Lee Adams

See the posts in the 'Real Indicator' topic. I think most are of similar opinions.

...Well?Well Zach thanks for that lead...I am sorely disappointed first and foremost. I was at least hoping the game would be competetive.In General: 1) Obviously they are light years away from being just competetive with the better teams in the MAC. 2) I am not convinced that this offensive scheme is going to be successful over the long haul unless the coaches make some adjustments to suit the personnel they have and will get at Akron.Specifically: 1)Neither the O-line nor the D-line can consistently control the line of scrimmage. These guys have some experience and are not playing like it. 2)Moore is not at his best as a 'pocket' passer. The coaches need to allow him to get his feet moving. Move the pocket,run some option from under center,run some more shotgun. Obviously he can and wants to run. But,he is short and has a hard time seeing receivers and getting the ball over/thru the linemen. They run a lot of crossing routes. Thats difficult if you can't see. It also might help the O-line because they won't have to hold blocks as long. Moore hit some longer routes because he could see downfield alittle and he could throw the ball up in the air. 3)Chisholm isn't as impressive against decent defenses. He isn't getting a lot of help from the line though. The 'wildcat' didn't really produce much either. 4)ALL of the linebackers are missing tackles at the line. They end up chasing downfield. They seem to either take bad angles or are slow. They may make tackles but those are after sizable gains in many cases. 5)The receivers are not comfortable with Moore yet. They dropped a few last night. But Moore was also throwing some of those crossing routes behind them. 6)The secondary is what it is. They didn't get torched more only because Temple was running the ball very well. And, their best back Pierce didn't even play that much. They can't cover big receivers, and guys like Waller are so small they get run over in run support.Its just a little surprising that this team has not made more progress after 14 games under this coach. They appear to be mostly playing hard. But that means that 'something' else has to happen before they are going to be competetive. Hopefully when they start playing the bottom feeders in the MAC they will pick up a couple of wins. Please though,lets not do the 'fire the coach thing'. Its not going to happen this year. Lets see if he makes more adjustments.

Wagner is becoming the D'qwell Jackson of Akron. I specifically watched the LB's at the game tonite. There were a lot of missed tackles at the line. Temple's RB's were much to fast for them to get angles on. The D-line wasn't getting many 'draws' at the line either. They were getting pushed around most of the night.

Two excellent points.Northern Illinois was ahead of Kansas on the road.

I turned it off with 13 minutes to go. Why bother? We definitely may be rated as the worst team in all of Div IThere is really no excuse for this. We have resources, we have active players in the NFL. No way we should be this awful.This is not a 'young' team as the coaches and a couple of certain media types want us to think. There is experience on the O-line,linbackers and D-line. NONE of those positions across the board are playing well at all. If Ianello insists on trying to make Moore a pocket passer he will get what he has gotten in the first two games. Moore is not a pocket passer. He needs to be moving in an option or moving pocket scheme.What we obviously know is that the Zips are nowhere close to being competetive with the above average teams in the MAC. Its gonna be a while gang.

Blocked a punt and scored.

Well,FIU is way too athletic for Akron to handle. Too much speed and too much strength. Unless they come up with some injuries, its going to be a sad homecoming. When they spread the defense out they force you to try to catch them. Receivers have some size. Defense isn't great but its fast.

Lee, you should keep repeating that question. GP1 and some other ex-players have also questioned this. It's really a valid question. You would hope there's a good, professional journalist out there somewhere who would ask Ianello this question. Maybe there's a good answer, maybe not. The thing your question brings to mind for me is the fact that some pro teams are moving away from the traditional pro style offense and going to more of a West Coast offense. If the pros are moving away from the pro offense, how is it going to work for a team near the bottom of the college football food chain? I only wish that more ZN.O posters would be asking and trying to answer questions like this as opposed to trying to find out what style underwear Ianello wears so they can trash it. If Moore is going to be the QB for a while why not run some option and move the pocket more? He is obviously more mobile than Nicely. If he can throw while he is moving his feet it may take some pressure off the O-line to hold on to blocks. It takes away part of the field but it may also put some pressure on opposing D's.

Of course there are no sure things, but the main dividing point at the time of the hire was whether you were in the "FBS assistant camp" or the "FCS/D2 head coach camp". I still think hiring an FCS/D2 head coach would have been less of a risk. at least hire an assistant from a winning FBS school. I'd take Boise State's special teams coach before Ianello. We needed someone with winning philosophies to help us learn the way. Instead we're stuck with someone from a losing program that is spreading his losing philosophies on us. A coach from a winning program would have been a lot less riskier. If you want someone because they can recruit, you don't hire someone that's good at recruiting at a top level program, you take someone that's good at recruiting at the non-bcs level. That shows your ignorance. Ianello has been associated with nothing but winning programs. In fact that is why Weiss hired him at Notre Dame. Was Notre Dame a failure? From a Notre Dame perspective yes. Would we have wanted seasons like what Notre Dame had while Ianello was involved? Yes. Weiss was 35-27 his seasons went like this 9-3, 10-2, 3-9, 6-6, 6-6. Notre Dame expects its programs to compete for BCS bowls and National Championships. If we had 5 seasons in a row like that we would be happy. What happened with Notre Dame is that they couldn't recruit offensive and defensive line players. And before you do the "Ianello was their recruiter". He was in charge of recruiting, he did the coordinating of all the coaches. His specific recruiting positions were the skill positions, and Notre Dame has not lacked skill players. Was I happy with the hire? No, I sat in Wistrcill's office talking about the need to go after a coach like Charlie Strong, Mike London, or speaking with AD's from ECU and Boise State about their hiring philophies. The truth is, it didn't matter who we were going to bring in we were going to struggle. Look at how we competed with what we had under Brookhart. He won two seasons in a row with Owens players, then relied too heavily on special case athletes (Harvey etc.) Also the handling of the Getsy replacement was awful, he expected to leave after a third successful season and when the team crapped out on him after the NC State game he was stuck here for the next three seasons with no talent. Wistrcill's intentions on the hire was to build a solid foundation like what Soccer has or what Dambrot has done with basketball (or what K.E.N.T. has done with their BB program). The goal was the rip everything away and rebuild into a program where it didn't matter who coached it, or what players came and went, it would be consistantly competitive. Why? Because its what the fans want and it is what is best for the program. Will Ianello get us there? I don't know, but his general philosphy is the same that Golden used at Temple. And he brought the "pro-style" despite the fact that Akron had o-line issues and poor skill position players (undersized to boot). So we are doomed to fail until the program becomes better so we can get higher quality recruits....doesn't make any sense. You come in and blow up a team for nothing. We get the same recruits now as before. They are undersized and incapable of running the style of offense Ianello runs. Add in his struggles with the basics of game day coaching and you have a recipe for continued disaster. Personal attacks aside he is not a good coach at this point. He lacks the basic skills to be a DIV-1A coach. Doesn't make him a bad person but how many of us would get years to prove ourselves at work? As a manager you play with the hand you are dealt in the short term and build your team over time. Why did we not find a coach with the ability to get the most from any player with the vision to shape long-term improvement? Made the comment elsewhere that you may not be able to consistently get enough of the type of recruits to run this type of offense. It asumes a QB suited to that and an O-line that has to be on par or better physically than the opponents. OSU and the big boys can get enough of those kind to be able to slug it out with each other. But even many of the highly regarde teams are using more of the 'spread' these days.

I am being repetitive but I am wondering whether you can run a 'pro style' offense at Akron and be successful. It seems to do that you have to be able to line up and be close to physically equal with the opponents. That doesn't seem to occur very often here. At least running a 'spread' or west coast or whatever,you can get away with having a decent QB,RB and WR or two and finesse your way around a game. At this point it does not appear Moore or even Nicely is suited to be a mostly drop back passer. And, the O-line can't consistently block those schemes.

I also think Fickell wants to keep this job.

Tasteless? You mean like how they were proud to have nuts on their chests? It just writes it's own joke....doesn't it? I can't believe someone would come up with such an idea that would easily promote ridicule. And even without that.....they still look like Christmas elves. Ahem...what do OSU cheerleaders on Friday night and OSU cheerleaders on Saturday afternoon have in common? This is indeed a slippery slope and should not be attempted w/o adult supervision.

Dave, There is always hope, otherwise we wouldn't be fans. Actually, Chisholm showed a few good fl.ashes against OSU, I'm interested in seeing what he can do this week. 30-0 last year. I don't believe the Zips will beat the Owls,but ya gotta score and the defense has to control the game better. I am beginning to wonder if you can really run a 'pro style' offense consistently,successfully here. It requires more phyisicality across the board than running a version of the spread,west coast or whatever. At least in the spread if you have a decent QB a decent receiver and a decent RB you can finesse your way around some of the teams that have more physical talent. It doesn't seem either Moore or Nicely fit the drop back mold. And the O-line certainly hasn't shown it can line up and cosistently control the line of scrimmage.

Ya does not bode well for the Zips on down the road does it?

Lets wait to see how they play against Temple. The team could really use a win. But if they can be real competetive against a good MAC opponent it will help them as well as the fans. 14th game of the Ianello regime will be big.

They REALLY need to beat Temple. Thats not only from the perspective of the team but also the fans. If the Zips aren't real competetive Saturday,I'm afraid those 'avg' fans they have been trying to get to the games are gonna lose interest early in the season again.

If that is true about barley House, then people need to STFU about Barley House supporting OSU. What is bad is that if the Zips lose again to Temple,casual fans are going to see the same thing they have seen for the last 5 years. Nobody will show up for games AGAIN.

Odd? It was 90+ degrees; fans in the stands were going down with heat exhaustion. Game was OVER. Seems obvious that Nicely was in so that Moore wouldn't get hurt. He wouldn't get hurt doing what? If he hadn't gotten hurt earlier,he was going to get hurt in the 4th quarter against OSU's subs? Ianello knew that Moore wasn't moving the team and there was no reason to leave him in. That was not all Moore's fault OBVIUOSLY. Ianello decided to play a guy who as far as I know had never taken a DI snap. If you are worried about him getting hurt,you better take him out in the first half 'cause thats when the game was out of hand. I agree, but we're talking about iCoach. No way do I believe that he brought Nicely into the game to make a difference on offense. BTW, I also agree with your first post in this thread that the Temple game @ home will be more telling than this one. No I agree. I can't imagine that hee reason he brought Nicely in was to make a diff. in the game. Thats kind of what makes it weird. I hope he didn't think it was better to get Nicely hurt than Moore.

Maybe we all should hold off on this status of the coach thing til the end of the year.

This is exactly what I said earlier, and I don't blame him. It is iCoach's job to make the score competitive without relying on the other team to back off. Unlike a game against Tressel, today's score was truly representative of the difference in talent and performance. Not an accurate comparison. In our last two games at Cowlumbus, OSWho needed LATE scores to beat us. Those two games weren't close because Tressel "let off the gas" in the late going. They actually needed to turn up their play in the late going in order to beat us. I am NOT a big OSU fan. OK we can debate whether OSU 'needed' to do anything. You just said it, OSU wasn't playing well. They were able to 'turn it on' when they needed to. Do you think that OSU may just have done some minimal prep for Akron feeling confident they could 'turn it on' when needed? I'm not sure I understand your post here. I'm just pointing out that this game wasn't the same as the last two games under Tressel. If Tressel had "let off the gas" in the previous two games, we would have won. Today, the game was long over with in the 4th Q. I guess we can speculate about anything that is over.

Are you kidding?! The guy on the bench was an absolute disaster when he came into the game. Just like the guy he replaced.

Odd? It was 90+ degrees; fans in the stands were going down with heat exhaustion. Game was OVER. Seems obvious that Nicely was in so that Moore wouldn't get hurt. He wouldn't get hurt doing what? If he hadn't gotten hurt earlier,he was going to get hurt in the 4th quarter against OSU's subs? Ianello knew that Moore wasn't moving the team and there was no reason to leave him in. That was not all Moore's fault OBVIUOSLY. Ianello decided to play a guy who as far as I know had never taken a DI snap. If you are worried about him getting hurt,you better take him out in the first half 'cause thats when the game was out of hand.

Correct.

This is exactly what I said earlier, and I don't blame him. It is iCoach's job to make the score competitive without relying on the other team to back off. Unlike a game against Tressel, today's score was truly representative of the difference in talent and performance. Not an accurate comparison. In our last two games at Cowlumbus, OSWho needed LATE scores to beat us. Those two games weren't close because Tressel "let off the gas" in the late going. They actually needed to turn up their play in the late going in order to beat us. I am NOT a big OSU fan. OK we can debate whether OSU 'needed' to do anything. You just said it, OSU wasn't playing well. They were able to 'turn it on' when they needed to. Do you think that OSU may just have done some minimal prep for Akron feeling confident they could 'turn it on' when needed?

OK. We didn't see anything much different than last year. Which,against a well below par OSU team is troubling. The real indicator is Temple. A MAC opponent at home. If that game is not HIGHLY competetive and in my humble opinion if you don't win you must lose by a TD or less,the questions about the coaching staff and its ability to develop a program here become more legit. Given what we saw against a relatively weak OSU team the problems which existed last year are still there. Questionable QB play,poor D secondary,little pressure on the QB no running game...still there. I thought it a little odd that Ianello put Nicely in the game. He just told everyone that Nicely wasn't his guy,his guy doesn't show much at all,then he puts in the back up. Nicely has been in the sacrifice games before. He didn't need to experience that again just because the starter couldn't get it done. The Temple game is huge as far as the progress or lack thereof of this program is concerned.