Sherman's excuses for 2011

He's probably right, though it's not an excuse. He should have developed the leaders. I liked a lot of the guys you listed as players and many seemed like good guys, but pissing away second half leads like that definitely indicates a lack of leadership

And I hold absolutely zero ill will toward Sherman. He left a foundation for success and was a good transitional coach from Fran. He did everything he could and I wish him the best.

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Pissing away leads like that doesn't have to be black and white on blame.

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What about pissing away leads like that across a career. (4th and 26 anyone?)

When is the book actually coming out? I've had it on order for some time.

Thanks.

Reading the article, I'd heard that Byrne wasn't too fond of A&M going to the SEC. I didn't know about Sherman not caring for it either.

If the AD and the HFC weren't supportive of a conference change, then it was time for them to go.

Sherman said it AFTER the move was announced.

A&M played football in 2011?

Ah.

I think it's both. Second half collapses it was everyone on the bench sitting around with a look of panic on their face, and Sherman buried in his playbook. It was the blind leading the blind.

I don't think it was both. Sherman caused that lack of "leadership" and those blank, lost looks by losing the team. He lost the team for the same reason he lost us: infuriating play-calling that absolutely boggled the mind. The same thing happened at Miami. Players there started to opine to the media that they were bewildered by Sherman abandoning the run in the second half.

Sherman doesn't deserve to be denigrated with all sorts of nastiness, but we can speak the truth about him. He's a good man and good football coach with two fatal flaws. One is a personality flaw, the other is a coaching flaw.

Sherman is stubborn. That's his personal problem. He was told by the AD to get an OC after 2010 and refused, insisting that he could do it himself. He clearly couldn't, so his firing is his own fault.

Sherman is a gifted talent evaluator, an excellent O-line coach, and a good overall manager. His offensive scheme is effective. He isn't a natural play-caller though. Professionally, play-calling is his weakness. He is the anti-Petrino. He doesn't have great rhythm or an intuition for the best play at a given time and worst of all, tends to overthink it. He's too obsessed with balanced numbers between passing and rushing for the sake of balanced numbers and abandons the run when it is murdering the other team so that he can bring the passing numbers up. When there's a totally obvious choice that will absolutely work, Sherman will do the opposite because he fears the other coach will guess what he'll do, even if they can't stop it.

As an aside, I thought it was well-known that both Sherman and Byrne were against the SEC move. I assumed everyone knew that and I'm pretty surprised that not everyone does. It was fairly obvious from their complete lack of public praise or really commentary on it at all and rumors abounded that both were openly hostile to the idea.