Consider the following:
Our playcalling, both offensively and defensively, is predictable, and our refusal to make halftime adjustments has repeatedly burned us. The coaching staff views changes at halftime as a sign of weakness; darn straight! But I’d rather see us fix those weaknesses than ignore their existence. The same thing can now be said about our football program as a whole. I’m not calling for Coach Harris’s head, but as a contributor to Pitt athletics, I want to see the leadership of the football program acknowledge the obvious problems therein and work to change them.
Okay, I changed two words in this paragraph and deleted a parenthetical. This was really written by a die-hard Hokie fan about his football team.
Here’s the real statement.
Our playcalling, both offensively and defensively, is predictable, and our refusal to make halftime adjustments has repeatedly burned us. The coaching staff views changes at halftime as a sign of weakness; darn straight! But I’d rather see us fix those weaknesses (for example, our failure to cover Heath Miller) than ignore their existence. The same thing can now be said about our football program as a whole. I’m not calling for Coach Beamer’s head, but as a contributor to Virginia Tech athletics, I want to see the leadership of the football program acknowledge the obvious problems therein and work to change them.
No one here at PSB is calling for Walt Harris’s head. We have longstanding criticisms, that haven’t changed.
In light of the pathetic loss on Saturday night there are predictable pieces saying Harris can’t win the big one (but Ron Cook wouldn’t want to lay any blame on his boy Paul Rhoads, now would he?). And of course, there is the rekindled question of whether Harris should stay.
Here’s just a short list of things that have to change under Walt Harris:
— Re-teach the fundamentals on defense. You know, tackling instead of just hitting. You don’t have to fire Rhoads, who, it must be conceded, did seem to have the defense doing well the previous two years; but something changed, and it wasn’t that the talent dropped that greatly for the defense to plummet so far this year.
— Re-educate the offensive line on how to block. The line didn’t seem to have a lot of holding penalties this year, but they sure didn’t do much for the running game. Nor could they provide much protection for Rutherford if the defense chose to blitz.
— The game plan is not written in stone. You need to show some flexibility with the plan at halftime. If things aren’t working to this point, acknowledge the problem and adjust. Also, if things are working, be prepared to still make some variations because the odds are that the other side might try to adjust.
— What else?
