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LB K'Vaughan Pope (transfer to Tenn St)

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OH10 said:
This.

It’s easy to sit here and criticize Williamson and Pope for their public comments. Fair.

They’re not the first players to ever get passed over in the program. They won’t be the last. They are, however, the first two I can recall blowing up on the way out. This part isn’t normal. Is it them? Is it social media? Or did our coaching staff do a bad job promoting a good culture in the lockerroom with their words and actions? Considering the performance of the defense on the field, I’m inclined to think the culture and the coaching simply stunk. That plays a big role here.

Still very foolish for Pope, who is still looking for a team, to double down publicly. I don’t see how any team picks him up knowing he could do the same to them. He could have entered the portal quietly and found a decent landing spot.
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Yup. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine a D1 coach willing to take on that kind of risk. It’s simply not worth it for a coach to take on an attitude that clearly is less than a team-first kind of guy.

If he plays again, at a high level in college, it will be a great surprise to me. I was all for him retaining his scholarship through the year. At this point, I hope he’s left campus.
 
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Perfectly age appropriate, maturity issue(s) imo.

It takes some people longer than others to stop blaming the external world for their situation and start taking responsibility for it themselves. I know people a hell of a lot older than these two guys who still play this game.

I just hope they grow out of it before they burn bridges too badly but it will be what it will be.

I have zero concern about this from an OSU/coaching staff perspective.
 
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Merih said:
This is not normal. There is too much mess. Something is smelling off in the program and Ryan Day needs to assess and take control.

I believe he will. I think it starts with him realizing he delegated a bit too much on defensive side of the ball.
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I think (and have thought for a while) that the "not normal mess" is evidence of Ryan Day assessing and taking control.

I don't believe that the transition from Urban Meyer to Ryan Day was as smooth as it first appeared.
 
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LordJeffBuck said:
I think (and have thought for a while) that the "not normal mess" is evidence of Ryan Day assessing and taking control.

I don't believe that the transition from Urban Meyer to Ryan Day was as smooth as it first appeared.
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Factor in the 2019 season - everything went "right" until the Clemson game. Winning heals all wounds and whatnot.

As time progressed, the fractures between Day's control and the Urban guys grew.
 
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Williamson has some credibility in that he was a four year player and scholar-athlete who had graduated already when he "retired." His timing was wrong, but I feel he earned enough on the ledger to be listened to.

Pope has none of that. This is just a guy who quit in the worst way possible trying to pile on, hurt recruiting and play the piss poor loser. MW had some pretty thoughtful things to say about the culture of college football. Pope is just a loser trying to throw gasoline on the fire.
 
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jwinslow said:
There's an avalanche of assumptions here, and the 2 bolded sentences don't fit together at all.

The reality is they didn't have good LBs, and they tried a lot of guys to fix it. We can speculate as to why, but no one got on the field and then played great. Some felt Pope's play was less inconsistent than others, but it was a mess overall, and very basic things were not happening at the position.
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The two sentences are not inconsistent. It appeared from watching the frenetic rotation that they were trying to get everyone playing time (“trying to make everyone happy”). Thats what we could see.

What we could not see was what was said/happening behind the scenes.

I know folks are reluctant to acknowledge the possibility that the coaches screwed this up. It’s kinda hard to argue with the results though. The linebackers were a problem all year. The coaches struggled to identify the appropriate shorter rotation and ended up pissing guys off in the process. I cannot recall another time in my lifetime where the coaches struggled so much, after preseason camp and into several games, to identify their starters. It was a mess.
 
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OH10 said:
The two sentences are not inconsistent. It appeared from watching the frenetic rotation that they were trying to get everyone playing time (“trying to make everyone happy”). Thats what we could see.
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We could see that they didn't have 3 starters. The rest are things we could guess. They played everyone because
- they had no starters, so they tried anything
- they wanted to keep people happy
- they weren't valuing feelings/loyalty, but the substandard play kept things volatile
- they didn't know what they were doing
- they did know what they were doing, but they developed poorly and deployment no longer mattered
- the scheme was a big problem
- the LB room was a mess
- any number of other hypotheticals

What we could not see was what was said/happening behind the scenes.

I know folks are reluctant to acknowledge the possibility that the coaches screwed this up. It’s kinda hard to argue with the results though. The linebackers were a problem all year. The coaches struggled to identify the appropriate shorter rotation and ended up pissing guys off in the process. I cannot recall another time in my lifetime where the coaches struggled so much, after preseason camp and into several games, to identify their starters. It was a mess.
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I don't think there are many folks that would argue that the LB coaching got it right.

I find it interesting that Pope is calling out the staff for playing young guys instead of vets, and if that's true, that's the death of the "they choose loyalty over talent" talking point, which wasn't very supportable this year but still popped up occasionally. I think it also plays right into what LJB was hinting at with his post.
 
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jwinslow said:
We could see that they didn't have 3 starters. The rest are things we could guess. They played everyone because
- they had no starters, so they tried anything
- they wanted to keep people happy
- they weren't valuing feelings/loyalty, but the substandard play kept things volatile
- they didn't know what they were doing
- they did know what they were doing, but they developed poorly and deployment no longer mattered
- the scheme was a big problem
- the LB room was a mess
- any number of other hypotheticals

I don't think there are many folks that would argue that the LB coaching got it right.

I find it interesting that Pope is calling out the staff for playing young guys instead of vets, and if that's true, that's the death of the "they choose loyalty over talent" talking point, which wasn't very supportable this year but still popped up occasionally. I think it also plays right into what LJB was hinting at with his post.
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We know for a fact the bold was true on the OL because Studs Wilson stated as much…
Thanks to @buchtelgrad04 for the error correction
 
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AuTX Buckeye said:
Yup you are correct … i’ll make the fix in my post .. thanks
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Also, to comment on that quote. I know a lot of people thought he was talking about keeping Dawand happy, but I think he was talking about Paris. It was pretty obvious that Matt Jones was the best guard on the team. Paris still looks a little thin and probably wasn't ready to be a full time tackle this year. Would he have stayed if he wasn't starting? He made it known after the season that he didn't really want to play guard and preferred to play tackle.
 
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AuTX Buckeye said:
We know for a fact the bold was true on the OL because Studs Wilson stated as much…
Thanks to @buchtelgrad04 for the error correction
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With a position with a clear excess of starter caliber guys, with more talent than OL starting spots, and an excess of OTs.

OSU had 0-1 starters at LB at many times this year. And the coaches should shoulder the blame for that, but very opposite situations.
 
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