Now that Paul Rhoads has accepted, and it’s (hopefully) too late for his return, I thought I’d give the Auburn fans some of my very biased perspective on the Rhoads tenure. They keep visiting and seem somewhat surprised that Pitt fans aren’t rending their shirts at the news of his departure.
Here are the basic numbers.
Year — Def. Ranking — Run Def. — Pass Def.
2007 —– 5th ———– 33d ——– 3d
2006 — 87th ——– 107th ——— 29th
2005 — 31st ——— 94th ———- 2nd
2004 —- 73d ——– 48th ———- 100th
2003 — 79th ——– 87th ———- 54th
2002 — 12th ——– 24th ———- 18th
2001 — 7th ——— 26th ———- 6th
2000 —- 29th —— 17th ———— 80th
That’s the kind of consistency Pitt has seen on the defensive side in the Rhoads tenure. The minute the talent previously recruited started graduating, the defense slid. Rhoads as a recruiter has been anything but good.
I’ll start with this post back in November about this season. After years of preaching “read and react” defensive schemes, Rhoads then had the gall to claim he has always been a proponent of aggressive defenses. He doesn’t do halftime adjustments or any adjustments. There’s a gameplan and he’ll stick to it.
The media will love him. Rhoads is a charmer in person by all accounts. It is why he has been well supported by media and the administration. He also disappears when things aren’t good. When things go well, he’s happy to talk. No one likes a guy who won’t be accountable in the bad times as well as the good.
Even halfway through this season, it looked like Rhoads was finally done as the media had finally conceded he hasn’t performed well.
This past season, Rhoads was stripped of secondary coaching and instead oversaw the linebackers. This was Wannstedt’s call to force Rhoads to pay more attention to stopping the run. Emphasis up front more. It was a brilliant move by Wannstedt because it recognized and used a key issue with Rhoads — When he had the focus on the secondary, he wouldn’t put them in a position to get burned at the expense of the rest of the defense. Now that he’s got the linebackers, he doesn’t want them looking bad. The result, for the first time in Rhoads’ tenure, the safeties were actually brought up in run support. Something Pitt fans had been screaming for years.
He preaches “fundamentals” but teaches crap. The focus has been on how good the defense has been this year. Consider what he’s done in past years, as well. If it’s about talent, then the question still remains — what role does the DC play as a recruiter? Rhoads escaped a lot of accountability for the talent slide on the defense.
Oh, and finally, Rhoads has historically sucked at getting the defense to handle spread offenses. I don’t think that can be stressed enough.
Thank you, once more Auburn and Tommy Tuberville for hiring Paul Rhoads. He’s your problem now.
I think he fell on the sword for DW with a lot of the recent lack of aggression on defense. He’s a good guy and a good coach who the players love.
Pryor already took an official visit to Ohio State and said he counts Ohio State, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana State, Oregon and Penn State among his finalists.
“I want to play in a college town, a facility that has 100,000 and is packed,” Pryor said. “That’s how I want to do it.”
I really can’t understand why Auburn would hire Coach Rhodes and double his salary. He is a great guy and the players appear to bond well with him. Some incinuated that he is a good recruiter over the years but I can’t remember him ever landing top talent. In the big games (except WVU) his d was consistently scorched with the run. It has become such an issue that it was mentioned that Coach W might have been responsible for the d in the WVU win. His overall performance at PITT was a C+.
Maybe it will be different at Auburn. Time will tell. I just don’t know what it is about this guy that he has been brought up for HC jobs and just got a pay raise with a performance eval that is less than stellar.
This leaves us with his replacement. He definately has small shoes to fill.
Paul rhoads always struggled against the run. I agree with ironhead. Auburn is a big name program. Why would they want rhoads??? he is a decent to poor D1 dc.
😉
I was thinking of that exact game and the debacle against N.D. (.i.e. Julius Jones) as I wrote that post.
Maybe it’s the argument that he didn’t have talent.
I am glad to see him go (and wish him well). I was very happy to see Dunn go. I hope W gets the guys he wants to fill these spots.
2005: opener, ND 42 Pitt 21, how do you let by 42 in front of a sell out crowd that was nuts?
2006: 2 OT loss vs. Uconn, I never knew DJ Hernandez was a Heisman candidate, no bowl game as a result
2006: Michigan St. 38, Pitt 23
Rhodes had 2 and a half quarters to adjust to Drew Stanton running the option, no adjustment made
2005: Lousiville 42 Pitt 21, Bush and Brohm run and throw at will, did we ever bliz? The ‘ville scores a touchdown with less than 1 minute left because they could do whatever they wanted.
2003: Anyone remember how many points Ingle Martin and IAA Furman put up against the mighty Rhodes D
2004 Fiesta Bowl vs Utah: Did Rhodes even know that Alex Smith was the quarterback? Four quarters of humiliation.
2005 and 2006: Did the D show up against WVU? Blades was injured in the 2005 Brawl, but change the scheme to adjust for back up’s.
2007 vs Navy: Kipo whatever his name is and Paul Johnson run at will over the mighty Pitt D, Rhodes had almost 2 weeks to prepare and as I recall, the defense only stopped Navy once
2001: new Division I team South Florida enters Heinz Field, they are ranked 117th by Sports Illustrated, I don’t remember the score, but I remember being a sophomore in high school sitting by the radio hearing Bill and Bill in disgust
Auburn, you are in the SEC. This is the best coach you could get. Thank you for an early Christmas present. Let Wanny run the D.
Im wondering if Sunseri would like to coach on a team with his son?
WAR EAGLE
Good luck Rhoads, and good luck Auburn. I won’t forget, we’ll see what happens this fall…
Yeah, that’s it, the talent. Keep telling yourselves that. Cause Utah, Furman, Uconn, Navy and USF have been outrecruiting Pitt for decades…
Since you won’t be able to use “talent” as an excuse next year, if all doesn’t go well, what’s the excuse gonna be then? “Growing pains”? “New System”? Better write some down so you have them ready, just in case…
I would like to see Sunseri get the job but promoting Greg G isn’t a bad option either…
How about ND 2003 when Julius Jones ran for ND school record 262 yards and Brady Quinn completed like 5 passes he could not throw the ball at all…we knew they were going to run every play and we could not stop them…we never adjusted in any game…
I’m really excited to see what happens next year!
