Some great quotes and information came out of Coach O’Brien’s press conference yesterday and can be seen and heard by clicking here.
Fortunately for all of us - Coach O’Brien’s comments indicate that he employs a management style that in no way is consistent or congruent with the value structure with Lee Fowler’s Athletics Department or within the entire University since the departure of Bruce Poulton in the late 1980s - excluding the Marye Ann Fox years.
“McKeen played very well. He’s got a lot of pass rushing ability. I think he performed better than Markus Kuhn did. We’re a performance-based organization here so he moved up.“
WOW! A ‘performance-based organization‘!? In West Raleigh? What in the world is that? TOB may want to take some time and explain such a thing to the folks who think accolades and employment are an extension of natural rights conveyed to people who do nothing more than breathe and sustain life.
Do you mean to tell me that Coach O’Brien made this roster move after watching the performance of these players for just a few plays in ONE GAME? Doesn’t he know that he needs to give Kuhn more time? What if Kuhn’s girlfriend just dumped him? Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration? Maybe he wore the wrong shoes on Thursday night? A few plays in one game?! Is that really ‘fair’? Kuhn has sacrificed so much by coming to Raleigh from Germany. Surely he should get at least a few years to improve his performance before being so cruel as to promote someone in front of him. Doesn’t TOB know anything about the need for continuity and consistency?
The more I think about it, Coach O’Briens blatant disregard for the NC State culture is amazing. It borders on absolute blasphemy in West Raleigh!
TOBTB - Tom O’Brien The Blasphemer!!! What would Jim statusquOblinger say?
I wonder if TOB’s realized yet that what he thought was a “sleeping giant” is really a “sleeping dog” when the school and department administrations are considered!
It is amazing to me on the fact that we even got O’Brien as a coach. I am not sure how Fowler pulled it off. I realize that most of the players on the team are from the Amato era, was he just a terrible judge of talent or is it that the players on the team now unable to grasp O’Brien’s system and expectations? I see this season as a wash, but I sure do hope that next year’s team will begin to show an acceptance of the system with more players brought in by O’Brien and his staff. How frustrated must he be though? I know we knew this was a rebuilding project but I wonder if he realized just what kind of mess it was and is.
SFN: Why do you think “Fowler pulled it off?”
Fowler didn’t have much to do with the hiring at all. Chuck Neinas was hired to conduct the search. Tom O’Brien wanted out of BC and came to us because of how impressed he was with our facilities and our fans. Boom. Search over.
anyone know where I could get two tickets for the Clemson game in the State section?
I doubt he knew what a mess he was stepping into. I still believe we are damn lucky to have him. I can only hope that he is the kind of guy he seems to be - one who won’t bail on a “project” until he gets it turned around.
“I am not sure how Fowler pulled it off.”
Foulup had nothing to do with it. TOB was actively looking to leave BC. He merely fell into Foulup’s lap. I give Foulup absolutely no credit for TOB being at NCSU. If it had not been for TOB already looking around, we’d have ended up with another loser I’m sure!
Funny stuff JB. You could rival Jim Rome with some biting wit & straightforward assesment–and would be better.
awesome quote…
ps: in time MK will be a stud too
I think he is just taking sort of a ‘you’ve got the job until you’re injured or I find someone better’ approach. It sends the players a clear message: be at your best, or you will drop a spot. A player can then either step it up and get better, drop to #2, or quit, but TOB doesn’t coach no quitter. To me, it’s not like TOB should coddle him. The goal is to win the game. We gonna win, and we gotta win now.
Accountability. What a concept!!!
Am I the only one who thinks TOB might be taking a dig at the administration above him? If so, can he be Chancellor when he’s finished with coaching? Please get the muppets out of the top administration positions sooner rather than later.
How would you like to be one of the QBs who could not beat out Evans? Seriously, think about that.
he probably should have given Kuhn time to build some fuh-CI-luh-tees
Scooter - can you imagine the entrenched, i-will-die-with-my-ncstate-admin-job=for-no-good-reason, mentality that probably permeates the people TOB has to report to…he probably throws-up in his mouth everytime he has to deal with the administration.
I throw up in my mouth over it, too. There it goes again…
Maybe we should try recruiting in Japan — sumo wrestlers are great at pushing people around, inside the shoulders and with open hands even.
Impressed with the info he shared on W & M. I think he realizes that talent alone will not overwhelm, after all we don’t have a Tate type player to bail us out.
We will need to stop them from running the offense they are most comfortable with. When we are on offense we need to pound the ball and work the play action in. If Bible is comfortable with DE or HB in a straight drop back timing route pass attack then he is flat out gutsy.
I can’t believe they wouldn’t let Markus Kuhn play… what if his feelings are hurt?
Personally, if I was Markus I would be working my ass off to get my job back. Competition is never a bad thing.
I’m only comfortable with Harrison Beck in a hotdog-eating competition. It’s probably not a reach to say that Bible hasn’t been comfortable with his options since arriving at NCSU. For his sanity’s sake, we have to keep the redshirt on Mike Glennon. He needs time to watch the college game and pick up some muscle. Seriously, he looked thirteen years old when they showed him at the USC game.
UpstateSCWolfpack,
I’ll have 3 for the Clemson game I need to sell, in Wolfpack section.
lsutton5144@yahoo.com
SFN-
Usually love and agree with your insight, but I have to scoff at this one.
Tell that “performance based” BS to Harrison Beck. I can not ever remember seeing any college quarterback as lost as Daniel Evans was last Thursday night, and what does General TOB do? Start him again.
What a joke. And the saddest part about it is there are many regular students at our campus that could have done better than he performed the other night.
SFN- What gives?
SFN: Beck has obviously worked his ass off during the offseason on the Brandon Costner work out plan
^it is pretty obvious that there is no one better cheif. beck was awful on thursday too
thekind - there’s a fine line you walk between rewarding the best player and rewarding a behavior that sets a horrid example to the rest of the team.
Beck, by all appearances - and in his performance in games -hasn’t done anything to seperate himself from Evans on the field. Off the field, it looks like he’s out of shape.
I think in the of these two DLs - you are looking at someone who won a job vs. someone who lost it. Someone who earned a starting job by performance vs. someone who had it given to them because there were no better options.
If Beck were in shape and setting a better example, I don’t think you’d see Evans starting. Clearly, Evans starting now says more about Beck than it does about TOB or Evans.
Having to endure the long, slog of rebuilding (or are we just “building”??) sucks, but every time I hear TOB talk, I am convinced that we are in good hands.
If we can build a program that averages 8-9 wins per season and goes to a decent bowl most years, I will be thrilled and satisfied. There’s no reason TOB won’t do this.
Hopefully after TOB retires from coaching he will be hired as AD at State!
That is funny stuff and I agree with Howlie. Just don’t start calling people Chris Everett or it could get ugly.
I think McKeen did great and it still gives Kuhn time to take it away if he can outperform.
/\Second that DA, he is firm but rewards performance and is loyal to his subjugates. None of the “we were this close” or if ands buts, we got licked no excuses. We as fans can seek moral victories, TOB and his team only want the real ones.
I really got a kick out of reading TOB’s “performance-based organization”.
In structural engineering, we have performance-based building standards and we have prescriptive-based standards. Performance-based allows the engineer to design a solution that meets the performance requirements, while prescriptive standards tell you what to do in the absence of a performance design.
The only thing missing from TOB’s Performance-Based Org is innovation. Performance based design allows you to innovate instead of using a cook-book formula. There is very little innovation that I can see in our offense or defense for that matter. They are attempting to be successful with the same schemes and approaches that worked years ago at BC.
I don’t think we will be overly successful with that approach unless we recruit better than our competitors. Innovative coaching and schemes will ourperform the more predictable schemes unless there is a large disparity in talent.
However, TOB still has my confidence inspite of what I see as a lack of innovation in our play design. The fact that we know they are going to blitz our QB and still can’t come up with plays that work is worrisome.
I’m sure TOB wasn’t taking any intentional swipes at the administration, and even if he ever would, they’re off in their own little la-la land, none of them are smart enough to pick up on it anyway.
All TOB has to do is to tell Jed that some fifty year old woman was asking about him, or Oblinger that his hair is coming back and that he’s the smartest man on the planet, it’s just that simple and TOB will have free rein in Raleigh for as long as his little heart desires.
I don’t know why exactly, but my own post here, reminds me of that picture of Lee Fowler/Sgt Schultz and Hogan’s Heroes. But this time starring TOB as Colonel Hogan, Oblinger as Colonel Klink, and little Jeddy Fowler, as “the Schultz”.
^right on redfred you hit the nail on the head “I know nothing”
Primewolf …Great analogy regarding innovation. The performance based organization and accountability should apply to the coaching staff as well. This offence requires creative and innovative coaching. You can’t implement the BC system with the existing cliental so stop blaming Amato’s recruiting and “dance with the girl you brought” (no matter how ugly she is)!!
I have to strongly disagree with you Primewolf on your statement that there is no innovation in the coaching staff. Historically TOB & Bible have implemented and executed the single back, pocket passing QB. Heck they even recruited the #1 Pro-Style QB in the country to run this system. The problem he has is that he doesn’t have a current QB capable of running this system or the OL to provide the pass protection necessary. So using innovation they thought outside the box, saw that their best QB was very mobile, and changed their offensive system to the Spread Option to minimize the glaring lack of pass protection. (NOTE: 2 starting OL are converted DL who never played a snap of OL. What does that say about the players that Amato left behind?)
Now that we’ve lost (for an unknown number of weeks) the only QB who can run the Spread Offense TOB will have to revert back to the original offense, where if we all recall he doesn’t have a QB to run it or an OL to pass protect. Want to really know how unlucky we are? Wasn’t Clem Johnson (the projected starting Safety & PR) a QB in JUCO? Well he might have been able to step in and take over the Spread, or heck change it to the Veer, to keep giving us our best chance at winning. But alas, the only other player on the team (Johnson) is out for the season with a broken jaw.
Back to the innovation, I think TOB and staff did a very good job with innovation during the off-season by installing a new offense due to the personnel he currently has until he gets his players in and matured.
1.21 JiggyWatts - bravo. Ever since i saw RW pulling back the handoff and running up the field, spread offense style, i thought: Pro-Style, Power-I TOB/Bible installed a spread offense…geniuses. No wonder TOB didn’t want to talk much about things preseason. Does anyone run it in the SEC. I think it would explain why USC couldn’t stop it really.
Nice call on Clem Johnson too.
I’d say that had we scored once or twice or kept it close against USC, it would have truly been a lemonade-out-of-lemons moment, and it still could be.
Boys, it looks like we’re stuck with Howdy Doody (DE) and the StayPuft Marshmallow Man (HB). Let’s get behind them, hope they are pissed for some unknown reason and really play well till RW gets back.
One of the complaints about Coach Amato was a failure to develop a follow on QB for PR.
Have the standards changed?