Message from Chris Ash That Bears Repeating
- Thread starter Knight Shift
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Let's go down the list:
Donations.
Strength and conditioning program.
Nutrition.
Facilities-none of which would have happened with the previous coach being here.
Attitude.
Morale.
Recruiting.
Quality of assistant coaching staff.
All of the above are cornerstones and foundations for the future. A foundation that was crumbling and nearly disintegrated under the previous leadership.
On the field you say? OK. Defensive back play was much improved over previous years, which was on a really bad downward spiral.
Linebacker play--much improved in second half of the year, especially considering the roster of LBs (basically none) Ash was left with.
QB play improved greatly in the second half of the year after Gio took over. Too bad he was injured.
One thing we could have done better is to adjust the offense, and in particular, slow it down. We may never know the actual reason why DM left- was he nudged out by Ash, or did he get an opportunity in his home state and he decided to bolt for it? But in any event, Ash appears to have learned that he needed a more senior coach to guide him through the myriad of issues he faced in a huge rebuild job. I am excited about this upcoming season. I am not going to measure it in W-L's, but in watching for improved play on offense and special teams (our punting and kicking were terrible--and YOU can't attribute that to Coach Ash if he did not have the personnel), which should put us in a much better position on defense alone because the defense will not be on the field for 3/4 of the game and should work from better field position.
Do you disagree with any of the above?
OK...pretty fair list
I do see guys like Tyreek stepping up at linebacker on the field....he is my fav player lately
The other things you list off the field are admirable
NOPE I dont disagree with anything you have listed
and THANK YOU for taking the time to post it !
BTW not for ONE moment am I ANTI ASH
He is easily the best coach in a long while pedigree-wise
and
I am easily willing to wait another 2 years
and I truly HOPE to see something ON the field rise to the occaision
to my mind I think linebackers have a shot at being SOLID
as do Dbacks
again thanks
In 2017 he gets a reprieve, in 2018 he will either be a hero or exposed as a fraud.
This year he needs to start putting the pieces together and show improvement in execution, fundamentals and prove he can develop players. Next year (2018) he will be expected to win at least 7 games. If he can't deliver they'll be no reason to keep him around. If he succeeds he should be rewarded.
Some people are going to be unable to look past the scoreboard. And I understand that, to a certain extent. I mean, this is big boy football and the score is the whole point.
But, as fans, the score is almost entirely out of our control. So, as a fan, I figure there are two approaches (broadly speaking):
The first is to spend one's time focusing entirely on the negatives. To post about and highlight everything that's going wrong. To be miserable and spread that misery around liberally.
The second is to spend one's time focusing on the positives, as minor as they may be at first, and enjoy the process as much as possible. To recognize that, while the negatives are there, whining about them constantly doesn't make anything better; it just makes a bad thing worse.
Our players and staff are working their butts off and they suffer way more than we fans do when the team loses. I enjoy supporting them even when they are down. I can't do much to support the program, but that much I can do. That and donations/season tickets are pretty much the only way we can help.
That's my approach, and it keeps me happy all the time. I guess maybe those who prefer the first approach are happy being miserable. Each to their own.
Look, if ANY fan looks at last year's results in a very superficial way, they could say a lot of bad things and that NOTHING went right last year. Last year was hard to watch. And this year MAY be harder to watch. It will be a real recruiting conundrum if this year is on par with or worse than last year on the field. We could have a class in the 60's or 70's. But IMO, it is tremendously counterproductive to keep harping on last year's on the field results and this year's recruiting when we are 10 months away from NSD.
Improvements that should be expected this year:
1. Improved OL play (it can't get much worse);
2. Creative game plans on offense and not the same repetition last year;
3. Improvement at LB.
4. Better use of Hicks and Martin.
5. Better use of tight ends--did we use them last year?
6. Better special teams play.
Some will say this is a low bar, because things were pretty bad on the field last year. If we get 3 or 4 out of the above six items, this will reduce blowouts and get us at least one or two more wins than last year. Onward and upward.
Which 7 teams should we expect to beat?
We're no longer playing a bunch of cupcakes like Schiano liked to schedule. There are likely two to four gimme games in any season going forward. Most years, most other games will be tough games where we can win, but shouldn't necessarily expect to win.
You and I think a lot alike.
You can compare the situation to a house fire.
Casual bystanders who don't understand firefighting will look at things and say the following:
1. Why did it take the fire department so long to get here?
2. Why aren't they putting out the fire faster?
3. Why are they cutting a big hole in the roof and breaking windows and doing more damage?
At the end of the fire, casual bystanders will look at a charred house with broken windows and a big hole cut in the roof and say that the fire department did a terrible job. Experts will look at the job and conclude that the technical aspects of the fire department prevented the fire from being a total loss. By cutting a hole in the roof and breaking windows, they contained the fire to one part of the structure and made it easier to put the fire out.
It's the same type of issue with football. There are a lot of moving parts and planning (recruiting, finding personnel strengths, nutrition, conditioning, etc) that are required to make a team successful on the field. Without the moving parts, execution of a game plan is difficult to impossible.
I don't see hoping for 8-5 in 3 years as being unrealistic at all. I'm also not saying if they are not at that level they should fire the coach, as long as they are showing tangible progress. By then Ash will have had 4 recruiting classes, although the first class suffered due to his late hire. Call me naive but I think winning 6 games this coming season is not crazy, granted they will need some luck avoiding injuries, some young players to step up, and some balls to bounce their way. Also, other than OSU, Michigan, Penn State, and Michigan State I don't see the other teams in the B1G conference being light years ahead of RU in terms of talent, facilities, etc.. Finally, despite my optimism I too believe the key to long term success is being patient (5 years) and not making irrational knee jerk decisions due to the cries of a some in what I believe is often an irrational, unrealistic, lacking in football knowledge fanbase.
In Flood's defense he did have that hot shot QB from Pa onboard before he was fired. Unfortunately he decided to flip to Temple.
I'll take being competitive. I'll take going back to when going to a bowl game was expected. Maybe upset a team or two. Getting players in the NFL. Why does Temple have more draft picks then we do? There's absolutely no excuse for that. Temple would've beat us if we played them this year and our program is superior to Temple in every single way. Temple doesn't even come close to filling their stadium ever.
Several FCS teams would have beaten us last year. I can't speak for this year.
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Yet, many on this board were head over heels for this QB and his performance at the Elite 11 competition. Spin it any way you want. It was a loss of a high quality QB recruit.
I agree Knight. What does the fact that he flipped to Temple have to do with anything unless maybe RUonBrain is criticizing Ash for losing him to Temple. The fact is Russo was a highlighted regarded QB that Flood was able to secure...Flood left most positions in shambles but if the staff could have held on to Russo instead of bringing in Oden, the current QB situation would probably be much better shape.
Yeah, he did not do too badly at QB. Also did OK at RB. But in most of the other positions, especially in critical ones, the depth chart was barren.
<cough> <cough> Michael Dare <cough> <cough> Anthony Russo <cough> <cough>
But let's not forget 4 shutouts, something we had not accomplished since the 1930's, and the wonderful Michigan game where we had 39 yards of total offense.
<cough> <cough> Chris Laviano
<cough> <cough> Hayden Rettig
Which one of these guys was good enough to be a B1G QB?
Even if he turns out to be any good, he didn't fit the offensive style we initially planned on running.
Can't blame Ash for that.
Was actually thinking of Dan Devine, the old Missou and ND coach. But this would be pretty scary coming out of the tunnel.Put me in coach!
Here's what needs to stop: Calling Rutgers fans who are not okay with a return to the Terry Shea years "trolls." After all the progress that was made in the Schiano years that led us into the Big Ten, getting humiliated 78-0 at home to anyone is unacceptable. Routinely getting destroyed in four or five conference games per year is unacceptable. Being unable to land halfway decent Jersey kids after finally reaching the national map as a program in 2006 is unacceptable.
If we get another year of blowouts and embarrassments, I will be calling for Ash to be fired and I think everyone else here should, too. If we improve in terms of competitiveness, I will be the first to sing our coach's praises. But another year like 2016 is...wait for it...unacceptable.
If we get another year of blowouts and embarrassments, I will be calling for Ash to be fired and I think everyone else here should, too. If we improve in terms of competitiveness, I will be the first to sing our coach's praises. But another year like 2016 is...wait for it...unacceptable.
Man do I find the word "unacceptable" tiresome. Was in some book or something claiming it's a powerful statement?
When we hired Ash, we hired an approach. A concept of how to try to get better. With a limited budget, we did not go for "a second chance on damaged goods," nor did we choose, "guy who has done it all at a lower level." We went with "guy who looks really promising and incredibly hard-working but has never been in charge of the whole show." With that approach, we acknowledged that we wanted to look at a longer horizon. And we acknowledged that it might be rough for a couple of years.
I was hoping we go with "guy who has done it all at a lower level," (e.g., Fleck, Babers) because you know they know the ropes. Ash has had a few bumps learning those ropes. And he took a chance on a kid in an important position who didn't pan out. But now there appears to be more money available, and we have strengthened the coaching staff. I think the next few years will see more changes there. Might we suffer a blow out or two again next year? Maybe. Schiano had his share of early blowouts. But I think that continued improvement in the quality of the players and in upgrading the coaching staff, while trying to achieve success with a program we can be proud of is a good way to go.
And so, what I'll look for this year is improvement, and some glimmers of real hope for the future. And next year a reasonable shot at a bowl.
Skillet: I don't pretend to have seen that magical map which will one day make us more competitive in the B10. For me personally, I want to believe that a map exists. We often site Greg Schiano's success in the Big East, but honestly he was never able to win the BE. He was usually out coached and out recruited by both Rich Rodriguez and Brian Kelly. Probably because Rodriguez and Kelly had better OC/DC Coordinators and in my opinion recruited better college athletes. Did the RU Brass ever approach Greg and say "what is it going to take for our school to win a BE Championship?" No they did not, because they didn't care. They were content with a 7-5 record and an insignificant bowl game.
Both Kyle Flood and Chris Ash are one of the same in terms of football knowledge and experience and should have never been hired. If they (Barchi & Board) cared they would have hired a proven coach with solid assistants. Heck, Maryland's Durkin earns 2.5 million but they surrounded him with dam good coordinators and Assistants. I won't even discuss OSU, PSU, MICH or FSU, they're simply on a different planet. I guess my point is that the odds are really stacked against us and I seriously doubt we will ever be competitive in the B10 conference.
We don't know if Rettig was good enough to play in the B1G nobody played him. Laviano looked like a serviceable game manager QB in 2015, the worst QB in the country in 2016.
This is revisionist history. There was a point in time a lot of those programs were better. USF used to be really good, as was Cincinnati, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Miami. A ton of those teams were top 25 teams back then.
Kyle Flood and Chris Ash are one of the same in terms of football knowledge and experience? Wow.
You keep repeating this Terry Shea years and I wonder if you even know what that is. Let me ask you something - when Greg was losing to teams like WVU 80-7, did you call that back to the "Terry Shea years?"
This is a joke, right? Before RU, Flood coached at St. Francis, CW Post, Hofstra, and Delaware. Before RU, Ash coached at Drake, Iowa State, San Diego State, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Ohio State.
RU simply does not have the financial resources to go up against the B1G East in terms of spending money on coaches. It will, but it doesn't right now. It's not a matter of not caring. It's a matter of not having nearly as much money to spend as the competition.
Part of Greg's success was making sure the OOC schedule was filled with cream puffs. And the conference schedule was only 7 games. Now, the conference schedule is 9 games and at least 6 of them are tough. In 2009, we played Howard, Army, FIU, Texas Southern, a terrible Maryland team, and UCF before they were decent.
Ash did not inherit what greg did, thinking he did is beyond ignorant. ash has a far better pedigree than flood which should make everyone pause after seeing his performance last year. he showed us nothing, absolutely nothing in terms of his ability to coach.
Many posters like to compare today with Schiano's early years. I don't get the same vibe today as I did back then. Call it a 6th sense. Back then I always felt things were improving just below the surface -- dare I use the Chinese bamboo tree analogy -- and it was only a matter of time before we were going to be pretty darn good. Relationships were being built with HS coaches. You could see recruiting getting much better, etc,etc. With Ash, I just don't get the same feeling. Wouldn't say it's the Shea era all over but it feels more like Shea than it does Schiano in that he's a fish out of water (not from the east coast, doesn't really understand NJ) and it seems recruiting isn't where it needs to be considering the league we're in -- at least not at this point in time.
I don't follow you guys enough now and especially then to speak to what Ash inherited v Greg. What I can say though is this is Ash's 1st head coaching gig. I think too often we think of coaches as binary. Meaning either they can coach or they can't. However, I think coaching is like any other profession where you get better at your job with experience. I remember reading an article that said basically year 3 of any job is when you "figure it out". That included moving to a new company in the same profession. It just takes time to learn the in and outs.
There are two reasons when I think a coach needs to be fired early. 1. He has an off-field incident. 2. He loses the team. If the team is tuning him and not taking any coaching then it's hard to improve. But if you look at a coach and everything he's doing around the program is all pointing up I think you got to give the guy 5 years. He'll probably figure the game day stuff out.
What's unacceptable is idiots like you pretending Flood didn't dig the program into a 5 year hole and having completely unrealistic expectations in 2 years. Your post shows you have zero clue of how big a mess was left, how hard it is to clean it up and how college athletics work.
+1. It really is shocking reading some of these posts and trying to comprehend how some of these perceptions are created. So many willing to discard Ash after 2 years. Lots of instant gratification folks out there.
You are certainly entitled to YOUR opinion, no matter how wrong it actually is or others think it is.
I don't really care about comparisons to Schiano or Shea, as the comparisons are worthless, considering we were in a 7 team league with only one truly elite team per year to contend with. Now we are in THE ELITE LEAGUE with 3-4 elite teams to contend with. Sure, you will say then our recruiting should improve because we are in an elite league, but from day one in the B1G when that other guy was coach, PSU, UM and tOSU took a stronger foothold in NJ and started cleaning the state out of top tier recruits.
But since you mentioned Schiano, let's look at his second true class, the class of 2002:
https://rutgers.rivals.com/commitments/football/2002
24 Recruits- 15 from out of state (this does not include the recruit from Levittown Pa), with 10 from Florida. 63% of the class was from out of state and 42% were from Florida. Oh, and the most highly rated players from that class were from out of state. So why did a guy with all of the New Jersey connections fill a class full of recruits from FAR OUT OF STATE? Could it have been that NJ kids were turned off by the crappy job Greg did on the field in 2000? It had to be all Greg's fault by your logic right? I have heard you and others say that Chris Ash's situation was not nearly as dire as Greg's (as far as talent). But this ignores the fact that Greg's level of competition was very low compared to the teams Chris Ash's team has to play year in and year out.
And one other thing. You cheapen your arguments against Ash when you keep bringing up his coaching in the Fiesta Bowl. You do realize that coaching is a profession of relationships, and do you think that if Ash stiffed tOSU, he would have gotten Urban Meyer here for the recruit camp in NJ? There were other positive aspects to Ash coaching in bowl too.
You don't see things improving just below the surface now? Literally and figuratively, Chris Ash had to fortify the foundation of the strength and conditioning program. New weight room, thanks to donors who only felt compelled to give after the previous disaster was averted. Nutrition program. Discipline restored and improved. No off the field incidents. Rick Mantz (the dean of NJ HS coaches) hired to rebuild and maintain NJ HS coach relationships. Several NJ HS coaches and recruits remarking that things are moving in the right direction and there is a lot of ENERGY in the program. I'm forgetting other items.
I really don't understand your continued need to wallow in misery and to take shots at Chris Ash. Can't you tone it down a bit until the upcoming season is over and we actually see what the recruiting class looks like when NSD is here?
Excellent, excellent post. The first 2 years of Schiano's tenure were miserable on the field (I guess people don't remember us giving two basically winless teams their only wins of the year in '01 and '02, with '02 Buffalo, who was hot garbage on the field and a 1-11 MAC school, opening up a 34-3 lead en route to a 34-11 win AT RUTGERS) and the majority of Schiano's good early recruits were Florida and NY kids. Year 3 is when we really started to show progress on the field. After the UConn and Cal losses in '01 and then BuffaNova to open up '02, I was saying out loud we were better off with Shea, we never lost games like that, etc...I don't want to make the same mistake twice.
Joe P.
Ash was never going to get a franchise QB with such short notice. You are on one side of the fence in regards to his doing double duty. I am on the other in a world where there is honor, integrity, and upholding one's commitments. Ash finished his job at OSU, then started at Rutgers. I think more good came out of Ash coaching the Fiesta Bowl than ditching OSU and coming to Rutgers earlier.
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Thanks Knight. I have echoed those same sentiments numerous times. They are the foundations to start a successful program. Now that those are in place, the rest can be built upon it.
Really? If anything, the foundation built by Ash today is much more tangible than the one Greg was building in his early years. People have very short memories. In Greg's first year, he won 2 wins with losses to Miami 60-0, VTech 50-0, Pitt 40-0, WVU 80-7 .... heck even lost to Temple 30-5. Also did we forget the fiasco with the Cubits? By his second year, Ryan Cubit transferred out and Greg was losing to teams like Buffalo and Villanova (that's right - Villa-freakin-nova!!!!) and people were ready to run him out of town. But Greg was a fighter and forged ahead, building the foundation that led to 2005 and 2006.
Some people will say that Ash has a lot more to work with than Greg and I would agree with that - to a point. Perhaps in terms of infrastructure. But in terms of talent relative to the competition? I don't think so. People talk about Greg's early teams as if they were completely devoid of talent. Folks forget Ryan Cubit was a Clemson commit before he flipped to Rutgers. People also forget about NFL guys like Nate Jones, Tres Moses, LJ Smith, Gary Brackett, Gary Gibson.
Don;t get me wrong. I'm not saying Ash needs to be given five years to get to a bowl game (same as Schiano). All I'm saying is give more than one year before calling for his head. 3 years to show improvement on the field I think would be fair.
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