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I'm going to go backwards before we move forward. Let's start with how we got here
1) It's amazing to say, but in the end, November of 2015 is a huge part of what got Barry Odom fired. Mack Rhoades is not a terrible athletic director. He had plans at Missouri. When everything in November 2015 happened, all those plans went out the window. Everything was handled terribly and Rhoades started looking for the first ticket out of town. He found it eight months later. When that happened, the guy that hired Odom, his biggest advocate, was gone. Odom was never Jim Sterk's guy. I felt for two years that Sterk was looking for a reason to move on. I don't think he ever believed in him. This season gave him that reason. I'm not saying it's unfair. I'm not even saying Sterk is wrong. But if Sterk had kept Odom this year, he would have become his guy. That's not something Sterk was ever going to be comfortable with. So he moved on. Mack Rhoades leaving made it a matter of when, not if, Odom was going to be fired.
2) Obviously there, are football reasons too. I've talked to a lot of people over the last couple of days. And the football reasons are the ones we all knew they were by watching:
A) Kelly Bryant just wasn't that good a quarterback. He was slow to make decisions. He missed reads. He missed open receivers. He didn't run at the right times. There were plenty of problems on offense, but No. 1 was the quarterback. Good kid. Everybody in the program likes him. He just wasn't good enough.
B) Derek Dooley didn't do the things that would have made Bryant successful. If Bryant was going to work, he was going to work because you ran a lot of QB zone, QB counter, QB power, etc. You ran the hell out of the ball to open up the passing game. Missouri never did that. Was there an agreement "We're going to let you throw the ball to impress the NFL" to get him on campus? I'm sure there was. But once he's on campus, your job, when you're trailing at Vanderbilt in the second half, is to run the ball 25 straight times with the quarterback if you have to. And Dooley didn't.
3) The question is one we asked for two years: How did it come to be that Derek Dooley was hired as the offensive coordinator? I've said this a lot, but I had a list of names from a really good source at the start of it when Josh Heupel left. And Dooley's wasn't on it. I'm confident saying he was no better than the fifth choice. But it's where Missouri ended up. It looked good in year one. But I said going into year two, that's when we were going to find out if Dooley could be a good OC. Because in year one, all he had to do was not screw it up. And to his credit, he didn't. He let Drew Lock be Drew Lock and they ran a lot of what Heupel ran, which was a scheme that masked the fact that the offensive line wasn't nearly as good as it looked. Then things changed in year two and that all went away. They couldn't throw the ball, they didn't have a quarterback who made good decisions and covered up problems and the offensive line was exposed. And Missouri looked awful on offense in the last six weeks and it cost the head coach his job.
4) I asked someone who would know flat out, was there something that happened after Ole Miss that I don't know about. He would tell me if there was. He said there was not. The dismissal of Trajan Jeffcoat rubbed some people the wrong way, but it wasn't a cratering event. Injuries hurt, but they were survivable. It was simply that the offensive issues came to a head and once the ball started rolling downhill, Missouri simply never figured out how to turn it around.
5) I've heard a lot of things about the firing and how it went down. I don't know what's true and what's not. I do know that the last two weeks damaged the relationship between Sterk and Odom to the point where I really don't think Sterk had a choice. They weren't going to be able to keep working together. I don't know whose fault that was. It depends on who you're talking to. Ultimately, though, Sterk is the boss and it's Odom that's going to pay the price with his job. Again, you can make the argument the firing was deserved on football alone. But I think he could have survived 6-6 and I know he could have survived 7-5 based on just the football. But the relationship, which was never great, got to a point over the last two weeks that there wasn't any salvaging it. Ultimately, that's why Odom had to go. If he didn't go, Sterk was probably going to have to go. At this point in time, Sterk had far more capital and leverage than Odom.
6) The talent on the team has taken a hit with Albert O and Jordan Elliott going pro. Both were expected. The more telling thing will be the transfer portal. I expect quite a few Missouri players to be in it over the next few weeks. Some will wait to see who the new coach is. Some might not. I've got multiple people monitoring the portal for me. If names pop up, you guys will know ASAP. I'm not going to start throwing names out there of guys I think could leave, but I think you could see a number of defections. Cost of making a coaching change. This has to be expected.
7) The recruiting class is also obviously taking a beating. Also expected. Missouri has had four decommitments (I think, I'm so busy my head is spinning) and then Kevon Billingsley who simultaneously said he was opening his recruitment and remaining committed to Mizzou. So five decommitments. There will probably be more. Then there will be guys the new staff isn't interested in. I would say the best case scenario for Mizzou is signing 8-10 guys in December. That's reality. Again, you know this is going to happen when you make a coaching change, especially with the early signing period. This can't be a surprise to you. You don't keep a coach you don't want or hire a coach you don't believe in for a single recruiting class. Whoever the new guy is, there will be an understanding, we know your first class isn't going to be very good. You're going to have to piece together what you can in the late signing period. We won't hold it against you. We put you in a situation where there's nothing else you can do. We'll continue to monitor the recruiting stuff for you, but honestly, it's just not the big story right now.
8) We've been updating the coach search stuff every day multiple times and I'm going to do it again after this so I'm not going to run through it all here. But a couple of notes:
Mike Norvell is out. I think he'll end up at Florida State. He won't end up here.
I think Bryan Harsin is very much in the picture, maybe in the driver's seat.
I think Willie Fritz is going to get more attention than I initially thought.
Will Healy is a name that came on my radar this morning that I'm trying to look into.
9) I wanted to give Lane Kiffin his own section. Partly because he's the hot name right now, but also because of this: Missouri has a Jimmy Sexton problem. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago as a factor when it was looking like Missouri might make a change and was told it was stupid. It is not stupid. Sexton's relationship with Mizzou and Jim Sterk has been rocky. At best. It goes back to the negotiations of the extension last year. Barry Odom and Sexton didn't feel they got the deal they deserved. It was a very club friendly deal for Missouri and you can argue it was the right deal. But it strained the relationship. I was told Sterk and Sexton weren't even dealing with each other personally by the end of it. Obviously, Missouri just fired one of Sexton's clients. That in and of itself is no big deal. Sexton reps enough guys that he has people get fired all the time. But when the relationship with the AD isn't great and he's the chessmaster of college football--particularly in the SEC--it is a thing to pay attention to. I'm not sure how many of you understand how important agents are in this process and Sexton is the biggest of them all (oh by the way, he represents Derek Dooley too).
Lane Kiffin is a Jimmy Sexton client. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible Missouri can hire a Sexton client. But I think it's harder than hiring someone else's client. I'll be interested to see how that plays out. Missouri may not get Kiffin regardless of his agent. He may not even be their top choice. But I'd say I'm downgrading the chances on Kiffin from what I thought they were when I went to bed last night.
10) I have no idea how this is going to go. I'm starting to lean to the idea that to get a hire that will be popular with most of the fanbase, it's either going to be Bryan Harsin or Sterk has a guy on his list who is not on any of our radars. And that's very possible. In a coaching search, I always judge the job we've done this way: If the guy they hire was on my initial hot board, I did well. I'm starting to think maybe the best outcome for Mizzou fans is if the guy they hire wasn't on my hot board and comes as a complete surprise. Of course, the last time that happened, it was Frank Haith, and I don't think that made any of you very happy. So we'll see.
I'm going to go backwards before we move forward. Let's start with how we got here
1) It's amazing to say, but in the end, November of 2015 is a huge part of what got Barry Odom fired. Mack Rhoades is not a terrible athletic director. He had plans at Missouri. When everything in November 2015 happened, all those plans went out the window. Everything was handled terribly and Rhoades started looking for the first ticket out of town. He found it eight months later. When that happened, the guy that hired Odom, his biggest advocate, was gone. Odom was never Jim Sterk's guy. I felt for two years that Sterk was looking for a reason to move on. I don't think he ever believed in him. This season gave him that reason. I'm not saying it's unfair. I'm not even saying Sterk is wrong. But if Sterk had kept Odom this year, he would have become his guy. That's not something Sterk was ever going to be comfortable with. So he moved on. Mack Rhoades leaving made it a matter of when, not if, Odom was going to be fired.
2) Obviously there, are football reasons too. I've talked to a lot of people over the last couple of days. And the football reasons are the ones we all knew they were by watching:
A) Kelly Bryant just wasn't that good a quarterback. He was slow to make decisions. He missed reads. He missed open receivers. He didn't run at the right times. There were plenty of problems on offense, but No. 1 was the quarterback. Good kid. Everybody in the program likes him. He just wasn't good enough.
B) Derek Dooley didn't do the things that would have made Bryant successful. If Bryant was going to work, he was going to work because you ran a lot of QB zone, QB counter, QB power, etc. You ran the hell out of the ball to open up the passing game. Missouri never did that. Was there an agreement "We're going to let you throw the ball to impress the NFL" to get him on campus? I'm sure there was. But once he's on campus, your job, when you're trailing at Vanderbilt in the second half, is to run the ball 25 straight times with the quarterback if you have to. And Dooley didn't.
3) The question is one we asked for two years: How did it come to be that Derek Dooley was hired as the offensive coordinator? I've said this a lot, but I had a list of names from a really good source at the start of it when Josh Heupel left. And Dooley's wasn't on it. I'm confident saying he was no better than the fifth choice. But it's where Missouri ended up. It looked good in year one. But I said going into year two, that's when we were going to find out if Dooley could be a good OC. Because in year one, all he had to do was not screw it up. And to his credit, he didn't. He let Drew Lock be Drew Lock and they ran a lot of what Heupel ran, which was a scheme that masked the fact that the offensive line wasn't nearly as good as it looked. Then things changed in year two and that all went away. They couldn't throw the ball, they didn't have a quarterback who made good decisions and covered up problems and the offensive line was exposed. And Missouri looked awful on offense in the last six weeks and it cost the head coach his job.
4) I asked someone who would know flat out, was there something that happened after Ole Miss that I don't know about. He would tell me if there was. He said there was not. The dismissal of Trajan Jeffcoat rubbed some people the wrong way, but it wasn't a cratering event. Injuries hurt, but they were survivable. It was simply that the offensive issues came to a head and once the ball started rolling downhill, Missouri simply never figured out how to turn it around.
5) I've heard a lot of things about the firing and how it went down. I don't know what's true and what's not. I do know that the last two weeks damaged the relationship between Sterk and Odom to the point where I really don't think Sterk had a choice. They weren't going to be able to keep working together. I don't know whose fault that was. It depends on who you're talking to. Ultimately, though, Sterk is the boss and it's Odom that's going to pay the price with his job. Again, you can make the argument the firing was deserved on football alone. But I think he could have survived 6-6 and I know he could have survived 7-5 based on just the football. But the relationship, which was never great, got to a point over the last two weeks that there wasn't any salvaging it. Ultimately, that's why Odom had to go. If he didn't go, Sterk was probably going to have to go. At this point in time, Sterk had far more capital and leverage than Odom.
6) The talent on the team has taken a hit with Albert O and Jordan Elliott going pro. Both were expected. The more telling thing will be the transfer portal. I expect quite a few Missouri players to be in it over the next few weeks. Some will wait to see who the new coach is. Some might not. I've got multiple people monitoring the portal for me. If names pop up, you guys will know ASAP. I'm not going to start throwing names out there of guys I think could leave, but I think you could see a number of defections. Cost of making a coaching change. This has to be expected.
7) The recruiting class is also obviously taking a beating. Also expected. Missouri has had four decommitments (I think, I'm so busy my head is spinning) and then Kevon Billingsley who simultaneously said he was opening his recruitment and remaining committed to Mizzou. So five decommitments. There will probably be more. Then there will be guys the new staff isn't interested in. I would say the best case scenario for Mizzou is signing 8-10 guys in December. That's reality. Again, you know this is going to happen when you make a coaching change, especially with the early signing period. This can't be a surprise to you. You don't keep a coach you don't want or hire a coach you don't believe in for a single recruiting class. Whoever the new guy is, there will be an understanding, we know your first class isn't going to be very good. You're going to have to piece together what you can in the late signing period. We won't hold it against you. We put you in a situation where there's nothing else you can do. We'll continue to monitor the recruiting stuff for you, but honestly, it's just not the big story right now.
8) We've been updating the coach search stuff every day multiple times and I'm going to do it again after this so I'm not going to run through it all here. But a couple of notes:
Mike Norvell is out. I think he'll end up at Florida State. He won't end up here.
I think Bryan Harsin is very much in the picture, maybe in the driver's seat.
I think Willie Fritz is going to get more attention than I initially thought.
Will Healy is a name that came on my radar this morning that I'm trying to look into.
9) I wanted to give Lane Kiffin his own section. Partly because he's the hot name right now, but also because of this: Missouri has a Jimmy Sexton problem. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago as a factor when it was looking like Missouri might make a change and was told it was stupid. It is not stupid. Sexton's relationship with Mizzou and Jim Sterk has been rocky. At best. It goes back to the negotiations of the extension last year. Barry Odom and Sexton didn't feel they got the deal they deserved. It was a very club friendly deal for Missouri and you can argue it was the right deal. But it strained the relationship. I was told Sterk and Sexton weren't even dealing with each other personally by the end of it. Obviously, Missouri just fired one of Sexton's clients. That in and of itself is no big deal. Sexton reps enough guys that he has people get fired all the time. But when the relationship with the AD isn't great and he's the chessmaster of college football--particularly in the SEC--it is a thing to pay attention to. I'm not sure how many of you understand how important agents are in this process and Sexton is the biggest of them all (oh by the way, he represents Derek Dooley too).
Lane Kiffin is a Jimmy Sexton client. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible Missouri can hire a Sexton client. But I think it's harder than hiring someone else's client. I'll be interested to see how that plays out. Missouri may not get Kiffin regardless of his agent. He may not even be their top choice. But I'd say I'm downgrading the chances on Kiffin from what I thought they were when I went to bed last night.
10) I have no idea how this is going to go. I'm starting to lean to the idea that to get a hire that will be popular with most of the fanbase, it's either going to be Bryan Harsin or Sterk has a guy on his list who is not on any of our radars. And that's very possible. In a coaching search, I always judge the job we've done this way: If the guy they hire was on my initial hot board, I did well. I'm starting to think maybe the best outcome for Mizzou fans is if the guy they hire wasn't on my hot board and comes as a complete surprise. Of course, the last time that happened, it was Frank Haith, and I don't think that made any of you very happy. So we'll see.
