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MTOW: Shows You How Much I Know

DeaconBrews said:
I started to turn in 2011, when it was obvious that with better playcalling and coaching, we could have found ourselves in Charlotte. No doubt that we had the talent. Since then, i got completely sick of the staff last year and the early results aren't helping that opinion.
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That's the most frustrating thing. The popular narrative by people not familiar with the program is that Grobe has always done more with less, etc. etc., and Wake fans calling for his resignation/termination just aren't grounding their expectations in reality.

Football Study Hall over at SB Nation ran a piece on the effects of coaching on team success when controlling for talent, and the results are pretty hilarious for Wake fans: http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2013/8/19/4635732/college-football-apparent-talent-coaching-effects

The bottom chart gives the best and worst seasons relative to talent. The 2008 team, according to the data, was actually Grobe's best coaching job. The 2006 team is a very close second. And then, at the very bottom of the chart are the 2010 and 2012 seasons. The 2012 seasons was one of the worst seasons for any team relative to its talent in the past decade. Awesome.
 
For context, the piece also gives little captions beside each "best" and "worst" season. Grobe's 2012 season, by the data, was worse than the following seasons:

Duke 2007 (got Ted Roof fired)
Baylor 2007 (got Guy Morriss fired)
Stanford 2006 (got Walt Harris fired)
 
If NFL draft position was included as a measure of talent (separating out the coaching effects on draft position, if any), Grobe's coaching effects on 2006-08 would likely disappear aside from the practical effects of recruiting underrated talent.
 
TexasDeac10 said:
For context, the piece also gives little captions beside each "best" and "worst" season. Grobe's 2012 season, by the data, was worse than the following seasons:

Duke 2007 (got Ted Roof fired)
Baylor 2007 (got Guy Morriss fired)
Stanford 2006 (got Walt Harris fired)
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Really interesting study. Thanks for sharing. Incredible that despite how much talent Nick Saban has recruited at Alabama, the worst he has done is overachieve by 1%. 2nd worst was overachieve by 13%. Simply sensational. Mack Brown's best year was +13%, then +12% and every other year has been negative.
 
Good point about Saban. Sure he recruits a lot of talent, but he regularly beats teams that also recruit a similar amount of talent.
 
Rick Neuheisel with 3 appearances at the bottom there is incredible.

Also Charlie Weis, both with Notre Dame and Kansas.
 
I first started to notice that Grobe didn't always have winning in mind in 2008 when we played at Miami and Riley Skinner threw 8 passes the whole game. We scored a touchdown on our first drive with all runs and Grobe insisted on running the rest of the game and we never saw the end zone again. Told me that he was more interested in proving a point rather than winning a game. Did I mention that Riley Freaking Skinner was our quarterback and we threw 8 freaking passes?
 
I believe Grobe's explanation at the time was that we couldn't get Riley enough time to afford any passing?
 
Here's one for the Neo-Luddites. We have had some of our top recruiting coup turn out to be less than productive. As they say in the commercials, "Past performance is not an indicator of future results". Ramon Booi come to mind. The 18 yr old who gets of the bus is not the 21 yr old man at the coin toss. Back in the day, Grobe could make 2* play like 4*, today that is not the case. Player developement has fallen off.
 
WFUPH said:
I believe Grobe's explanation at the time was that we couldn't get Riley enough time to afford any passing?
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CumberlandDeac said:
I think Riley's ribs were bothering him that day.
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I remember hearing both. The first was definitely true. Doesn't mean you give up on the passing game. As far as Riley's ribs, that's what backup QBs are for. Using him as a decoy is still a risk.

The first drive was beautiful though. Power football out of the I-formation all the way down field.
 
ChrisL68 said:
Even if you believe that to be the case about our program then, which I disagree, you must realize that the idea of firing Grobe after the 2011 season is a laughable suggestion.
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That is different than our program being in good shape 2 years ago. Our steady decline and Grobe's unwillingness/inability to address it was painfully obvious, and I thought it was obvious that the rest of the league would improve and we would not.

No, we could not have fired him then. I would say after 2010 would have been a good time, but the huge raise/extension made that out of the question.

ETA: I know he already had the extension, I just meant that it was obvious at that point where we were heading.
 
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PhDeac said:
If NFL draft position was included as a measure of talent (separating out the coaching effects on draft position, if any), Grobe's coaching effects on 2006-08 would likely disappear aside from the practical effects of recruiting underrated talent.
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If he could consistently bring in that kind of underrated talent he would be worth what we are paying him. Unfortunately that has not continued to happen.
 
Turd Ferguson said:
That is different than our program being in good shape 2 years ago. Our steady decline and Grobe's unwillingness/inability to address it was painfully obvious, and I thought it was obvious that the rest of the league would improve and we would not.

No, we could not have fired him then. I would say after 2010 would have been a good time, but the huge raise/extension made that out of the question.

ETA: I know he already had the extension, I just meant that it was obvious at that point where we were heading.
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You think we could have fired Grobe after 2010? Really?
 
Good posts, Turd. Grobe established a good blueprint for winning at Wake. He was unable to improve on it by adding offense to it. He was unable to duplicate it after the FRESH DEACS left. 2008 was telling compared to 2006. In 2006, we had very good seniors on the field and backed up by NFL quality sophomores. In 2008, those sophomores were seniors and had poor depth behind them.

We still haven't replaced Swank.
 
Turd Ferguson said:
Are we talking about the season we went 3-9 and lost to Stanford 24-68, FSU 0-31, Navy, VT 21-52, UM 14-62, and NCSU 3-38?
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Yes, but we were coming off of the best 4 year run in school history and were starting a true freshman QB. It would have been a major WTF by the college football world if we fired Grobe for one bad season.
 
ChrisL68 said:
You think we could have fired Grobe after 2010? Really?
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Probably not, because he had a lot of good will. He did finish the 2010 season with 4 wins in his last 18 games (Duke, Presby, Duke, Vandy). The OB momentum was dead.
 
ChrisL68 said:
Yes, but we were coming off of the best 4 year run in school history and were starting a true freshman QB. It would have been a major WTF by the college football world if we fired Grobe for one bad season.
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Two bad seasons. Somehow the 5 game slide in 2009 continues to be ignored by our fanbase.
 
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