Bill O'Brien? Fine, Let's Play Along.

so sick of all of these “sources say” stories….right now, I am going to try and enjoy this game, hoping for a PSU victory of course. AND what a difference a year makes….last year McG started and most of us were astonished that Bolden didn’t get to play….well, this year we get our wish. Yes and one more thing, Joyner, you are a complete jackwad. That is all.

You’re telling me that our first choice was Munchak, but second on our list is this guy? The guy who led a Duke offense that went 1-22 averaging 15 points per game? The same guy who had mild success with a GT team that was found to have played athletes who failed to make progress towards graduation, and vacated all wins because of it? I see absolutely no reason why this guy would be on a list of the top 500 candidates, let alone the top 2,

Not only would this be a huge step down from other options (Bradley comes to mind), I think he might be a worse option than some guys that we said “no thanks” to (Schiano).

As I mentioned in another thread, it was clear from the behind the scenes look in a Football Story, that he doesn’t have a seat at the table of the team he’s currently “OC” for. BB and Brady sit in BB’s office and draw up plays with OBrien nowhere to be found.

When there was a vacancy at OC, BB decided initially to go with vacancy over OBrien at the position. VACANCY. This is such a misdirection it’s absurd.

In KC.

Link

From that article, it looks like it might have been a move by O’Brien to get attention for a new NFL gig.

Let’s ignore all the twitter chatters and asinine rumors for a minute (Miles, Saban, Cowher, Jesus et al. ). Here’s what we know:

People interested in the HC position :
1. Clements
2. Bradley
3. Ron Vanderlinden.
4. LJ Sr.

I could be missing some here . Now , even assuming that O’Brien’s a serious candidate for consideration, what does he bring to the table that would put him heads-and-shoulders above the aforementioned guys ?

1. He needed to have been an excellent O or D coordinator : I think save for Clements (Who’s a positions coach), Bradley, Vanderlinden and LR Sr all have great track records as position coaches . Just an opinion. The others trump him here – personal opinon.

2. He needs to be an excellent position coach : I think Clements (tremendous QB record almost everywhere he went), LJ Sr (D-line coaching monster), and Ron V (LBs!) have all very enviable track records here too, if not better than him. Bradley has done a good job with the secondaries in the past, but perhaps a little behind the rest?

3. Personable character : One thing Bradley’s got going for him is that he is absolutely tremendous with the media. LJ Sr and Ron V (see quotes from Hodges ) are also very fiery coaches with these characteristics backed up by numerous players. I am not sure about O’Brien in this regard. He could be good, but it might not be a reach to say that 3 of others are atleast on par with him, if not ahead.

4. High school connections/recruiting: O’Brien could be a little ahead of Clements here , having been involved with GTech , Maryland and Duke till 2006, but the existing coaches are all ahead of him right now , surely

Let’s assume that Clements and O’Brien are the only 2 interested external candidates right now. The only reason to go for any one of the 2 are if:
1. Penn State wants an ABSOLUTE and UNCONDITIONAL clean break from the past. This would mean that there’d be NO way they’d consider Bradley, LJ Sr or Ron V, regardless of the role (even retaining any as coordinators). I could be off-base here, but something tells me that’s not the case. If they feel convinced that none of the 3 had any info about the case, they’d give them a fair shot.
2. One of the 2 outside guys absolutely cracked their interviews with a comprehensive short and long term plan and road-map for the future as a PSU HC. Would a fantastic interview/s be enough to cover the short-comings of a track-record that a HC probably needs to have?

This is what makes me believe that Joyner and co. couldn’t have settled on O’Brien just yet. Don’t shoot me, just sharing my worthless opinions!

We Are!

until I actually looked at how his college teams did when he was an OC.

At Georgia Tech he stepped into a good situation. The team had just gone 9-3 when he took over. He got then to 8-4 and his offense put up 405 points in 12 games. Not shabby. The next year though they fell off to 7-5 and managed only 280. Even worse, if you look at how the ’02 GT offense played across the season it regressed (a la Rob Bolden), managing only 17 points against a 2-10 Duke and failing to break 22 points in their final four games (including a loss to Fresno State in something called the Silicon Valley Classic).

After an apparent demotion to a position coach at Maryland, O’Brien turned up at hapless Duke for 2 years where his teams managed to go 1-21 and managed to put up 177 and 179, respectively.

This went so well for him that he wound up on the Pats staff in an ambiguous “offensive assistant position.” True, he rose up through the ranks, helped no doubt by attrition as Belichick’s assistants went to other posts.

Yes, it sounds good to be Brady’s QB coach – but by ‘09 just how much coaching did he need? Do you mean to tell me the man who couldn’t score 180 points in 2 years at Duke helped Brady analyze defenses? Or taught Brady the system he’d already been winning with for years?

And this year as the Pats’ OC, how much did he really do other than call plays in an already successful system?

I think close and careful analysis of O’Brien’s body of work shows that this isn’t the man we need to hire as our coach (especially in light of the recent failure of Charlie Weis to develop college players). I hope the report is errant.

If it’s an external hire and the only 2 candidates are Clements and O’Brien, I’d rather have Clements as the guy.

O’Brien is the top assistant on the Pats staff, and is one of the elite QB coaches in the NFL. When we talk about a break from the past which is inevitable given the circumstances, few have considered the new HC as an elite developer of QBs.

O’Brien is a strong coach, and a good one. He wants the Chiefs job however, so expect that PSU is plan B at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33V0hSri6BM&feature=related

Lubert is in Tennessee talking to Munchak today. How do you really pressure him into taking the job? Leak this report through one of your media puppets. Then you tell Munchak, if you don’t take the job, your alma mater is going to end up with Bill OBrien.

ESPN is going with this based on an unnamed source, yet the man’s own agent told the Herald that PSU hasn’t approached him. The Herald’s a bit of a rag, but if they were just making up the agent’s quotes, I think we’d have read that by now. I trust that more than unnamed sources.

I think this 49ers guy appears to be much more qualified and the story about him interviewing is more solid. His agent said he interviewed a month ago. If ESPN and their unnamed sources were so great, they’d have reported that.

He’s succeeded at both levels and, I pray, will bring Bobby Engram with him. Engram is currently on the 49ers staff. He could be a great coach. He could demonstrate how to run the routes.

I’m also sick of hearing about all the guys who have supposedly turned us down. There’s no good info that anyone has been offered and some of them – Tony Dungy, Chris Peterson, Mike Munchak, etc, are clearly content where they are.

It’s almost impossible to get a “big name” because all of the big names already have good jobs or are content in retirement. Urban Meyer was the only big name free agent and he was probably destined for OSU regardless.