dabaxter said:
rtauburnsucks said:
Shula is a great recruiter.......but.....he needs to stop calling any plays and let the coaches that he hired handle that.........as soon as he figures that out....the better.
I don't think that was the issue with the Duke game. It was a head coaching/leadership issue having to do with not motivating the team to get up for the game.
I have heard you make this argument more than once today and to tell you the truth it is total BS. Bottom line is that they were playing
Duke.
Duke was playing
The University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Now you tell me which was more fired up for that game. When I was playing high school football we went into a game one night against a team that we should have beaten by 70 at least. At halftime our coach came in the locker room and peeled the paint off the walls with his speach. After that I got up and spoke to the team. We were losing at half 14-6. We came back out and lit them up to win the game 44-14. After I graduated my coach pulled me to the side at our football banquet and said this to me word for word... I remember it like it was yesterday and I still think about it when going through tough times in my life.
"David, remember that game at ____?? We were playing like crap in the first half and you gave that speach after I got done ranting and raving."
"Well, I never told anyone this, but I knew we were gonna play like that in that game. We practiced like crap, we warmed up like crap, we even ran on the field like crap. But, when you stood up and gave that speach, I knew we were gonna be a better team the rest of the season. We had a leader and it was our QB."
I asked him why he didn't do something to motivate us to play better in the first half, and he said, "What was I supposed to do?? I just felt like the best thing was to let you guys play like sh** and take you over my knee at halftime. If someone didn't take charge of that team at half and we didn't have the turnaround we did, we were gonna do nothing but run sprints the rest of the year."
He also explained to me that he knew we were gonna win. It wasn't a doubt in his mind because they just weren't conditioned enough to stay with us in the 4th quarter. However, he wasn't happy about how we played in the first half and if it hadn't ended like it did we would have had hell to pay.
I have a feeling that Coach Shula suspected that his players were overlooking Duke and were gonna come out flat. I think that Bino standing up at halftime is huge. Now, we have been through adversity and we have a leader. Leadership only sprouts more leadership. What exactly would you have Shula do to get them pumped up to play?? He can give speaches till he's blue in the face, but when you're a player it doesn't matter till someone stands up, slaps you in the face, and makes you snap out of it.