I've been thinking about this lately with the excitement about the new coordinators. It would certainly make me feel better if it were the case. Here's something I wrote in an email to Chris in late October last year. In retrospect I actually think I nailed it.
I gotta admit, the more I think about it, the idea that there's some kind of acute philosophical conflict between DM and KD does kinda explain some things. Does anyone know how close they really were in the years between 1991 and 2014?
Disparate things that kinda fit with this:
- Mason saying they're going to run more and it never happening (the big one)
- Historic line change before Temple means something leaked out. Staff conflict?
- Rumors of player discontent about PR starting. I discounted these initially because it's highly implausible that a team revolts over one starting assignment. That's pure message board fantasy stuff. HOWEVER, if there was a clear Mason's guy and a clear Dorrell's guy, and that conflict was being played out in front of the team, then the "telephone game" could lead to those rumors.
- The QB carousel, and....
- Mason's incoherent explanations of the QB carousel, which have been beyond just being bad with the media. They strike me as the stammering of someone who knows he can't disclose everything going on but doesn't know how to hide it in Sabanesque boilerplate.
- Intuitively I would just expect a first-time HC to be pretty awful at delegating, especially on the "other" side of the ball, sometimes giving too much control and then regretting it and trying to take it back.
- Of course, Southernpipe's post [around this time, about how Mason was hired in January and had little choice of assistants] makes it clear that TPTB are aware something's wrong with some assistants.
I gotta admit, the more I think about it, the idea that there's some kind of acute philosophical conflict between DM and KD does kinda explain some things. Does anyone know how close they really were in the years between 1991 and 2014?
Disparate things that kinda fit with this:
- Mason saying they're going to run more and it never happening (the big one)
- Historic line change before Temple means something leaked out. Staff conflict?
- Rumors of player discontent about PR starting. I discounted these initially because it's highly implausible that a team revolts over one starting assignment. That's pure message board fantasy stuff. HOWEVER, if there was a clear Mason's guy and a clear Dorrell's guy, and that conflict was being played out in front of the team, then the "telephone game" could lead to those rumors.
- The QB carousel, and....
- Mason's incoherent explanations of the QB carousel, which have been beyond just being bad with the media. They strike me as the stammering of someone who knows he can't disclose everything going on but doesn't know how to hide it in Sabanesque boilerplate.
- Intuitively I would just expect a first-time HC to be pretty awful at delegating, especially on the "other" side of the ball, sometimes giving too much control and then regretting it and trying to take it back.
- Of course, Southernpipe's post [around this time, about how Mason was hired in January and had little choice of assistants] makes it clear that TPTB are aware something's wrong with some assistants.
