After some days to mature on the fact that Cam's gone, It's a good time to resume some facts about his right and wrong decisions, his abilities and ineptitudes and finally his fitness and gaps about the HC role.
On his decisions, time will probe how wrong they were, because as today, only a 1-15 record is a fact, where he may have wasted something more than just a year: a ton of draft picks, a bunch of good players like Chris Chambers, and also a lot of salary cap in Joey Porter. But every dol-fan is still shocked by that moment in April when we picked Ginn instead of Quinn, so even this may be credited to Randy Mueller, Cameron was responsible of the evaluation of Ted Ginn Jr.
Since Saban arrived, the team has been fortified on offense and was restructuring on defense. When Cameron was hired, his offensive mind was unable to detect how fragile was the status of our defense. His efforts just focused on allowing Capers to deal with the defense, while he deals with developing an offense. That means that since Cam's hiring we have drafted, trained and played without head coach, just an offensive coordinator who was lacking of the toughness to handle this team.
Cam's real fault was to be our offensive coordinator more than our head coach. This is the only reason for this 1-15 mess.
Offensively there are few problems now, a firm hand may keep these guys on track to be at least a regular unit. To improve, this corps may only been lacking of a quality passer, because John Beck may only be needing more time to develop his skills, so his third year in the league will be his real one, but the doubt will be if he can or not to adapt into David Lee and the new regime.
Defensively, name a position and there's a hole to fill. Since Saban's days we been trying to adopt a 3-4 defense, but without real NT there's no way to make it work. A lazy Keith Traylor was less than insufficient. Joey Porter has been too expensive for a LB, but showed some cool moments, with 5.5 sacks, 2 ints, 1 ff and 65 tackles, so he was our second best defensive player just next to Jason Taylor. Dom Capers never could fix it and Cameron was shy to help, creating frustration on both sides of the ball, leading into a nasty environment where things finished in troubles inside the locker room. That's evidence of how wrong everything was with Cameron as head coach.
So unlike New England that lacks of offensive coordinator, we have been lacking of head coach.
Any comments?
-
Good post... But even Jesus Christ would have been unable to detect how bad we were going to be on defense this year. I think the whole league was shockedmexdolfan likes this. -
I was thinking no less than #3 Defense in the league, and a very good chance at being #1.
Man..... I was so wrong! -
Very good post!
-
This dead horse has been beat to death, cooked and sold to make cat food and glue.
-
nothing wrong with beating up on Cam.... he beat us up all season.
-
As early as the Washington game you could see the disgust in the players faces as it always seemed like what ever they tried didn't work. A new coach should help. I know it seems drastic after one bad year but Miami was just painful to watch this year and yet I suffered through every game. -
I will disagree with the people who said they expected us to have a top defense
between the loss of saban, the age of our front 7, and our talent in the secondary, i figured we wouldnt be much better than average
but i did not expect us to be as bad as we were -
Anyone who thought the coach was all to blame for a 1-15 season needs to wake up. I bet there are very few teams that go 1-15 and don't have a few people questioning the coach.
I liked Cam. I think he was in over his head though. Seemed like a great guy to go on a camping trip with........ not sure I'd pick him first to help me in a bar fight. -
Putting things in the middle (avoiding both extremes, Pete Prisco, who hates our team and has been saying for years that our defense will crack, and Armando Salguero, who loves every player in our roster) the main reason for changing 4-3 into 3-4, is that a 3-4 can handle better mixes of run and pass defense, no matter if the opponents have an arsenal with excellent QB, WR, TE, RB and O-line.
Of course that any solid 4-3 is better than a poor 3-4, and as our team traded any mayor figure of defensive back, looking for fresh legs instead of old but experienced players, we lost quality in that position. That, mixed to the fact that the league has better receivers in our days, has created a demolishing issue, because our DB are being pressed so much, causing several injuries and lots of points allowed.
On the other hand, while our offensive rookies are making slow but nice improvement, our defensive unit has been losing speed on the veterans, while lacking of effectiveness in younger players. Sportspool.com pre ranked Jason Allen as a projected #63 prospect for the 2006 NFL Draft, but Saban used the 16th overall on him, but his playing time proves projection was right about the guy, because until now, his stellar level have been hidden.
That means holes everywhere, with luck we may have a not-so-good defense, but a complicated schedule, including playing two times a year the unstoppable Pats, there's no luck, so we're among the worst in running defense.:confused2: -
oh.... and to your title, No Head Coach, Ha...... we never really had one.
-
The first sign I saw from Cam that really troubled me was the approach he took toward training camp. He sit the vets and didn't game plan and had an easy training camp. It seemed the team never got prepared for the season and started out flat. Of course his famous speach from the podium saying we drafted the whole Ginn family and he was a great punt returner really made me wonder.