Cons are obvious. Never been a head coach. Never been a coordinator. Huge risk from that perspective.
Pros
Elite recruiter nationally, especially of lineman (which is by far our biggest weakness in talent over the last few years).
Players love him and will play hard for him–they won’t quit on him which has been a clear problem this season.
Team will be tough and physical, which we have sorely lacked.
he will be able to bring in an SEC quality staff which Chad could not, especially if he has the $ to do so.
No idea if this will work, but frankly we are few reasonable options at this point. I know people want to blame HY but the plain truth is coaches just don’t want this job now.
I don’t know how successful any coach is going to be digging us out of this hole, but I think we can increase our talent level, effort, and toughness with coach P and that is a good start.
I don’t think the staff will be as “SEC quality” as we’d like to think. Assistants don’t leave programs for bad ones, much less one that has a head coach that has never been a head coach or coordinator. I bet he keeps Taylor, Stepp and brings in Tim Horton.
It’s a transient profession, a fraternity of sorts where they all move around and work together at some point. They have families just like everybody else. They go where they get the most $ just like regular people. Their wives and kids like nice things too. More money means more things and vacations, that makes Mama happy. And if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
So if you offer big $, they don’t say no to make less at a an alleged better program. Just not how it works.
That likely means we’ll be doing another coaching search in 2-3 years.
I know the players like him & he can recruit. Maybe… if he gets some good coordinators & assistants. Maybe he can get Beleima to coach offensive linemen.
I don’t know if Chad couldn’t or wouldn’t. My suspicion is that he was way too loyal to the people who worked for him at SMU.
Hawgindaslough is correct. Assistants work for friends and they work where they’ll be paid better. The nature of their profession is to be insanely optimistic. So what if the last coach went 4-20? We’ll fix that and go 20-4! And then I’ll get a better job somewhere else!