Jedd Fisch inherited a terrible offensive football team and he produced a terrible offense. That does not make him a bad coach, that is the inevitable outcome of lacking talent. There are many men who have made their fortunes coaching this game that carry on about the coaching ability of Jedd Fisch. I am far more concerned with this coaching staff's ability to cultivate talent into winning than I am about Jedd Fisch's ability to gameplan and call plays.
Now for my take on some of the hot topics surrounding Jed Fisch:
-He ruined Adam Weber because he switched his throwing motion:
Personally, I think far too much is made over the changing of Weber's throwing motion. Adam Weber was not setting the world on fire before Jedd Fisch came along. The only thing he was really doing better was throwing the ball more accurately, however it is almost impossible to compare the difference in accuracy between a spread and and a pro set. A lot of Weber's throws last season were merely long hand offs to WRs. Furthermore, Jedd Fisch is a coach, should he really get blasted for changing a kid's throwing motion who is doing something incorrectly? It's not like he turned an All American into an average QB, he turned a bad qb into a bad qb. So, IMO, Fisch can shoulder some blame for not developing Weber into something more, but we simply cannot act like Fisch defiled the work of art which was Adam Weber's quarterback ability.
-Our offense is too complicated for college kids:
What is holding our offense back is the most basic element of the game of football. We simply were not controlling the line of scrimmage. We run a very simple run blocking scheme (much more simple than a zone scheme under Mason), the idea is to line up and beat the man in front of you. We couldn't do this, this past year. Could you imagine the difference in our offense if we merely had an average running game?
I will admit there were times that people looked lost season, but I think that is going to happen whenever you have 1st and 2nd year players running an offense that is brand new to them. Furthermore, can you imagine the amount of blown opportunities that our offensive players messed up (McKnight dropping TD's vs. Illinois, Weber skipping the ball to wide open WR's in the end zone, Weber locking in a guy while another player is running free). Those miscues have nothing to do with a lack of understanding in the offense, and much more to do with execution.
If we were simply able to run the ball a bit more effectively and make the simple plays that we physically messed up , our offense would have been average last season (which would have been a gigantic improvement).
