I want someone to defend Arnett

[HailStout]

Ah the old "let's call out this user as a plant or insider because he doesn't have the same opinion as me" routine.

I've had this account since 2012. You think ZA knew we existed back then?

At least I'm not stomping around acting like we live in a day and age where teams get "demoted" for fielding 1 bad team in a decade the year after their prior coach passed away.

Sheesh our fanbase lives in a bubble where we are the only team that has bad years.

Circumstances and history dictate that we aren't going to fire ZA so I'm not going to stomp my feet and demand we fire him when I know its likely much better that I just see the positives and focus on how things are improving game-over-game.

I watched the meltdown from Mike Leach's year 1, and no excuse in the world worked back then either. Funny how after a 9 win season those excuses seem to have just been firmed up.

Its the day after a loss. I was warned in college not to read SPS after a loss. My philosophy is to just move on and hope the next game builds up on some of what we saw improve. So far, that's been the case since BYE. That's not me saying ZA deserves another year simply for that reason.

I have a very specific idea of what goals he should achieve knowing what we know now. After Rogers' injury, I was confident we could take all 3 games from the Ark/Aub/UK run. I felt we needed to win at least 2. Most people here didn't think we would win 1. We fell somewhere in between.

Now my adjusted goals are that we need to make a bowl, beat USM by at least 3 TD, and compete in the final 2 SEC games at the very least (no blowouts). By blowout, I mean I would like to see us keep them under 30 points. I don't consider UK a blowout. Blowouts usually have no hope of a comeback in the 4th.

If you or anyone else is so set on ZA being the problem, then he should have no problem failing 2 out of 3 of those goals, possibly all 3. Then we won't have any disagreements. However, I just simply don't see the program going that direction this season.

We started low with our FCS win, LSU was a very big low as far as game preparedness and execution, but since then, little-by-little we are seeing improvement. OL still misses, and I still maintain its because they are talentless and lazy. Secondary still gives up some big plays. Outside of those two positions, Mike Wright is the ONLY problem with this team. If week 1's team had the same cohesion and experience as they do now, we would be 7-2.

We will all ultimately see who is right, because it really isn't like any of us can do anything to change what will happen except stop attending games (oh wait that already happens...).

What we all should collectively be focused on is pushing the AD and football marketing to adopt the exact jerseys and branding we wore vs UK as our permanents. That is, after all, what matters most.**

Are you getting paid per word?

 

[thatsbaseball]

so the "head down, *** up, go to work " part , is that your words or his?


His words

Well that tells me he needs to be at a JUCO somewhere. He's a 17ing embarrassment as a head coach.

 

[Hail_STATE]

Are you getting paid per word?

No, you offering?

 

[Barkman Turner Overdrive]

Lost his starting QB and RB for two winnable games. If we were 6-3 right now he would be safe. That’s all I got.

That blame for that can squarely be put at the feet of his shiit for brains OC, Officer Barbrady. Why run Rogers, who is as fast as a Galapagos Island turtle, on a QB draw against an OOC opponent when the game is no longer in question? The bowl streak ended when that idiot made that idiotic call.

 

[Itsaboutus]

It was a shltty interview. Same old "we've got stuff we can be proud of" BS. If he wanted to give a good interview, he would say he's embarrassed, he's overwhelmed, and he doesn't know how to fix it. At least then he'd be admitting what we can all see for ourselves.

Pittman was roasted for this…just saying

 

[Drebin]

Pittman was roasted for this…just saying

He was. But he followed it up with firing his OC and then getting a huge win on the road in his next game. So looking back on it now, he probably has salvaged his job in the process.

 

[Itsaboutus]

He was. But he followed it up with firing his OC and then getting a huge win on the road in his next game. So looking back on it now, he probably has salvaged his job in the process.

True.. fact of the matter is that our OC and head coach both need to be fired.

 

[Perd Hapley]

I'll bite.

I'm just as frustrated with this team as anyone else, but ZA isn't the end all be all excuse for all of our woes this season.

Everyone knew from day one our OL and Secondary sucked. Happens. DBs usually take 2 years in a system to really be amazing, and our OL are a bunch of lazy bums that couldn't (maybe still can't) run block to save their lives. Watch our guards and tackles pull left/right. They are constantly beat, they constantly miss blocks and they aren't fast at all.

To both of those positions' credit, they have improve drastically. Our defense has actually kept us in 3 games since BYE and given us shots to win each one (I know people don't like to hear that, but its true).

Mike Wright is helpless. There is no scheme that works for him. He does one thing well: run straight ahead. If he has to turn or juke, he looks like he is a newborn deer learning to walk. He stares down his receivers like they are the hot route in madden and when they aren't open, he chunks it at them anyway. He constantly throws into double coverage and you can absolutely tell he throws his passes AT the receiver vs where they will be. Not to mention sometimes they come out of his hand so quick I am surprised anyone can catch them. His madden stats would be 0 Awareness, 0 Agility, 0 Vision. No scheme will work for him - there's a reason he didn't start at Vandy. I single-handedly place the blame for our loss to Auburn squarely on his shoulders. We had chance after chance to rally.

With that said, the UK game to me came down to one thing: refs pissed off at our players and preventing late-game comeback drives from turning into touchdowns. Those two redzone PFs on two consecutive drives were clearly just retaliation for mouthing off to one of them, and IMO its nice to see players care enough to show emotion. 0 was right. That should have been a hands to the face and he was likely just frustrated he was constantly being mauled. He took it too far, but I specifically told a friend at that point "these refs are going to purposefully stall a few of our drives now because of that". Look what happened?

Wright didn't put us in the best position to win, and I think Parson definitely should have been given the nod, but you could clearly see he was nervous on his first drive.

Like it or not, our team is showing improvement - secondary is better, OL is better, defense is playing like they did 2 years ago when we had the same frustrations about Leach and our offense coming out stale. This team is starting to click.

ZA should get a chance to come back for 1 more year given that Barbay makes some position coach changes, we get some improvement to our recruiting class, and we don't simply lose out. I would like to stay competitive in each of our last games, and I think that is absolutely possible.

This team is showing improvement We have definitely had underperforming teams in the past, and this is no worse than Dan Mullen's 2016 team going 5-7. In fact, I would say we had less returning this year than we did that year, and on top of that, we lost our two most productive offensive players right as the team was finding some form of groove with the new offense, and also going into the most winnable 3 game SEC stretch on the schedule. Say what you will about Rogers, but he gets us yards and he is head and shoulders above Mike Wright.

At this point, I am not sure if ZA will return or not, but I think our fans are making a boneheaded decision right now by getting the pitchforks out and running him off. If he leaves, its 100% a move to appease the fanbase.

That's a full defense from someone who is really just on the fence about it all at this point. If he stays, cool. It's most certainly not gonna be croom 2.0 and I'll still watch every down. If we get rid of him, well I hope our fanbase is ready for another mediocre season while our players learn yet another offensive scheme and adjust.

You’ll get raked over the coals for this post, but I actually agree with most of it.

However, Mike Wright being totally helpless can’t be what costs us multiple wins. If you’re one injury away from averaging 9 points a game on offense against teams as mediocre as Arkansas, Auburn, and Kentucky, then its gross negligence on behalf of the staff to not have a better #2 heading into the season. Gotta get a G5 starter who’s been decent and hook him up with some cash to be a backup, or somehow convince Locke and/or Robertson to stay, or go all-in on Parson after the Auburn game, and get some gameplan ready that he can execute. One of those 3 things, at a minimum.

The defense also hasn’t been as good as you suggest since the bye. Auburn and UK both got out to early leads and just sat on the ball from there, because they knew Wright couldn’t throw well enough to get us back in it. They both scored whenever and whereever they had to, especially early in the game. Have we gotten better? Yes, but there was nowhere to go but up. Situationally, we still seem to have given up a TD in every situation when we absolutely had to have a stop in the past couple of weeks.

At the end of the day, you can’t lose 24-3 to Kentucky, at home. Just can’t. Doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. I said 3 weeks ago that the upcoming 3 game stretch would make or break Arnett. I said we needed to win at least one and be competitive in the other 2, at minimum, to inspire some confidence in Arnett getting another year. Well, we did win one. We weren’t really competitive with Auburn at any point after the 1st quarter, but the final score made it look a little more respectable than it actually was. But then last night…..that was it. No sugarcoating it.

Was rooting hard for ZA to figure it out, but the hole is too deep at this point.

 

[Dawgtruc]

Arnett should clean up the Junction, just like Cohen & Polk would pick up debris at the Dude.

 

[thatsbaseball]

"My only purpose in defending our coaching staff is that I feel like they should get a chance to show they can make off-season adjustments. It's perfectly clear we need a new OL coach and its perfectly clear we have to adjust some of the hierarchy on defense. Our position coaches were hired before Barbay ever got a call from us."

This is not what you want hear but Arnett comes across as such a dumbass that a lot of us don't have any faith in him being a successful head coach anytime soon.

 

[msudawg1200]

One year, two years, 17 years. Doesn't matter how long. It can't and won't happen and it's a terrible argument from someone either drunk or overdramatizing the situation. You seem to think if you give ZA one more year the world will and and MSU will be downgraded to some lesser conference as if this is the UK Premiere League

Won't happen huh? I'll bet let's say in 1985, no one saw the SWC folding and Rice, Houston, SMU, and TCU getting demoted to lesser conferences. Who would've thought 10 years ago, hell 5, even say last year that the PAC 12 would implode and freaking USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon would be in the PAC 12. I'll bet Oregon State and Washington State never thought they'd get left behind either. In this landscape of College Football who knows, but keep on thinking it'd never happen here.

 

[beachbumdawg]

"My only purpose in defending our coaching staff is that I feel like they should get a chance to show they can make off-season adjustments. It's perfectly clear we need a new OL coach and its perfectly clear we have to adjust some of the hierarchy on defense. Our position coaches were hired before Barbay ever got a call from us."

This is not what you want hear but Arnett comes across as such a dumbass that a lot of us don't have any faith in him being a successful head coach anytime soon.

Those on camera in game interviews are just embarrassingly painful

 

[Ranchdawg]

I feel dumber just by reading this post. We haven’t improved jack ****. We scored 3 points on a 20 play drive…. 3. All game. Our SEC points scored thus far… 14,31,17,7,13,3. We are Croom level bad. We have had now 3 games where our total offense hasn’t cracked 300 yds

And the 3 points was against a team that gave up 123 points in their last 3 games!

 

[ronpolk]

I mean I am done posting stats because I'm tired of loading ESPN's website over and over, but I know we have been playing more solid defense and our OL has been playing marginally better.

I find it hard to believe you think this current team that has offense problems is the same team we saw for the first 6 games where we had majority defensive problems with no improvements. You can't tell me if we had some resemblance of a good QB against Auburn and UK in the 2nd half that we wouldn't have had a chance to come back. That's simply not true. Our defense might have given up some crucial 1st quarter big plays that put us in a hole, but they kept us in games and gave our offense a chance, even if our offense can't capitalize.

As far as I'm concerned, Zach Arnett can't really help the current situation with the offense because he's not Jesus and he can't magically heal Rogers, and we all know he can't make Mike Wright suddenly become a good player. It sucks to be in this position, but don't act like Zach Arnett is some weird mad scientist pulling all the strings and whipping Barbay in the evening hours so he doesn't run his "true" offense.

Someone clearly hasn't been watching the games, and I assure you it isn't me. Maybe lay off the bottle during games and objectively look at it sometime.

No, I don’t see improvement on the defense. We are playing weaker teams. Auburn has over 400 yards of offense against Umass, Samford, Vanderbilt and Mississippi state. Auburn has a dog **** offense and you think we have showed improvement because they didn’t score 40 points on us. They put up practically the same numbers against us as they did Vanderbilt. Kentucky had about their average game against us. Arkansas was good, so good their OC got fired. Let’s wait until the ole miss game and see if you still think there is improvement.

I agree with you that you can’t judge any offensive improvement due to injuries but the offense has been a train wreck all year except the South Carolina game.

 

[Baddog11]

Who would've thought 10 years ago?

I’m not sure if this is the right video,

but king Jackie predicted this would happen over 12 years ago. He also went on to predict 5 conferences would not be under the ncaa. The ncaa would only be seeing over teams not in the power 5 conferences.

 

[MagnoliaHunter]

I'll bite.

I'm just as frustrated with this team as anyone else, but ZA isn't the end all be all excuse for all of our woes this season.

Everyone knew from day one our OL and Secondary sucked. Happens. DBs usually take 2 years in a system to really be amazing, and our OL are a bunch of lazy bums that couldn't (maybe still can't) run block to save their lives. Watch our guards and tackles pull left/right. They are constantly beat, they constantly miss blocks and they aren't fast at all.

To both of those positions' credit, they have improve drastically. Our defense has actually kept us in 3 games since BYE and given us shots to win each one (I know people don't like to hear that, but its true).

Mike Wright is helpless. There is no scheme that works for him. He does one thing well: run straight ahead. If he has to turn or juke, he looks like he is a newborn deer learning to walk. He stares down his receivers like they are the hot route in madden and when they aren't open, he chunks it at them anyway. He constantly throws into double coverage and you can absolutely tell he throws his passes AT the receiver vs where they will be. Not to mention sometimes they come out of his hand so quick I am surprised anyone can catch them. His madden stats would be 0 Awareness, 0 Agility, 0 Vision. No scheme will work for him - there's a reason he didn't start at Vandy. I single-handedly place the blame for our loss to Auburn squarely on his shoulders. We had chance after chance to rally.

With that said, the UK game to me came down to one thing: refs pissed off at our players and preventing late-game comeback drives from turning into touchdowns. Those two redzone PFs on two consecutive drives were clearly just retaliation for mouthing off to one of them, and IMO its nice to see players care enough to show emotion. 0 was right. That should have been a hands to the face and he was likely just frustrated he was constantly being mauled. He took it too far, but I specifically told a friend at that point "these refs are going to purposefully stall a few of our drives now because of that". Look what happened?

Wright didn't put us in the best position to win, and I think Parson definitely should have been given the nod, but you could clearly see he was nervous on his first drive.

Like it or not, our team is showing improvement - secondary is better, OL is better, defense is playing like they did 2 years ago when we had the same frustrations about Leach and our offense coming out stale. This team is starting to click.

ZA should get a chance to come back for 1 more year given that Barbay makes some position coach changes, we get some improvement to our recruiting class, and we don't simply lose out. I would like to stay competitive in each of our last games, and I think that is absolutely possible.

This team is showing improvement We have definitely had underperforming teams in the past, and this is no worse than Dan Mullen's 2016 team going 5-7. In fact, I would say we had less returning this year than we did that year, and on top of that, we lost our two most productive offensive players right as the team was finding some form of groove with the new offense, and also going into the most winnable 3 game SEC stretch on the schedule. Say what you will about Rogers, but he gets us yards and he is head and shoulders above Mike Wright.

At this point, I am not sure if ZA will return or not, but I think our fans are making a boneheaded decision right now by getting the pitchforks out and running him off. If he leaves, its 100% a move to appease the fanbase.

That's a full defense from someone who is really just on the fence about it all at this point. If he stays, cool. It's most certainly not gonna be croom 2.0 and I'll still watch every down. If we get rid of him, well I hope our fanbase is ready for another mediocre season while our players learn yet another offensive scheme and adjust.

learn another offense?? I have yet to see evidence that they have learned whatever this offense is supposed to be.

 

[MagnoliaHunter]

You know there was another coach at State that claimed it takes time (up ti 3 years to grasp) to implement their offensive system

don’t believe I ever called for WRIGHT over Rogers but good try

not sensitive big guy/girl - Mullen went 5-7 in year 1 but you could tell there was improvement

I thought croom said it took 6 or 7 years. I remember it being longer than a college players career, pre-covid.

 

[beachbumdawg]

I thought croom said it took 6 or 7 years. I remember it being longer than a college players career, pre-covid.

Said something along the lines of you will be a junior/senior before you begin to fully grasp the crxxm coast offense