Tech's Intervention

[rhineaux]

_ Here's another POV. The problem was an inability to execute by our players with injuries (like Mike D) and those we had on the field as substitutes for our starters. UTEP was definitely beatable. Coaching, playcalling, the alignment of the stars and planets over Cajun Field really had little to do with the outcome. _

RF2 is right. The offense didn't put points on the board in those three losses because of bad coaching decisions and poor game planning. Bustle admitted as much to Josh Parrott on December 1st.

Now on a three-game losing streak, UL (5-6 overall, 4-2 Sun Belt) saw its offense bottom out in last week's 48-3 loss to Troy. Desormeaux had his best rushing effort since getting hurt with 136 yards, but Fenroy was held to 23 yards. The Cajuns finished with a season-low 255 yards and failed to score a touchdown for the first time since 2006. That came one week after being held to seven points through the first 52 minutes of a 40-29 loss to Florida Atlantic.

After evaluating last week's game film with his fellow coaches, including first-year offensive coordinator Ron Hudson and first-year passing game coordinator Jorge Munoz, head coach Rickey Bustle came to one conclusion.

"I think that thing (offensive play-calling) has kind of snowballed a little bit toward being too predictable," Bustle said. "That's why I'm saying that we've got to open our playbook back up and do some things and get other people involved in the game.

"This doesn't have anything to do with Jorge or Ron. It could happen to anybody."

[HoustonCajun]

_ You are correct! Also, the coaching was problematic. I really didn't see good adjustments being made. Maybe they were made, but whatever they were, they didn't work. _

The coaching staff waited until the last game vs. MTSU before deciding that the offense was too predictable and we needed to open up the playbook a little more. We did and won the game. Where were they 4 games back? UL made no adjustments until it was too late. And that, unfortunately has been the mark of this coaching staff for 7 years.

[DestinCajun]

RF2 is right. The offense didn't put points on the board in those three losses because of bad coaching decisions and poor game planning. Bustle admitted as much to Josh Parrott on December 1st. _

Nice coachspeak.


The offense was predictable against everybody we beat too. Nobody stopped us until Dez's knee injury plus a few injuries to OLs. Fenroy was also hurt a bit as well at times.

Running offenses are by nature kinda predictable. Watch Ga. Tech against LSUAMCBR.

Defense was playing much better this season until the injuries caught up with us. Look at the Illinois game. The difference was Dez getting stripped and the ball which was then run in for a TD. The Illinois offense got 13 on the Cajun defense. Kansas St got big help from some crappy calls after it made big stops.

No sir, we had too many hosses were in the barn at one time.

Now, if all you say had happened without all the injuries then I'd be forced to agree.

[MetryCajun]

_ Nice coachspeak.


The offense was predictable against everybody we beat too. Nobody stopped us until Dez's knee injury plus a few injuries to OLs. Fenroy was also hurt a bit as well at times.

Running offenses are by nature kinda predictable. Watch Ga. Tech against LSUAMCBR.

Defense was playing much better this season until the injuries caught up with us. Look at the Illinois game. The difference was Dez getting stripped and the ball which was then run in for a TD. The Illinois offense got 13 on the Cajun defense. Kansas St got big help from some crappy calls after it made big stops.

No sir, we had too many hosses were in the barn at one time.

Now, if all you say had happened without all the injuries then I'd be forced to agree. _

I missed this. When we were at full speed on defense I saw one good performance (ILLinois). Once we started getting injured, I saw one good performance(ASU) and one OK performance(FIU). In fact you could make a case the injured D was better than the full speed D. The one constant we had was not existant line play. Injuries or not our D was horrible again this year. Just like it has been since the mid-90's.

Also, I think you are beiing too kind to the offensive coaches. Des limped throught the last 5 games. Only in the MTU game was the play calling unpredictable. The results speak for themselves.

[rhineaux]

_ Nice coachspeak.


The offense was predictable against everybody we beat too. Nobody stopped us until Dez's knee injury plus a few injuries to OLs. Fenroy was also hurt a bit as well at times.

Running offenses are by nature kinda predictable. Watch Ga. Tech against LSUAMCBR.

Defense was playing much better this season until the injuries caught up with us. Look at the Illinois game. The difference was Dez getting stripped and the ball which was then run in for a TD. The Illinois offense got 13 on the Cajun defense. Kansas St got big help from some crappy calls after it made big stops.

No sir, we had too many hosses were in the barn at one time.

Now, if all you say had happened without all the injuries then I'd be forced to agree. _

You're making my argument for me.

Of course our offense was predictable before, nobody was stopping it. We were getting by with about 10 different plays per game (or so it seemed). Then Des gets injured. We all agree about all of that. There is no denying that when Tom Brady went down, the Patriots offense wasn't going to be breaking the same records they broke last year.

The point I'm trying to make, and the reason I am losing my patience with Bustle, is that he didn't do anything to change the offense enough to where other teams couldn't just key on Fenroy. They kept calling the same Zone Reads time after time, and it resulted in very poor offense and a 3 game losing streak. Then, after having so little success for 3 straight weeks because those opponents stopped them or slowed them down the same way, he finally decides that something needed to be changed. That lack of judgement is a big reason why the team is not preparing for a bowl game right now. They needed two wins in 4 games against tough, yet beatable, teams. And not only did it not happen, but two of them were in extremely convincing fashion.

I understand that this team had significant injuries on both sides of the ball. It happens to every team, every season...perhaps not as extensively as it did to UL this year. That is something you can't control. But, you can control what you do in spite of the injuries and what moves you make to mitigate their affect. And in that newspaper article I quoted above, Bustle admits that he did nothing, or at least not enough, to mitigate those affects. That is one of the main reasons why I have very little confidence that Bustle will ever take us farther than he already has on a consistent basis.

[Just1More]

_ Hold on a minute. We couldnt bring 800 fans to Troy with a SunBelt championship on the line but we are sure that we would have brought 20,000 to Shreveport for a game against La. Tech?

I think your number is highly inflated. The only time we ever traveled big was for those fun games against Tulane in the superdome almost 20 years ago. More than half of those fans were there for the party in New Orleans. _

Many would go to the Indy Bowl never considered the trek to Troy. I saw friends at the Tulane games who live throughout Texas and Florida. They would have made plans for Shreveport... no doubt about it. Troy is a heck of a drive to the middle of nowhere. Shreveport is a short drive from Acadiana for the first 10k who would have been there to "party in Shreveport". It would have been the first bowl in 38 years... we were all going.

[Just1More]

_ That's exactly my point! The coaches, after seeing Dez unable t execute, should have tried other approaches. I know Maguire was hurt, too, and that Masson didn't have game experience. But at least they could've tried him for s few series. Also, maybe run the "Wild Chery" formation more. Something, anything to try to spark the offense. I think the lack of offense (in several games) put too much pressure on our defense. Anyway, that's water under the bridge. _

Agree. Why was the "Wild Cajun... wild Chery" not thought about and used for UTEP? Mike was already hurt. Why not the Richie throw... why not the Mike in the slot with Chery alone in the backfield with only a blocker like MTSU? Going into MTSU our coaches said that we would have to "change some things up", "try a few new things"... why did that occur to them so late in the situation? UTEP was definitely winnable. We line a hobbled QB up in a shotgun on a 4th and 1... after a TO... give me a break. But... yes... water under the proverbial bridge... again.

I'm not saying that Bustle needs to be fired... but instead of holding coaching camps, he needs to be sent to a few. I want a gutsy coach at the level MD was a gutsy QB. I can take losing when everyone, including the coaches, were splitting out of the skin for the win... but just showing up with your skills from 15 years ago just does not cut it anymore.

[Zeebart21]

_ Many would go to the Indy Bowl never considered the trek to Troy. I saw friends at the Tulane games who live throughout Texas and Florida. They would have made plans for Shreveport... no doubt about it. Troy is a heck of a drive to the middle of nowhere. Shreveport is a short drive from Acadiana for the first 10k who would have been there to "party in Shreveport". It would have been the first bowl in 38 years... we were all going. _

Look at his posting history, he isnt one of us. Take what he says with a grain of salt.

Z

[Just1More]

_ Look at his posting history, he isnt one of us. Take what he says with a grain of salt.

Z _

Grain taken. None of these cats can fool an old fool. I love my fellow homers... but these other tools are major league entertaining... especially the supposed intellectuals. It takes a small mind to run around big on someone else's forum.

[DestinCajun]

_ You're making my argument for me.

Of course our offense was predictable before, nobody was stopping it. We were getting by with about 10 different plays per game (or so it seemed). Then Des gets injured. We all agree about all of that. There is no denying that when Tom Brady went down, the Patriots offense wasn't going to be breaking the same records they broke last year.

The point I'm trying to make, and the reason I am losing my patience with Bustle, is that he didn't do anything to change the offense enough to where other teams couldn't just key on Fenroy. They kept calling the same Zone Reads time after time, and it resulted in very poor offense and a 3 game losing streak. Then, after having so little success for 3 straight weeks because those opponents stopped them or slowed them down the same way, he finally decides that something needed to be changed. That lack of judgement is a big reason why the team is not preparing for a bowl game right now. They needed two wins in 4 games against tough, yet beatable, teams. And not only did it not happen, but two of them were in extremely convincing fashion.

I understand that this team had significant injuries on both sides of the ball. It happens to every team, every season...perhaps not as extensively as it did to UL this year. That is something you can't control. But, you can control what you do in spite of the injuries and what moves you make to mitigate their affect. And in that newspaper article I quoted above, Bustle admits that he did nothing, or at least not enough, to mitigate those affects. That is one of the main reasons why I have very little confidence that Bustle will ever take us farther than he already has on a consistent basis. _

A team doesn't simply change its offense in the middle of the season and I can only make a case based on what I saw on the field. We were not able to execute due to a significant number of injury hampered players and players lost to injury. The difference I see and you obviously don't is the degree to which we were impacted by injuries. It wasn't the two or three players on either side of the ball that every team has to deal with over a season. It was the entire LB corps minus Zanders. It was Mike Desormeaux the main cog in our offense and several linemen at various times.

In essence you're saying if we had done something different or played a healthy third string QB, we would have been successful. That's arm chair coaching after the fact. I think the bottomline here is you've decided we need to fire Bustle and you create whatever rationale is handy to support that.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Holy Trinity couldn't have come in and won here these past few years and Rickey. Bustle was apparantly the only person nuts enough to take on the job. The reality is yes he can now be evaluated but I didn't see anything on the field that warrants firing him (which we're not going to do anyway).

I'll admit because I cannot see the future that you might eventually be proven correct about Bustle but I don't see it right now, not based on this season's final results and where we are in terms of returning players next season. Check with me after the 2009 season.