quote:
I guess my question is how do you possibly drop 50 spots in the ranking when you did not have a catastrophic loss of talent or anything in particular happen where you can put your finger to it and say welp.. this is why. Sure our secondary was horrible and we had some tough injuries but to go from slightly above average to letting Wisconsin pass all over you seems ridiculous. I think House was just THAT bad of a coach.

House has proven he can be average to good (he had one great season at UK) IF he has the perfect setup to play his scheme exactly as he wants. The problem is that it all falls apart when he doesn’t.

Last year, we had a lot of experienced key veterans who held the defense together. That included all of the portal guys who played big roles in the secondary and on the DL. In the secondary we added JBC, who was very experienced, and 2 guys from Arkansas. That was key because Odom also ran a TON of zone, so they knew what to do as soon as they hit the field. House had enough guys to understand and run his overcomplicated scheme without dumbing it down. And even with this, we were still just an average to above average defense.

What you saw this year was what happens when you give House less experienced players who can’t get his scheme in one offseason. He isn’t a good enough or creative enough to adjust his system to them and he obviously can’t teach them how to run it very well. He can only be successful if you give him exactly what he needs to run what he wants every season, but that just isn’t possible, especially with the way the portal and NIL work today.

Great coaches never stop learning and growing and even good coaches are capable of being flexible and adjusting. House has none of these traits.

This post was edited on 1/3/24 at 6:16 pm