Part One: The Good

Now that the coaching carousel is officially over (thanks for making me wait Harbaugh), we can look back at and evaluate each hire. We can’t evaluate whether these hires are good or bad because that’s impossible this early. It takes years to decide that, as “home run hires” like Scott Frost have proven. It’s even too early to make any definitive statements on last year’s list. Instead of handing out grades, I ranked each coaching hire based on how well it fits. It’s pointless trying to grade schools like Nebraska and Western Michigan the same way because they need entirely different things from a coach. Sorting coaches based on fit alleviates most of these problems. As it turns out, there was a lot going on this cycle, so I split the rankings into two separates posts. This post includes the first four tiers, all of which I consider to be the good hires of the year. Continue reading →

Everyone loves to watch an explosive offense. “Defense wins championships” is one of the oldest adages in the sport. These opposing phases of football dominate the conversation, and rightfully so. They do make up the vast majority of every game. Meanwhile, there’s a third phase of the game that endures nothing but ridicule. I’m talking about football’s red headed stepchild: special teams. Every few years, some Skip Bayless type talking head will say that kickers and punters aren’t football players, all the other shows will turn it into a few days of content, and Pat McAfee will be the only one defending the specialists. Even though it’s easy to make fun of college kickers, the results don’t lie. Good special teams is a requirement to win a championship. Continue reading →