Rossi honeymoon is over! Time to fire!

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I love Rossi and what he brings to the defense. SDSU used their entire playbook. We still won.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Anyone seriously calling for Rossi to be fired after last night is out of their mind. The defense didn't play great last night but it is not like they dropped 50 on us. Let's see how he does in the weeks ahead when he has current game film to work off of as opposed to the first game of the year when you have no clue what a team like SDSU is going to throw at you as they pull out all the stops in an effort to spring the upset.

Getting some more help from the offense and special teams would be nice as well. Neither unit did a ton to help the D last night.
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Good post, I agree 100%.
 

Dean S said:
I heard he was hanging out with Rick Mons.
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Rick Mons passed away in the last few years. It wasn't just someone's made up username. Not sure if you knew that.
 




I don't think anyone is reasonably calling for his head or at least I hope not. But it does give us some evidence that the perhaps all the posts and threads on here talking about how all the problems with the defense in the first part of last year were schematic may not be correct.

A lot of fans, many adamantly on here, said that the poor contain and wide open running lanes of the Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, and Iowa games were the fault of one man and his overly complicated scheme and his firing was the perfect fix all. The more football savy and intelligent fans and posters knew that no one scheme or coordinator can make good players bad or bad players good, but they were shouted down in the manner that only the Gopherhole mob can.

But hopefully Rossi is better equipped to figure out why there were gaping holes in the D-line and second level. This board said last year the turnaround was a product of the magical yet simple "simplifying the scheme." Is this an option again? In the first game of the year have we all of a sudden become too complicated again? It would seem odd, but maybe.

And I think SDSU is a good little team, but that isn't the best weapons and athletes our defense is going to face this year so let's hope Rossi plugs some of these holes before then.
 
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I didn't follow Coughlin the entire game, but on the SDSU TD run in the 3rd quarter at about 9 mins, the run was right at CC and the Jacks tight end was able to move CC 5-6 yards out of the way to the left of the run. CC was too high. Seems like the DE's of the Gophers still need improvement.
 

Stuff said:
I didn't follow Coughlin the entire game, but on the SDSU TD run in the 3rd quarter at about 9 mins, the run was right at CC and the Jacks tight end was able to move CC 5-6 yards out of the way to the left of the run. CC was too high. Seems like the DE's of the Gophers still need improvement.
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If it's the play I'm thinking of, CC was in pass-rush mode and was trying to go around the TE so it wasn't hard for the TE to push him that direction since he was already heading that way. To me that's just a play call issue (or just guessing wrong) vs CC being easy to move.
 

caliGopher said:
We were out coached on both sides of the ball in this game.

PJ is right. Most games aren’t won. They are lost. SDSU lost this game. It’s still a win for us. We live on to get out coached again next week.

Can the boys overcome it again?


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Ditto. Why can't we have an offense like that of SDSU? Third Quarter: SDSU 170 yards, Gophers -7.
 



I think my IQ dropped at least 10 points from reading this:
Rossi honeymoon is over! Time to fire!

I'm waiting for the next post to be that we need to fire Fleck and hire Tony Dungy. Sheesh...
 

WoodburyTim said:
I don't think anyone is reasonably calling for his head or at least I hope not. But it does give us some evidence that the perhaps all the posts and threads on here talking about how all the problems with the defense in the first part of last year were schematic may not be correct.

A lot of fans, many adamantly on here, said that the poor contain and wide open running lanes of the Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, and Iowa games were the fault of one man and his overly complicated scheme and his firing was the perfect fix all. The more football savy and intelligent fans and posters knew that no one scheme or coordinator can make good players bad or bad players good, but they were shouted down in the manner that only the Gopherhole mob can.

But hopefully Rossi is better equipped to figure out why there were gaping holes in the D-line and second level. This board said last year the turnaround was a product of the magical yet simple "simplifying the scheme." Is this an option again? In the first game of the year have we all of a sudden become too complicated again? It would seem odd, but maybe.

And I think SDSU is a good little team, but that isn't the best weapons and athletes our defense is going to face this year so let's hope Rossi plugs some of these holes before then.
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Think you are way over simplifying things here. Don't think anyone has been claiming that just changing the coordinator was the magical fix for the defense but only an idiot would try to argue that it didn't have some affect on how things played out last season. The difference in the play of the defense after Smith was fired was very noticeable right away.

None of the phases of the game played particularly well last night yet we still found a way to win the game. To the defense specifically, yes they struggled but what happened yesterday was NOTHING like the way the team played against teams like Illinois and Nebraska last year when we were getting crushed by big plays over and over again and giving up 50+ points.

At the end of the day we gave up 21 points and 300 some yards to a solid team. That isn't great but it certainly isn't terrible either. Especially when you factor in that the offense and special teams didn't play well and SDSU was throwing everything at us trying to get the W.

If the defense continues to struggle as the weeks go on it will be time to get worried. Right now it is just one game......and a game we won no less.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Think you are way over simplifying things here. Don't think anyone has been claiming that just changing the coordinator was the magical fix for the defense but only an idiot would try to argue that it didn't have some affect on how things played out last season. The difference in the play of the defense after Smith was fired was very noticeable right away.

None of the phases of the game played particularly well last night yet we still found a way to win the game. To the defense specifically, yes they struggled but what happened yesterday was NOTHING like the way the team played against teams like Illinois and Nebraska last year when we were getting crushed by big plays over and over again and giving up 50+ points.

At the end of the day we gave up 21 points and 300 some yards to a solid team. That isn't great but it certainly isn't terrible either. Especially when you factor in that the offense and special teams didn't play well and SDSU was throwing everything at us trying to get the W.

If the defense continues to struggle as the weeks go on it will be time to get worried. Right now it is just one game......and a game we won no less.
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I am not calling for Rossi's head by any means or thought the whole thing was a disaster.

I will say much of your argument is predicated on how good SDSU is. Are they are a really good team that threw everything at us to win, like you said? Maybe, but they are also a FCS team that had a QB who had never played in a college football game before. They were a gritty bunch, but we are going to face some running backs that would house a few of those 15 or 20 yard runs that the SDSU guy didn't. My point is that you may be right that the results were not quite as dramatic as the really bad games of last year, but the problems were very familiar. We want the answer to be that Smith was problem. But last night doesn't entirely support that argument.
 

Without a magic machine to go back and replay the whole 2018 season with Rossi as DC, there is no way to know yet. We will find out eventually, this season.

But it just seems impossible that the defense pulling a 180 and Smith’s firing/Rossi’s interim promotion were coincidental.
 



Word said:
If it's the play I'm thinking of, CC was in pass-rush mode and was trying to go around the TE so it wasn't hard for the TE to push him that direction since he was already heading that way. To me that's just a play call issue (or just guessing wrong) vs CC being easy to move.
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That must of been a different play. He didn't try to rush around the tight end, he went straight into him and was pushed back 2 or 3 yards and across to the right side of the line. He started on the left side.
 
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A silver lining defensively is that we didn't give up the big play or the big run. We made them earn everything. We gave up one run on the first play for 25 yards but every other run was 14 yards or shorter. We gave up one 39 yard pass but every other pass was 19 yards or shorter.

Against Nebraska, Maryland and Illinois we gave up multiple 60+ yard runs and passes in each game and several 40+ yards pass completions to OSU, Iowa and Indiana. That was our biggest weakness on D last year. Jordan Howden made some really nice tackles in the open field, something he couldn't do against Maryland which killed us.

Also on two of their TD's, I think we might have been able to stop them if it was later in the season and we had more film on them. The long TD pass with the RB out of the backfield that got called back and the TD pass to the TE were nice play calls that I think we might have been able to stop if it weren't the first game of the season.
 

I'd point out that they had to large TD runs called back due to penalty's. Sure, without the penalties maybe we contain it, but I think its also likely that they could've had those two scores...
 


caliGopher said:
Poor preparation.

Poor game plan.

Poor play calling (for the most part)

Poor adjustments.

Special teams got blown out of the building.

Defense couldn’t stop basic RUTM plays.

Offense couldn’t wear down their DL despite a massive size advantage.

Can’t find a way to get your best receiver the ball against untested DBs.

Bateman shut out in the second half.

Still don’t know how to manage time in year three, burning two timeouts in the 3rd quarter (but they did too, so maybe not out coached on this point?)



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I would add terrible waste of timeouts and punting from the 36.
 


swelna said:
I'd point out that they had to large TD runs called back due to penalty's. Sure, without the penalties maybe we contain it, but I think its also likely that they could've had those two scores...
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That’s not how football works.
 

highwayman said:
That’s not how football works.
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I'm not saying "had the refs looked the other way", I'm saying that both were holding calls (I think) and I'm not sure how much the holds actually affected the play. Did the hold cause the only person close to not make a tackle, or would it have still been a large run had they not committed the penalty. Everyone is talking big plays, but no one has mentioned those two. If you think those two plays are irrelevant, fine, but I thought they could use some discussion.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Without a magic machine to go back and replay the whole 2018 season with Rossi as DC, there is no way to know yet. We will find out eventually, this season.

But it just seems impossible that the defense pulling a 180 and Smith’s firing/Rossi’s interim promotion were coincidental.
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There is a small chance that more than one factor might have been involved.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Fair enough, but the thread is about firing Rossi.

Remember how much people were in love with him at the end of last season? Remember when people said that if he had been our DCoord all of last season, we would've won 8 or 9 games?
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People like....you? yeah I remember that. If anyone is seriously calling for his firing, just ignore it.

That said, take a look at the last two times Rossi replaced Smith as DC and let me know how you feel about it this time.
 

WoodburyTim said:
There is a small chance that more than one factor might have been involved.
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you can't take away the sport of leaping to causality from data that only is correlated. It's an American tradition!
 

WoodburyTim said:
There is a small chance that more than one factor might have been involved.
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That's probably correct.

Care to take a guess at what some of those other factors were, other than Smith being fired and Rossi promoted to interim DCoord??

Because other than that particular factor, off the top of my head, I can't think of any other changes that coincided with the Gopher defense last year going from getting gashed by Illinois to a step change improvement for the last four games.
 

Sometime teams, workers, soldiers, whatever quit on leaders for various reasons. Probably everyone here has been part of an organization or two with unbelievably a)incompetent, b) tone deaf, c) both management. Could be as simple as new guys up top and renewed motivation as one of the factors. Sometimes things really are that simple. New blood and better communication.
 

The defense wasn't great by any means, but it wasn't horrific, they gave up 21 points scored seven and set up the offense for a 30 yards drive for another 7. If our offense didn't sputter the entire game it would have been a comfortable win.
 

btowngopher said:
The defense wasn't great by any means, but it wasn't horrific, they gave up 21 points scored seven and set up the offense for a 30 yards drive for another 7. If our offense didn't sputter the entire game it would have been a comfortable win.
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Five different SDSU runners had at least one rush over 10 yards. ST was sloppy as well.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Five different SDSU runners had at least one rush over 10 yards. ST was sloppy as well.
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They made two big mistakes, not sure I'd call them sloppy for the game though. I just think it's funny people are calling for the DCs head after giving up 21 points.
 

btowngopher said:
They made two big mistakes, not sure I'd call them sloppy for the game though. I just think it's funny people are calling for the DCs head after giving up 21 points.
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Bit early, but inability set edge and losing at Los was concern. Thought d played too passive...


l'll wait until next week before I panic
 

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