I have been very excited about the potential of our team this upcoming season. But just as a word of caution, here is a growing concern to me: 58, 41, 42, and 42 are the points that our new Defensive Coordinator gave up during his final 4 games last season before being fired. Coach Mason also didn't give the most confident answer during last night's Coach's Show, when he mentioned how we will only get 3 days to prepare for Army's option offense. He mentioned how tough that option preparation week is for any Defensive Coordinator and he mentioned how he dealt with that same situation last year when he had to prepare for Air Force. Looking back at it, he gave up 58 points to Air Force last year. Ouch. Army's Starting QB is also on the team and is still the Starter, despite multiple reports last week saying that he had quit.
I know that every season, program, and situation is different. I also believe that last year's Hawaii team is probably not a fair way to judge Coach Mason. It was hopefully an outlier which resulted from the bad situation which that program was in. But at the end of the day, we still have 2 brand new coordinators and neither had success in their last job as Coordinators, both were fired either mid-season or immediately after the season. We are now expecting both of these guys to do complete 180's compared to their last Coordinator jobs and now have immediate success from the beginning? For the record, I think that we will be much better in time with both of these new Coordinator's(especially on offense), but I am really curious as to how quickly we will click early in the season. I am very anxious to watch us play next week and would love nothing more than to see us play well from the start. I genuinely think that we have some good and deep talent, I am just hopeful that it can click early in these new systems. And if all else fails, at least we still have Aaron Jones!
