At least you never knew what was gonna happen when somebody stuck a microphone his face. Of course, that was one of the reasons I loved him.
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Yeah I am OK with winning 8 games a year given that is not something we have ever consistently done at MSU. I love the folks that say 8 or 9 games is just not good enough, and you just want to scream compared to what? I know it is hard to accept, but MSU has always been a 8 win ceiling team, with a few outlier years thrown in there. This is something in the face of the NIL and changing college football landscape that is most likely not changing anytime soon. Do we all wish it would? Of course we do. So you do not think Leach had success in terms of wins and losses? I would say he did not have Dabo or Saban success, but he did have consistent success especially after his third year at anywhere he was in his career. MSU fans saying we are only going to base how good our program is, or how good our coach is solely based on wins and losses is honestly kind of dumb given that we are program that has never really won much. Now that is just one Devil's opinion.
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Mullen averaged 8 wins per year from 2010-2017. Best & longest sustained stretch of competitiveness in our history.
Again my thoughts as a state fan, i loved the hired, but im realistic here as it seems you are. However I dont think he would have ever gotten us to the level that Kiffin has gotten Ole Miss too. And if i were a school that had a higher bar/standard he's not someone i'd want.
And as an AD im not sure I would hire him. Because you are seeing the leach effect. Its going to take him 2-3 years to get his guys in. We witnessed that. And when leach leaves, its going to take the next guy 2-3 years to get guys in to fit their mold. Leach was such a system guy, that it took him a while to build it, and then its going to take the next guy just as long to rebuild it.
You mentioned the year 3 (it was year 4 in WSU, but point taken): The years after leach have been this:
8-5 (unranked all season), 5-7, 7-5- Texas Tech
1-3, 7-6, 7-6, 5-7
And then here this past season and what we are dealing now.
So do the building years before and after.. worth the 8 wins in b/t.. i'm not sure.
Truly unbelievable how narrow-minded and obtuse some of you can be. Just zero ability to use proper context.
I can agree 100% that he was not going to be Lane Kiffin. I said this to a fellow coaching buddy and state fan the other night, and it hurt both our hearts. Ole Miss has just as good of chance as any team to win the Natty next year, and I would honestly not be surprised if they do. I do not think, or I hope there was not, anybody in the fan base that did not understand it was going to take a few years to transition to what Leach liked to do and in turn a few years for the coach after him to transition back out of it. If anyone did not know that then they either lack an understanding of football or what it is that Leach did. If your ceiling is 8 wins, then there is going to be some 7 win, and my dad forbid a few 6 win seasons in there over the course of time with almost any coach. The problem now is that coaches are just not given the time to bare that out given we live in a win now or get out atmosphere. Every great coach has had a few down years from "The Bear" to Bobby Bowden, to even the mighty Saban. That happens when you are at a school for multiple years, look at Dabo here lately.
Leach is a unique hire. But for us, at the time, was a perfect one. Seeing that we botched the post-mullen hire, and it seemed like we were being turned away again for a quality coach before Leach entered the picture.
To hire him, you've got to understand what all comes with it, and I can see why a lot of schools would not be interested. I can also see why schools that are a in a bit of a spirial are willing to take that chance on him as well.
In the same sense, I can see why he drove some people crazy and why some adore him as a coach.
Hey now as I was told earlier Moorhead had a better record that Leach, so can we really say we botched the post Mullen hire? I mean given the overwhelming success of Joe Moorhead here at MSU. Of course, I am kidding. Leach is one of those people, and coaches, that if you can not find something about him to like then says more about you than anything else. Not talking about you directly, of course. I say that based on the out pouring after his death, and the fact that many people liked the man more than the coach.
I'll rephrase the botching of moorhead comment: At that point, it seemed like we could have landed a bigger fish than Moorhead.
When we hired leach..it seemed like we were going to have to really reach for a head coach, and landed Leach.
Moorhead, had handle some things differently, and not lost the team... might have had a decent run here. We'll never know. He was followed the greatest coach in MSU history. Which is why they say you dont want to be the man that follows the man... however on the field in terms of success was right on par with everyone else or better.
Leach amazed even me. At the time, I didn't like the hire, but I understood it. Our culture had always been running and playing defense, and now Cohen was bound and determined to do this pass happy stuff. But it made sense to finally try it here, and not to mention Moorhead had been attempting to transition us to a more passing offense. So I got on board, figured it was worth a shot. And to see what he did with that roster (and obviously being in bad health) from 2020-2022 was amazing.
That said, I think Tennessee and Arkansas both missed out on what would have been an even more perfect fit, for either of them. Those two programs generally have better access to Air Raid type players. But I'll be damned if Leach didn't find a way to start recruiting QBs, WRs and OLs to Starkville.
Moorhead was a pitiful hire, and that was on Cohen. You don't change what is working, and he wanted to go from Mullen's offense to whatever the 17 RPO shlt he tried to get going.
We'd have been better off promoting Todd Grantham.
I'll say Cohen stuck to his guns though, and went out and found another passing coach to replace Moorhead. And the results were good.
But I don't think our mouth-breathing fans appreciated any of it - Cohen's plan, Leach's ability, any of it. That may be a big reason it all fell apart.
Tenn's bar is higher than leach. Arkansas maybe? But theyve always struck me as a team that wasnt an air raid type fit.
I dont agree with the roster turnover. Leach found guys that fit his system, and what made his system good was that he didnt need 5 star anythings to do run his system. Which is why guys like Rogers were successful under leach but really couldnt be successful anywhere else. Which is also why leach despite his offensive mind, his players rarely had success in the NFL.
The above is also why, when leach leaves, its hard for the next guy to just come in and pick up where he left off, because a lot of tiems the talent on offense just isnt there or good enough to play in anything other than his system.
Define whats working, 8 wins a year? I give Cohen credit for realizing (if he did) that the RPO and what was success here wasnt going to lead to the next step forward or upward... so he tried something else... didnt work out as well as people hoped
And looking across the successful teams in college football. Better have a QB that can throw it and throw it well. Mullens system was never based on that, so seems foolish to continue to follow that path if you are trying to take that next step.
That wasn't really true at Texas Tech or Washington State. Evidence just isn't there to support that he left the program in disarray.
He didn't leave ours in disarray either.
We only saw 3 years of it, dude. We basically won 6, 7 and 8 regular season games. I say 6 in 2020 because if you project that SEC win % over a regular 12 game schedule of 8 SEC and 4 OOC, we would have been 5-7 or 6-6.
His big 'up' years at Texas Tech and Washington State came later, in like year 6 or 7.
I have no idea why I'm having to explain these things.
8-5 non ranked season at Texas tech (Started 5-5 and had to win out to become bowl eligbile), followed by 5-7, and then 7-5
1-3 at WSU, followed by 7-6, 7-6, 6-7
First season post leach here was the worst season in what 20 years?
There is windfall.
His big year at Texas Tech was in year 9. His other seasons were 8-9 win years.
His big year at WSU was year 7. He followed that up with a 6 win season.
And im not sure we are calling these big years. He never won his conference and never even played for the conference championship.
His career path was that of a Dan Mullen in weaker conferences. His season at Texas Tech was very similar to that of Mullen that we had here. Got hot. Had a high ranking. Fizzled out. Think he beat Texas and Oklahoma a combined 4 or 5 times in that 10 year span. So he couldnt get over the hump against the good teams.
His 8 years at washington was 2 very poor years. 2 bad years. 3 solid years. 1 good/great year. Mike price had a similar if not better run in the 1990s
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The immediate question that comes to my mind, and far be it from me to interrupt you and Goat, but how many conference and or national championships had Texas Tech or Washington State had before Leach? I also think the issue yall are having is different definitions of a "good season". The truth is 6+plus wins at places like TT, WSU, or MSU is actually a good year given their track records. 7-9 wins is a great year at these places, and anything above that enters best season in program history territory.
Context is in the mind of the beholder. We have had other short term coaches who did much better.
Leach wasnot as well liked around the country as his fans think. He was a polarizing fellow. Personally I was neither here nor there. I thought he was something of a clown, and that's in the good sense of the word. I loathed the offense. As y'all well know. I remember sitting in the stand watching Kentucky when he was there thinking I would HATE to have to watch this every single game. Short passes almost every single play was boring, even back then. I always saw it as another way to run the bone, at least in the rhythm of things. When he had receivers who could consistently make the first tackler miss and then break a long run then it was some better. He didn't have that a whole lot. He didn't here.
And the truth shall set you free. You have an axe to grind against Leach, man admitting that would have made this whole thing easier from the beginning. I had a feeling it was not about anything Leach did or did not do it was that you do not like him. Thank you for the clarification that makes the whole picture make perfect sense. Now to address the short term coaches comment. Please name one since 1970? Also, by grasping at numbers and trying to make it make sense all you do is prove how big that axe really is. I would have a tremendous amount more respect for those of your kind that would just admit that you do not like Leach, and that bias needs to be understood to better understand your opinion of him as a coach. Plus the idea that Leach was not well liked among pretty much everybody outside of Craig James is disproven by the people coming out to proclaim their love for him upon his death. One more comment is that hating on the air raid given its overall impact on football over the last 30 years, and how pretty much every team from high school to NFL runs some air raid concepts now just shows a overall lack of understanding of the game. Not trying to be insulting, but there is no denying the impact of the air raid on modern football and any attempt to do so just highlights a lack of understanding. Just my opinion.
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Moorehead still had a slightly better record in SEC play. You can't throw out that first year just to suit your argument. A lot of coaches would like to throw out their bad years. The fact remains that Leach's tenure went just about like those of us who didn't want to hire him thought it would, albeit a lot shorter. It was bad at first, got some better, and then when it was over, disaster. I think he had us to where we were going to win 5-8 games a year. As long as he beat Ole Miss 50% of the time that would have let him stay as long as he wanted to here. I wouldn't have fussed too much had he done that. I would have still hated the offense and said so. I just don't like to watch it. It's boring.
Not acknowledging the COVID year is suiting your argument just as much as throwing out a Moorhead year. Also, it is hard to blame Leach in our situation for the end being a disaster given that you know he was dead. Also, I just wanted to say thank you for the spirited debate without it devolving into a case of name calling or overall negative feelings. We obviously have a different opinion of Leach, and that is fine.
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Yes but the statement was he took them to new football heights. He definitely did that at Texas tech. He raised their bar a notch without the question. Washington state had seen a similar success if not more success, in a longer stretch with Mike price
And it was very much still in question how it would pan out against the sec.
but again I was for the hire. Right man at the right time. However I was realistic with it. 7 or 8 win seasons. Stability. With the phase in and phase out being difficult. We unfortunately just didn’t get to enjoy the 7-8 year run he probably had left, but again as stated earlier I don’t think he would bring us anything like the success kiffin brought to ole miss
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You seriously don’t comprehend what Moorhead inherited, vs what Leach did?
I was ok with both noodle arm and the pirate. However, Leach's offense almost gave that egg bowl away and the defense was the one that took it back.
The end was always going to be a disaster no matter how it came about. I and several others said that when we hired him. I suppose the teams that did well during COVID shouldn't count that year either?
It wouldn't have mattered what Leach inherited. He was going to tear it down no matter what, and he did. Arnett is castigated for doing EXACTLY what Leach did his first year. I am NOT defending Arnett. I wouldn't have blamed him for tearing it down and starting over, but he should have been honest about it. He had to go.
You have a mental block regarding that point. You say “he only won 3 games” as if you’re comparing to a normal year, but fail to acknowledge the 10-game SEC schedule not not a normal year.
Fake news. Didn’t tear down anything, he started a bunch of upperclassmen and destroyed the defending national champion. He then began replacing with freshmen once those folks like Kylin Hill started showing their *** during all the COVID stuff, a big part of the fallout of Moorhead’s soft culture.
Actually, I didn’t say “he only won 3 games.” In a normal year, he’s 5-7, 6-7 or 7-6 (2-6 SEC) in 2000. Even in the abnormal year, he won 4 games, not 3.
It was a great win, no matter how you want to slant it. The season was up and down, as many are. But that game gave you a glimpse of what a Leach team could be once it’s up and rolling.
Ok man. So we agree? You’ve been using that strict W/L total as a means of comparison (and to run down Leach) for years now.
Add a couple of wins to his record & it really doesn’t make much difference. It’s pretty average. Not terrible. Not particularly good either.
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