Head Coach Health Vs. Program Health

First, we all want JK to get healthy.


The current Head Coach thread ended up getting split between 2 groups- sympathetic fans hoping the best for JK and others who display a concern for the program.

This thread is program centric: Feel free to toss out your opinion of the future of the HC football position at the University of Minnesota. I would like to hear what others have to say

Coach Kill's health for both the short term and long term is vital. The team needs its HC.

Recruits all have to be concerned and will be watching his progress.

Its too early to toss around the what if's and specifics but not getting a clean bill of health would be a huge setback for the program.

First off I really hope Kill returns healthy and we never speak of this again.

Regardless how long it takes, I will trust whatever his doctors say and the decision Kill makes based off that. While this sounds very scary to most of us, we aren't doctors and haven't examined Kill ourselves, so we have no idea whether this is a big deal or if he will get on new meds and never have a seizure again.

I'm really wondering why the U of M Doctors messed with his meds - it sounded like the meds Kill was on had kept them fairly well controlled for several years, then he has one incident and they start playing around with different meds? Seems odd to me, but again my amateur medical opinion is worth less than the napkin I used at lunch!

The above being said, Maturi would not be doing his due dilligence if he was not coming up with contingency plans (deciding if Claeys is promoted to HC or if we bring in a new HC and keep the assts, or if we start from scratch; making some lists of coaches to contact just in case; etc.). While I expect Kill to coach this team at least part of the rest of this year and beyond, that may not happen and it's Maturi's job to make sure he's prepared. Of course, I'd prefer to have a new AD make that decision if it has to happen at all, so I'm really hoping Kill comes back with a vengance!

Bill Miller is the Assistant Head Coach. He will take over interim Head Coaching duties until Kill can return. Limegrover and Claeys will continue in their coordinator duties. It's how the system was set up.

Coach Kill IS our coach and WILL BE our coach. There is NO point discussing...

anything else. Everything will be resolved. In the mean while, Coach Kill, his staff and the players will go about the business at hand and there is a game to prepare for on Saturday. All of the right things are being done at this point in time.

It is a time to be supportive of coach Kill, his staff, the players and to await all outcomes. Good people are all doing the very best that they can do. It is also time for we fans to do the best that we can do and be supportive, respectful and reasonable about all things that are unknown to us and need our ability to trust and accept at this time. Very good people are all doing the very best that they can do. That's MORE than enough for me right now!

Go Gophers!

Beat Michigan!

highwayman said:

Bill Miller is the Assistant Head Coach. He will take over interim Head Coaching duties until Kill can return. Limegrover and Claeys will continue in their coordinator duties. It's how the system was set up.

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When this came up a couple of weeks ago, Limegrover stated that Claeys would be the lead guy, but they both would remain above the field to call the games. This was from the press conference:

Q. If coach is unavailable, who will be the head coach? Can you talk about how this group has been together so long that if anything happened to one of you guys, because you have the cohesiveness, everybody has had each other's back all these years, how much easier is it to get through situations like this?

COACH CLAEYS: Well, the first part, I don't know. I mean, me and Matt have been with coach the longest, so between the two of us, we would get it worked out. I can tell you there wouldn't be any drastic changes the way the game goes. I don't believe in changing everything. If we have to make a change, making everybody change how they do things, I don't believe in that. It would be very minimal, that part.

Besides missing him at the game, I mean, I don't know that there would be a lot of procedural things that would be different.

COACH LIMEGROVER: Basically at some point there's got to be somebody that kind of leads. Tracy is that guy. If we're in a situation where we might be in four-down territory, I'm going to turn to him and say, How you feeling on this? Should we think four downs? If we don't get it there, are we going to punt? Eventually you need somebody. You can't have it being debate class when you get down to key situations.

In the past, it's never really come up, but the process has been that we would discuss pregame what some of those decisions might be. But eventually you got to defer to somebody, so...

COACH CLAEYS: I've been with him the longest, so if I screw something up, hopefully he won't fire me (smiling).

I assume we'll hear more from both of them tomorrow on how they will handle things this week. I'm guessing they can't continue with the line of - "We expect him to be there on the sidelines coaching on Saturday."

Sorry, I meant on-the-field head coaching duties. You have to have one field guy to speak directly to the referee and to the team during timeouts, etc. Only the "head coach" on the field can call timeouts (besides players).

highwayman said:

Sorry, I meant on-the-field head coaching duties. You have to have one field guy to speak directly to the referee and to the team during timeouts, etc. Only the "head coach" on the field can call timeouts (besides players).

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Gotcha! Yes, I believe that would be Bill Miller.

The program is on life support. The prospects are bleak for any kind of resurgence this year. We hired the new staff to bring life into the team. They had 2 games of momentum at the end of the season and this year looked bright. Why did it look bright? Because of the coaching staff and the work being done to bring discipline and order to the players. The S&C program was supposedly updated. The system was to be built up from this base of players.

The reality has proved quite different. We now see there was no real heir apparent at QB. The offensive line is regrouping this year and will next year as well. The defense will lose critical leaders and the leaders who were to emerge are injured or on the bench. The problem this year is the gap between the Gophers and the B!G has grown wider, instead of narrower. Many will argue this isn't true, so let me lay out my argument. 3 seniors will graduate next year who, in general, were not starters in a majority of games last year. Next year, we will have fewer returning starters along the line, including the tight end. At QB, we have 2 players struggling to emerge as the clear #1 and line play has clouded the picture from emerging clearly. This uncertainty is detrimental to recruiting skill players, which we remain critically short of talent. At defense, we have not progressed significantly and the upper half ranking of the rush defense reflects the willingness of the opposition to pass against us. We have a makeshift defense in the secondary with Shady playing were he hasn't and Kim is about the expire after 6 seasons of football. So, the secondary will be rebuilding. At what position has real depth emerged, other than linebacker?

What this team needs is a recruiting miracle for the 2013 class that wows the football world.