Lee Adams

Trying to send a message to the rest of the team that if they don't perform better they will lose their jobs to freshmen? Dunno, Rifle. I am grasping at straws. Looks like RI pressed the panic button.I have to believe Ianello doesn't really have any idea why the team is playing this badly. I think at this point he is 'just along for the ride'. Nothing he and his staff are doing is making any difference. He can't 'send any messages'. At least until today I don't get the impression that the players had not been playing with intensity. It didn't seem they had quit. What message can he send,that what the head coach has you doing isn't working?

Drops drops dropsReciever means you catch the ball rightIs anybody watching this, another drop right thru the hands of Fleming somebody please catch a footballBlock please. Batted from behind wowHow does he put Moore back in nothing was PN 7 faultI wonder if Ianello is starting to feelsome pressure to actually have his team become at least competetive when getting beaten? This starts to look a little desparate. Wonder what the team is thinking now?

Not sure coparing Nicely last year with Moore this year is really telling. Ianello pulled his chosen QB 2 and1/2 games in to the season. Ianello chose to play Moore even though Moore had no experience in Ianello's offense or at the DI level. Moore as much as said he was not expecting what he has seen during the first 2 games. Now he goes into the 3rd game and Ianello decides that his QB needs to be yanked. Ianello brings in Nicely who had a year of experience in the offense and 2 years at the DI level. Nicely had actually performed pretty well as a freshman under a different coach and in a different system. But Ianello didn't give him a chance to see if a year in his system would help Nicely improve.Realizing this team has other problems besides the QB,you sure have to wonder if Ianello thought Moore was going to step in and take over the offense without any experience. Makes me wonder what kind of decision making is going on at the top.

For me, that should have sent PN to the bench a long time ago. So, I will hold Moore to the same standard.Remember...he hasn't had the luxury of throwing against EMU, Buffalo, Can't or a 1-AA team yet either, which better be enough to bring those numbers up significantly. I'll say this again, even though I do NOT want to be put in the same category of those making excuses for our QB for the last two years. But....most people think that our protection and dropped ball problems were worse than ever Saturday night. Losing all of our skill guys, and a few OLs HAD to be a big concern to all of us going into the season. Our backs are having problems even holding onto dump passes. And Carter and LaFrance suddenly must be looking like All-Americans to us, compared to what we saw last weekend. But again, in my opinion, I could see a QB using this as an excuse as to why his numbers should be better. But, regardless of the circumstances, I still believe that somewhere in the 50-60 range should be an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for a college QB.Please don't assume that games against those teams will prove to be any more productive. Frankly when Ianello decided to go with a QB who had never played in his system,and,as far as I know never threw a pass at the DI level and didn't actually show anything more in 'pre-season' than Nicely,it said to me that he was starting all over again. Ianello isn't in it to win much if anything this year. He knows he as at least 1 if not 2 more years before the AD actually expects any consistent winning.WAIT,, Didnt Coach I have a QB last year who had never played in his system? Hadnt been impressed with the Lone Ranger. So why not try Nicely again,,maye give him more then 2 minutes at the end of a game and were not DOWN by 40I wondered why Nicely wasn't named the starter to at least begin the season. See if a year in Ianello's system allowed him to improve on the field. If he didn't show significant improvement after a few games THEN get Moore behind center. That would have given Moore some additional time to get familiar with the new system and the game at the DI level. Apparently the decision to start Moore was not based solely on performance in the spring or the summer. Thats OK,to an extent. But now we are hearing Moore saying what any kid in a new situation would say. Its going to take time for him to get adjusted. The problems with this team go beyond just the QB. But,it sure makes things a lot tougher when the QB struggles.

No he hasn't! He should have been playing at safety like he did at Hoban. I know he got hurt. But,he got buried on the bench. Physically,he had the attributes to play on that side of the ball. For Ianello to ty to make him into a tight end at this point seems ludicrous especially when the defense stinks.

This doesn't sound like somebody that was ready to come in and start and give the team the best chance to win. :unsure:The fans get to suffer through his learning curve? Is that fair to us? We better get a payoff in the end.We have been discussing this for several weeks haven't we? The coach makes the choice to start the QB who has never thrown a pass in DI. The kid has never played in Ianello's system which requires the QB to be able to stand in the pocket,see over/around linemen,throw crossing routes etc,etc etc. Nicely was not ready to be a dropback/pocket passer last year. He was better in the 'gun'. So due to a coaches decision the team has to go through another QB who does not seem to fit well in the offensive system. Maybe some flexibility is needed on the part of the staff to better use the talent that is on the team.

I hope no one is thinking they know more about a 'pro style' offense than a coach who has actually done it. Maybe there are some out there. But,what appears to be happening into the second year of the Ianello regime/system is that the players who played in the systems both offensively and defensively last year and there are a significant number don't appear at this point to be improving under his coaching. And,to complicate matters the coach chose to start a QB who had never played in his system. Its possible that the 'talent' that has been here for these two years is that bad. I happen to believe that there are some players who play their butts off but were overrated talentwise when they were brought in. Some of those are pre-Ianello. But for this team as a whole to still be performing as badly on the field as they are is very distressing to say the least.

Absolutely! Its close enough for a road trip for the few Akron fans who might be interested. And,it might generarte a little local interest as wellas bringing some Pitt fans to fill empty seats.Also like that they are playing the Sunbelt. For most MAC teams those are competetive games.

If the Ianello thing doesn't work out, and, we have to wait at least 1 more year on that. If Louie Pro doesn't mandate a coach with previous head coaching experience be hired,then there will be no hope. It will take Proenza to dictate the next hire.

Notre who? I like the fact that they play a team like Pitt and get a home game out of it. As I mentioned previously on this board at least it might pump up the home interest. It also give us a nice,close road trip.

+1Disappointed in Saturday's results. Progress and Improvement must happen soon. We need to stop scheduling the top BCS schools. They do not help in getting the team ready for MAC play. We should schedule other Non-BCS and lower BCS schools. Urban Meyer's comment made me start thinking about this and I do not think there are many advantages other than recruiting. And I think recuiting would be better if we won games. Let's stick with the NC State's of the world.Agree. If you can get teams like Kentucky,Indiana,Syracuse,maybe Pitt to do a 2 for 1 you can at least get 1 home game out of it. That might bring in a few of the curious plus their fans.As far as the performance of the coaching staff and team nothing is going to change significantly this year. After the 2012 season Proenza and Wistrcill will have to make a decision one way or the other on Ianello.

Tressel is probably going to get what I think is a 'show cause' from the NCAA. That means he will probably not be allowed to coach for a while. That may be why he is hooking up with the NFL. There he really doesn't have to worry about what the players do. Somebody else handles that.

For me, that should have sent PN to the bench a long time ago. So, I will hold Moore to the same standard.Remember...he hasn't had the luxury of throwing against EMU, Buffalo, Can't or a 1-AA team yet either, which better be enough to bring those numbers up significantly. I'll say this again, even though I do NOT want to be put in the same category of those making excuses for our QB for the last two years. But....most people think that our protection and dropped ball problems were worse than ever Saturday night. Losing all of our skill guys, and a few OLs HAD to be a big concern to all of us going into the season. Our backs are having problems even holding onto dump passes. And Carter and LaFrance suddenly must be looking like All-Americans to us, compared to what we saw last weekend. But again, in my opinion, I could see a QB using this as an excuse as to why his numbers should be better. But, regardless of the circumstances, I still believe that somewhere in the 50-60 range should be an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for a college QB.Please don't assume that games against those teams will prove to be any more productive. Frankly when Ianello decided to go with a QB who had never played in his system,and,as far as I know never threw a pass at the DI level and didn't actually show anything more in 'pre-season' than Nicely,it said to me that he was starting all over again. Ianello isn't in it to win much if anything this year. He knows he as at least 1 if not 2 more years before the AD actually expects any consistent winning.

But isn't it still ashame that we can't say it was the GAME that was the highlight of the evening?

Zach, send this comment to Wistrcill. Seriously. It is very honest and factual. The AD would like to hear this and it is solid student opinion. If he doesn't give you a response then let me know and I will submit too.I have sent e-mails directly to Wistrcill before. He has always responded if not the next day,within a few days.

I was there. No way that place was half full.

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.