The Great Coordinator Purge of 2009

As expected, Ron Zook finally cleaned house Friday. You could definitely make the argument that it's unfair for the assistant coaches to take the fall for Zook but this is more or less the way things go in college coaching. First the coordinators fall, and then the head coach. As I will describe below, I agree that most of the coordinators who were fired were not getting results. But I fear that merely removing the symptoms will fail to take care of the underlying disease.

The casualties:

Co-defensive coordinators Dan Disch and Curt Mallory, demoted

Disch and Mallory presided over a truly noxious defense this year so I was sure they would be let go. The fact that they were demoted and not fired is fair given that as I understand things, they lacked the autonomy of most defensive coordinators. Rather, their role was to call plays while hewing to Zook's overall schematic design. I always had the feeling that Disch and Mallory were there because Zook couldn't find anyone else (witness his contract offer to Penn State's Larry Johnson last year when Disch and Mallory ostensibly still had jobs). What I would like to see is for Zook to hire a coordinator who will implement his own scheme and jettison Zook's because having the corners play ten yards off their men clearly isn't working.

Special teams coordinator Mike Woodford

Special teams has been an area of weakness for Illinois for years now. Punting has been an adventure, and I fail to conceive how with so much supposed talent (Arrelious Benn especially) the Illini averaged just 4.2 and 19.3 yards on punt and kickoff returns this year. In terms of results, there's not much of an argument for keeping Woodford.

Receivers coach Jim Pry

Evaluating strictly by results, Pry's job performance has been poor. If his role was to develop the wide receivers, then the hugely disappointing performance of the Illini receiving corps this year is ample reason for him to be let go. I'm not going to blame him for Arrelious Benn's injuries, but the lack of development for hyped talent like Jarred Fayson and Jeff Cumberland is not a testament to Pry's coaching.

Quarterbacks coach Kurt Beathard

Again, if Beathard's role was to develop the quarterbacks, then the utter lack of development by either Juice or Eddie McGee is an indictment against him. Yet again, the results suggest that Beathard's job performance was not strong enough to warrant him keeping his job.

Offensive coordinator Mike Schultz

This was the big hire of the year after stalwart offensive coordinator Mike Locksley left for New Mexico, and needless to say, the results were rocky. I analyzed Schultz' performance in a post in October and while at the time I likely would have supported his firing, the performance of Illinois' offense in the final five games of the year should have been enough to give Schultz a second chance, at least in a world where his boss wasn't on the hot seat.

Despite Zook claiming that the offense wouldn't change much in the transition from Locksley to Schultz, my personal observation (and something I want to study more in the future) is that Schultz didn't feel comfortable in the Illinois offense until midway through the season. His play-calling philosophy is more conservative and run-based than Locksley's, which worked fine for the running backs, but not for Juice, as the short passing game has never been his forte. Nonetheless, Schultz found his groove with the Illini offense as the year went on, as he discovered the joys of the deep pass. His performance was sub-par on the whole, given the horrific start to the year and the failure to incorporate Arrelious Benn, but as much as I'd like to dream that Illinois will hire some wunderkind offensive coordinator to replace him, they probably won't, making his removal questionable.

So although I agree that most of the coordinators who were fired or demoted had job performances that warranted such actions, my qualm is that it's easy to fire someone but not so easy to find his replacement. If there were really this many sub-par coaches on the Illini staff (and I am inclined to believe there were), then doesn't that tell you something about the person hiring them? And why should we trust that person to make the right hires the second (or third, or fourth) time around? I'll keep my fingers crossed that the Rons knock a few out of the park with their coming hires, but history says they probably won't and that Zook will be fired after a lackluster 2010 season. Let's just hope it doesn't get too ugly.