players have yet to play a good game.

mod10aeagle said...

From Merriam-Webster ... "Coach: one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a sport and directs team strategy".

Players arrive as RAW 18 year-olds with some level of natural talent, size, speed and football IQ. Size and speed can't be coached, but everything else can be, must be, actually. And that's one area where BC is just not getting the job done. Finch is still the fumbler he was when he first arrived on campus, and the O-line still can't run block. With all due respect Knucklehead, players take crappy coaching to the field, too.

That stuff is all depressing, but what really pissed me off yesterday, as someone else mentioned above, is how irrelevant BC football has become in the Boston market (nevermind the rest of the country). The Globe doesn't even bother to include BC's games in the upper left corner of the Saturday sports section under the day's "highlights". Worse yet, the effing administration is so utterly without juice that we can't even get a game against a Big Ten team streaming on the 'net! Nevermind having it actually televised! That's just pathetic. In the meantime, NBC will broadcast every Notre Dame game and Comcast carries the weekly Notre Dame football show. It's no wonder ND fans just scoff at BC fans. I'm ready to be done with this crap until someone cleans out the house. Hockey just can't start soon enough.

eddierock said...

I don't like to pick on players, but Clancy's comments in the Globe this morning suggest that he harbors the illusion that the defense played well yesterday. He talked about the D-line getting push off the line. I must have missed those plays among those that gained them 566 yards.

mod10aeagle said...

Clancy's perception may be skewed by his own performance. I don't recall the exact number of tackles he made, but it was Keuchly-esque. As the MLB, he's also going to stand up for the DL guys, no matter what.

Did anyone ever determine whether that downing of the NW punt on the 2 vs. touchback was reviewable? And, if so, was BC out of timeouts, in which case Spaz couldn't have challenged the call, anyway?

Knucklehead said...

The head coach sucks. The rest of the coaches are decent - Martin, Al Washington, Bollman, McGovern to a certain extent. They are all out the door soon though.

My only point is that the coaches cannot catch the passes the players dropped. The coaches cannot carry the ball for the running back.

If we played a relatively clean game on offense then we certainly beat Miami and probably win this game.

The defense did hold them to 5 field goals. They did all right.

I mentioned the topic of being irrelevant. Check the box score in the Globe. They got the quarter by quarter breakdown wrong. Look closely. They have BC with 22 and NW with 13.




Adidaspete said...

I just hope Rettig doesn't transfer after these abominations. DO NOT let him get Russell Wilson's phone number.

Anonymous said...

Talk about irrelevance... even Yahoo sports taking potshots at BC in an article about MIAMI being irrelevant!

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/thanks-showing-miami-fans-photo-175408799--ncaaf.html

mod10aeagle said...

If they put as much energy into the quality of the product on the field as they do into selling sponsorships, merchandise and every possible pixel of the bceagles web site, we'd be contenders every year. In the meantime, they're killing the brand for a few short-term bucks.

Andrew said...

Mod,

I originally was wondering about the downed punt call, if it was the NFL, that's a touchback. In college, I believe the ball has to cross the plane, doesn't matter about the player being in the endzone.

That's my understanding

dixieagle said...

I had to be away all yesterday afternoon, without access to TV or internet; thank God. These games that we should have won, but have been fumbled away, are inexcusable. End this now.

mod34b said...
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Big Jack Krack said...

I don't have much to say.

I thought this may have been the year we learned how to win a close game. Not so - at least not let.

Let's go players - keep fighting and don't pull an Arkansas. Those guys quit.

Virginia Tech should be ashamed of itself.

Is FSU really 52 points better than Wake?

Take some time off - regroup and study Clemson film.

We can score on those guys and maybe we'll get some more players back.

Go BC - you have to keep fighting.