Beaver Football / Gary Anderson Autopsy

[MrBug708]

USC treats baseball like ucla treats basketball and partially football. Moderate success can be had without much effort and a weird fascination with alumni and people connected to a past

[Scscsc89]

Not to hijack Beav's thread, but baseball scholarship limits coupled with USC's tuition costs make it almost impossible to compete.  Top area prospects can affordably walk-on at Fullerton, UCLA, Long Beach, etc

Not that anyone is crying for USC baseball ... we had our time in the 70s

[Nakedmolerat]

4 hours ago, utenation said:

Damn Orange. Love the passion.  Just my opinion. Season is young, if OSU doesn't see progress this year, I think there might be something you mentioned going on. Based on GA's track record, this year should be better.  How is his relationship with the AD?

 

4 hours ago, Orange said:

I'm not real sure.  I don't have any inside connections on the program.  Maybe molerat's the guy with those answers?   

I'm liking the replies on this thread already.  Call it a therapy session.  Maybe it all turns around, maybe it's just a slower turnaround than his previous stops, and we only get 5 wins.   But to be honest, I don't see where we'd get 4 more wins from where I sit.  ASU and UA?  Maybe, with drastic improvement.  Cal's looking better than anyone thought (and they have the coach that I've lobbied for for years...Wilcox is the real deal).

It's my understanding that GA and the AD have been acquainted with each other since USU days. I think OS is financially stuck with GA through his contract, 2021. He and the staff are too expensive to fire. I am not condoning that at this point, but 1-11 with a squeaker over PSU might have me singing a different song, and we are a couple steps down that avenue already. 

Cougs by 72. 

[Orange]

15 hours ago, Scscsc89 said:

Apparently, Beavs feels the same way about Oregon State football the same way I do about USC baseball:

Looking for reasons not to just give up hope.

12 CWS titles?  I'm struggling to see the comparison, haha.

[Orange]

12 hours ago, Nakedmolerat said:

 

It's my understanding that GA and the AD have been acquainted with each other since USU days. I think OS is financially stuck with GA through his contract, 2021. He and the staff are too expensive to fire. I am not condoning that at this point, but 1-11 with a squeaker over PSU might have me singing a different song, and we are a couple steps down that avenue already. 

Cougs by 72. 

This is exactly my thought.  NOTHING I've seen so far suggests the Beavs are at all capable of any more than they've currently accomplished this season, and I think we're staring 1-11 in the face.  That's nothing short of a disaster.

[Utefan1211]

It comes down to recruits. The best recruits don't want to be in Corvallis. Gary is a good coach and will probably end up at Utah State again one day.  Recruiting kills coaches  

 

[Orange]

14 hours ago, Utefan1211 said:

It comes down to recruits. The best recruits don't want to be in Corvallis. Gary is a good coach and will probably end up at Utah State again one day.  Recruiting kills coaches  

 

Interesting you say that:

http://247sports.com/Season/2018-Football/CompositeTeamRankings?Conference=Pac-12

 

[KUGRDON]

Not buying that.  In Corvallis you just have to do a better job of designing schemes and coaching up the available talent.  If it's recruiting, throw in the towel and concentrate on field hockey.

[dtd]

It is pretty shocking, and I agree that it is over. Andersen is a dead man walking, it might take another 2 years for financial reasons, but it seems like a complete fail from what started as a great hire. How could his OS teams be worse than his Utah State teams?

The inside takes I've heard (all from Beavers) are all about the players hating him. He's lost the locker room in large part due to the way he's handled the QB situation and "running off" some popular players. 

[dtd]

2 hours ago, KUGRDON said:

Not buying that.  In Corvallis you just have to do a better job of designing schemes and coaching up the available talent.  If it's recruiting, throw in the towel and concentrate on field hockey.

It always comes down to talent. Look at who OS recruits against. They win 1 or 2 battles for a 3 star guy against ASU or UO every year, and the rest is competing with SJSU and Hawai'i and UC Davis. 

[Orange]

1 hour ago, dtd said:

It is pretty shocking, and I agree that it is over. Andersen is a dead man walking, it might take another 2 years for financial reasons, but it seems like a complete fail from what started as a great hire. How could his OS teams be worse than his Utah State teams?

The inside takes I've heard (all from Beavers) are all about the players hating him. He's lost the locker room in large part due to the way he's handled the QB situation and "running off" some popular players. 

Really?

What are your sources?

[Orange]

1 hour ago, dtd said:

It always comes down to talent. Look at who OS recruits against. They win 1 or 2 battles for a 3 star guy against ASU or UO every year, and the rest is competing with SJSU and Hawai'i and UC Davis. 

I think you're overstating it a bit.  Most of their starters are 3-star talent, and they get a 4-star guy or 2 pretty much every year.  Nobody's spurning anyone in the Pac-12 for UC Davis.  Come on.  Unless you're talking about an OSU guy who couldn't cut it and drops down to SDSU (See Ryan Katz).

[KUGRDON]

Then how in the hell did Mike price get to two rose bowls?  Talent is a different concept than recruiting.  Price's rose bowl teams were very talented, but not highly recruited.  If it always comes down to talent, why does WSU have more conference wins over the last couple of years than anybody in the conference but Stanford and USC.  At the lesser, poorer schools You have to coach the talent that you do have and recruit, not necessarily the highest rated players, you have to recruit to your system.  And your system has to be good and generally unique.

another thing price did very effectively was to stack his classes I.e., Time the red shirts so that he had very good offensive and defensive lines every three or four years.   He also did a great job of moving players from one position to another, kids who played tight end in high school would end up playing defense of end or outside linebacker  At WSU. Kids who played running back in high school, played linebacker at WSU. Wide receivers in high school what converted to defensive backs.  Price realized that high schools tend to put the best athletes on offense so he used those athletes on his defenses.

 Realistically, schools like Oregon State and Washington state Are not going to compete for league championships every year, but you can certainly get there twice a decade even with the recruiting struggles. 

 

[RogueDuck]

2 hours ago, dtd said:

It always comes down to talent. Look at who OS recruits against. They win 1 or 2 battles for a 3 star guy against ASU or UO every year, and the rest is competing with SJSU and Hawai'i and UC Davis. 

Yep, namely QB talent.  Look at Helton, the dude sucks with an average 5* QB, the. He puts a top 10 pick in, and suddenly he looks like a competent coach.

[KUGRDON]

14 minutes ago, RogueDuck said:

Yep, namely QB talent.  Look at Helton, the dude sucks with an average 5* QB, the. He puts a top 10 pick in, and suddenly he looks like a competent coach.

There is not much difference between the number 30 quarterback in the country has the number 100 quarterback in the country. Skill positions are the easiest for schools like WSU and Oregon state to recruit competent talent. The recruiting challenges For schools like this are much more on the offensive and defensive lines because huge people with athleticism are relatively rare creatures.

Were Jason Gesser, Ryan Leaf, Alex Brink, Drew Bledsoe, Luke Falk highly recruited. Not at all.

[glduck]

the thing i remember about riley is that a lot of his osu teams were the oldest in the conference. people talked a lot about his finding a lot of overlooked gems, but he seemed to surround those guys with solid players who may not have been athletically superior to anyone else, but they were in their 5th year in the program so they were steady producers. fundamentally sound fellas, you get the jist. older than many of their peers.

that said, something happened after his last really good team (2009) and he just... stopped. or so it seemed. everything dried up. mannion had one pretty good year where they won 9 games, but pre-09 and post-09 was like night and day to this outsider. he left andersen NOTHING.

[Card Tricks]

On 9/12/2017 at 3:10 PM, Orange said:

I'm grieving.  Already.  And I'm shocked that it seems dead already.

Not because the Beavers suck.  I'm used to that shit.  I remember being a kid and actually excusing bad Beaver football with my friends by saying "well, let's be fair, they play in the Pac-10.  If they played in some other league, they'd be pretty good."  I remember tearing down goalposts sarcastically as a student in Corvallis.  And I've grown accustomed to recent dreary Septembers after losing to FCS teams (Sac State, E. Wash)

The reason I'm so thrown by this year's futility is because I had so much fucking HOPE last November.  The guys played with fire.  Ryan Nall was almost unstoppable against Oregon and Arizona, and our defense started to carry an identity, coming up with big stops when needed.  These guys weren't 4- and 5-star recruits, and most weren't going to do anything but sell insurance after college, but by god and baby jesus, they PLAYED for Gary Anderson.  THIS is the OSU tradition.  Like any experienced Beaver fan, I don't cheer on the program with national title hopes.  Hell, I've largely given up on seeing another conference title before I die thanks to the unwinnable arms race.  

I cheer on OSU's program because they're small-time guys who give me big-time moments.  Because OSU hires coaching personnel who are rock-solid, inspiring people.  Guys that the kids will jump out of their cleats for.  In addition to our 1-3 superstars on the program who will do big things, we get kids like Ken Simonton and Mike Hass and Jake Cookus and Mitch Meeuweson and Bill Swancutt and Jonathon Smith who were not particularly big, strong and fast, but willed their way into the record books because of sheer grit, and love of the game, and their team, and usually their coach.    

'15, and 16 were rough, and I expected that.  I knew wins would be few and far between, so I'd need to search for those moments that kept me coming back.  In '16, it was Darrell Garretson leading an OT win against Cal, and it was Nall bowling guys over in the Civil War.  

So that leads us to 2017.  So far, this is a team that comes out pretty strong, then gets punched (or even grazed) in the mouth, and then wilts like a flower.  They come out of halftime feeling less inspired than when they went in.  

They're down 24-20 in Fort Collins at halftime, go in for the speech, and they promptly give up 13 consecutive points, and close out the game giving up 3 unanswered touchdowns. Blowout loss.

They're pulling away from PSU before halftime, up 14-6.  Coach apparently told them to coast, and it becomes a shootout against second-tier talent that has no business running over a P5 defensive line the way they did.  They eke out a win due wholly to placekicker futility at Portland State.

Down 6 at home against Minnesota at the break?  Well, let's go in to the locker room, hear it from coach, and then promptly give up 28 unanswered and walk back in with less self-respect than a bulimic, teenage orphan.  Blowout loss.

This I did not expect.  A team just regularly quitting on its coach, three weeks in a row?  A team not only getting beat, but blatantly arm-tackling and appearing gassed and just, well, "over it" by the third quarter of each game?   How to account for this level of shitty play?  Is it that the program, sans Riley, has a 4-win cap?   Fuck that.  GA has put teams over the top by year 3 in Logan Freaking Utah.  Is GA suffering some personal drama?  Bad marriage?  Fighting a gambling problem?  Just garden-variety depression?

Whatever it is, it needs to be figured the fuck out.  And fast.  2-10 was acceptable in 2015, because he had nothing.  4-8 was okay last year, because it involved 3 conference wins, a civil war victory, and it doubled the win total from year 1.

Four wins won't cut it this year, and right now the team looks like it will need to spring forth with some miraculous, heretofore concealed level of energy to win 3 more games.  Four wins, at this point, seems like scaling Everest with a heart murmur.  Not.  Doable.

Thank Satan for Walking Dead.

I'm with ya, Orange. I'm as shocked as anyone that the Beavs have struggled so badly this early in the season. I figured the Colorado State game was a fluke and was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt moving forward. Even in that squeaker against Portland State, I thought "hey, these guys are still getting their $hit together but a win is a win". But after another blowout loss to a Minnesota team that struggled to put away Buffalo in Week 1... I just can't stay on the Gary Anderson train anymore. Not this season at least. 

What's weird to me is they seem to have some very nice pieces. Love their RB Nall. Their receivers are deep and talented. Luton may not be great but he doesn't seem terrible either (and a definite upgrade over Garretson last season). Their front-seven returned a lot of experience and I figured a guy like Bright Ugwoegbu might just be good enough to make all conference with enough sacks. But the offense has been ineffective and this defense is an absolute mess right now. I don't watch their games closely enough to truly pinpoint what the problem is but it just doesn't seem like there are a whole lot of things going right for the Beavs this season. That obviously falls on Gary Anderson, who (before all of this) was my dark horse pick for Pac-12 COY.

The good news: all of these guys come back next year. While that may sound like a nightmare repeating itself, I truly think these guys will be battle tested and ready to ball in 2018. I thought that would be the case this season but something's just not right in Corvallis right now. I do believe the Beavs will get better as the season progresses and win a game that surprises everyone. But at this point, I don't think any sort of late season surge will be enough to resuscitate their dwindling bowl prospects. If I'm an Oregon State fan right now, the best I would be hoping for right now is that the coaching staff tinkers the depth chart until just the right combination of starters are settled upon, move forward with those guys the rest of the way, sneak a game or two nobody expected you to win, and hope that the experience pays off in 2018. 

[Orange]

18 hours ago, glduck said:

the thing i remember about riley is that a lot of his osu teams were the oldest in the conference. people talked a lot about his finding a lot of overlooked gems, but he seemed to surround those guys with solid players who may not have been athletically superior to anyone else, but they were in their 5th year in the program so they were steady producers. fundamentally sound fellas, you get the jist. older than many of their peers.

that said, something happened after his last really good team (2009) and he just... stopped. or so it seemed. everything dried up. mannion had one pretty good year where they won 9 games, but pre-09 and post-09 was like night and day to this outsider. he left andersen NOTHING.

12 and 13 were both pretty solid seasons at OSU with cooks and Wheaton at WR and Mannion slinging it. Those years represent more or less our ceiling.  Once a generation we'll get a 2000 team.   

[Orange]

3 hours ago, Card Tricks said:

I'm with ya, Orange. I'm as shocked as anyone that the Beavs have struggled so badly this early in the season. I figured the Colorado State game was a fluke and was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt moving forward. Even in that squeaker against Portland State, I thought "hey, these guys are still getting their $hit together but a win is a win". But after another blowout loss to a Minnesota team that struggled to put away Buffalo in Week 1... I just can't stay on the Gary Anderson train anymore. Not this season at least. 

What's weird to me is they seem to have some very nice pieces. Love their RB Nall. Their receivers are deep and talented. Luton may not be great but he doesn't seem terrible either (and a definite upgrade over Garretson last season). Their front-seven returned a lot of experience and I figured a guy like Bright Ugwoegbu might just be good enough to make all conference with enough sacks. But the offense has been ineffective and this defense is an absolute mess right now. I don't watch their games closely enough to truly pinpoint what the problem is but it just doesn't seem like there are a whole lot of things going right for the Beavs this season. That obviously falls on Gary Anderson, who (before all of this) was my dark horse pick for Pac-12 COY.

The good news: all of these guys come back next year. While that may sound like a nightmare repeating itself, I truly think these guys will be battle tested and ready to ball in 2018. I thought that would be the case this season but something's just not right in Corvallis right now. I do believe the Beavs will get better as the season progresses and win a game that surprises everyone. But at this point, I don't think any sort of late season surge will be enough to resuscitate their dwindling bowl prospects. If I'm an Oregon State fan right now, the best I would be hoping for right now is that the coaching staff tinkers the depth chart until just the right combination of starters are settled upon, move forward with those guys the rest of the way, sneak a game or two nobody expected you to win, and hope that the experience pays off in 2018. 

If what I think is going on is going on, I think 17 won't get better, and 18 will be worse.  There's way too much talent on this team right now to go 1-11 (which is where I think we're headed.   3-9 is our ceiling).    There has to be some kind of internal rift.  It's the only explanation.  

 

Wheres seth Collins in the offense?  Why are we throwing 40x per game when we have arguably the 1st or 2nd most talented backfield in the conference?   I mean what the fuck? 

[PAC MAN]

On 9/14/2017 at 5:22 PM, Orange said:

I think you're overstating it a bit.  Most of their starters are 3-star talent, and they get a 4-star guy or 2 pretty much every year.  Nobody's spurning anyone in the Pac-12 for UC Davis.  Come on.  Unless you're talking about an OSU guy who couldn't cut it and drops down to SDSU (See Ryan Katz).

Not much different from CU recruiting under MacIntyre to this point and the Buffs won the South last year.  And you said UC Davis which is now coached by Dan Hawkins?

23 hours ago, glduck said:

the thing i remember about riley is that a lot of his osu teams were the oldest in the conference. people talked a lot about his finding a lot of overlooked gems, but he seemed to surround those guys with solid players who may not have been athletically superior to anyone else, but they were in their 5th year in the program so they were steady producers. fundamentally sound fellas, you get the jist. older than many of their peers.

that said, something happened after his last really good team (2009) and he just... stopped. or so it seemed. everything dried up. mannion had one pretty good year where they won 9 games, but pre-09 and post-09 was like night and day to this outsider. he left andersen NOTHING.

Sounds like the Buffs under Mike MacIntyre and for as long as he is the head coach in Boulder.  Buffs got crushed in 2011-14 with a young team and eventually those growing pains led to last season.

MacIntyre did think it would take him just three seasons to turn the program around but that breakthrough didn't come until season four.  Perhaps OSU is going through the same growing pains and Anderson's year four isn't until next season.  Perhaps there was a legitimate reason why Riley left abruptly for Nebraska...the cupboard was becoming bare.

Org, I do understand what you are going through...all I can say is just hang in there and it'll eventually turn around.