I originally had looked at Sanford's resume after Minny fired him and noticed immediately how QB play had regressed under him. The former OC had left for Penn State (long time PJ Fleck OC) and Sanford inherited the same QB who dropped off two years in a row.
When I look deeper, it's sort of bewildering how he got most of the jobs he got . He moved forward incredibly fast thru his first HC job (including the Notre Dame job). In that time, it's hard to take from his experience any real measures of improvement or success. Some definite red flags up until MN job, where I think it's real easy to see that he had a vet QB and they got worse each of his two years. More than a red flag. Fleck was able to get his long time OC back and he did it.
He must be a great interviewer.
I could see how his interview might have started and ended with the game tape of how they evaluated CU's defense and then game planned to completely and totally dominate Chris Martin's defense. I know, I know, they were tired. But, as many of you are tired of hearing, our defense was extremely talented and Minnesota made us look silly. So KD, LC, and RG all think that we have a pretty good defense and boy did he make us look silly. Here's a reminder of how out-coached we were that day:
https://cubuffs.com/sports/football/stats/2021/minnesota/boxscore/14221
I imagine that he could provide a real hands-on powerpoint presentation of how he outsmarted our defense and probably could also throw in how they dissected the aTm tape and had Chev's offense disarmed completely as well. By the end of the interview, KD, LC and Rick are looking at each other and going "wow, this dude's smart"!
I prefer to follow the numbers and not get caught up in the "stories". This guy's numbers don't paint a picture of success.
From that perspective, I am not sure that Marion's resume is all that strong either, as there's not a lot to go on but the stories (i.e. no OC experience at big boy football). But the gamble seemed worth it given there was innovation and excitement to be had. I'd say the same for Sowder. There's nothing about the numbers that would suggest that Sanford is going to get the job done. Mediocre seems like our best hope. With the others, we could hope for superstars.....That's what Brian Kelly was hoping for when he hired Sanford.
Ultimately, the OL coach is going to be as big of a story here. Our OL was historically bad. The communications/confusion persisted even after the Sled Coach was fired. In the Utah game, they were running simple DL twists and our OL would get beat about half the time based on blowing the assignment switch. This involved two veteran OL guys who both have had snaps going back a few years. In fact, they handled these things fine when they saw time as freshman.
Attracting an effective OL coach is so important and that would have been part of the interview process for the OC if it was me. Who can you bring into the fold coach? Because getting someone to Boulder right now given KD's last season is going to be a challenge. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of real estate or how good the schools are and it's all about the opportunity and the risks thereof.
