Apparently, a kid's high school stats - instead of the story behind a kid's skillset, or his video - tells anyone everything they need to know about what he can or can't do.
I do not know how anyone can characterize '09 to '10 as neutral, seems there is a lot of focus on a few tough games, mostly due to injury. I hope people will give the next OC a lot more rope than they did Watson. Not being a "Callahan guy" will probably help the next guy quite a bit, I suspect.
I see the anti-Watson crowd doesn't have a monopoly on hyperbole. You're mischaracterizing my statement about Green and his high school numbers.
The problem is that you want to give Watson a pass because of injuries, ignoring the fact that, especially in 2010, we've suffered some pretty key injuries on defense, yet the defense continues to play at a high level. We lost both starting linebackers just before the season, we lost Ciante Evans and Fonzie Dennard for a game or two each, we lost Stache for a half or two, and yet we haven't seen that crazy drop-off on Defense like we've seen on Offense. We've had more injuries preventing guys from playing on Defense than Offense, yet the results are what they are.
I get that you have this propensity to hitch your wagon to a guy and stick with him, zoogies, and the loyalty is admirable. I think you're your own worst enemy when it comes to Watson support, however, because I think the general feeling toward Watson isn't nearly as full of rancor as it seems - but in the face of implacable support for a coach not getting it done, those pointing out flaws are forced to go to ever greater lengths to prove their point. Perhaps had you given in a smidge, the Watson threads would have been less.
Still, it has given us something to talk about. And that's the whole point of the board.
More injuries on defense?
We had Mike Smith go down in pre-season, Sirles got dinged a few times, Keith Williams was a shell of a player in the CCG, Caputo played dinged up, Henry got dinged up, Marcel Jones mised a ton of time, Taylor Martinez obviously was hurt, Zac Lee got hurt, Cody Green had a concussion during the ISU game, Helu got hurt a couple of times, Burkhead was playing hurt a good chunk of the year, Gilleylen had problems with injuries, Paul with the broken foot.
The offense had plenty of it's share of injuries, in fact after the MU game our offense was 6th in the country in Rushing Offense with 295 YPG, 17th in total offense with 458.50 YPG, 12th in scoring average with 38 PPG.
At that point we had the 13th and 20th best rushers in YPG, we had Martinez 12th in the country in passing effeciency.
At that point our offense was ahead of the defense
Total Yardage
Offense 17th
Defense 19th
Scoring
Offense 12th
Defense 19th
Our freshmen quarterback was being talked about as a fringe Heisman candidate this year, Roy Helu set a single game rushing record at a school that has a bit of history of outstanding rushers. Then Taylor got hurt and we went back into shell mode for the most part at our head coaches direction.
People ignore the fact that we started a RS freshman at LT, and QB, and had a center that was a first year starter also with limited experience. And that it was our entire offensive staff's first year with our new philosophy that was installed in the middle of fall camp. We have a group of fans that expects our OC to meet the performance of one of the best offensive minds to ever grace a football stadium and conveniently forgets all of the games where our offense under Osborne failed us against OU. Shawn Watson is a heck of a coach, and has done a great job as our offensive coordinator. Is he perfect? Absolutely not! But then again I also recall Bo's legendary D getting blasted several times as well, but he gets a pass.
Best of luck to Shawn Watson in his quest for a head coaching gig.
