Who's your candidate of 'last resort'?

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Right now Horton is the fall back guy and I do respect the job he did in keeping the team together and the accomplishments made, but next year is all new and he will have to change how he goes about business. Just got a hunch he will have to do things a lot differently.
 

50PoundHead said:
I wouldn't mind Shannon, but I can't figure out why he was fired. Donna Shalala doesn't mess around, but I have a hard time seeing why Shannon should have been fired. Must be nice to have high expectations.
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From what I have read, this last year for Shannon was more of a hiccup then indicative of the type of HC he is. He would actually be a respectable hire, IMO, though I am still hoping for Mullen.

Honestly, right now about any solid coach sounds pretty good.
 

Sigh. Horton is not a fallback guy, I'm sorry. Just because he is better than Brew does not make him the answer to any of our questions.

However, if we should ever find ourselves in need of an interim coach, he's the guy.
 

howeda7 said:
He'll be busy with Play-off games, after winning the NFC West with a 6-10 record. :cry:
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That will only be the case if it's impossible given the late-season match-ups to win that division with a 5-11 record.
 

50 pound are you for Singletary coming to the U? I would love it
 



I guess it all depends on how far we have to fall back.

Many of the names that now seem "realistic" are names that people probably would have referred to as "fallback" two weeks ago.

One option would be to find an older, established coach that is not currently employed in coaching (ie Belotti, Fulmer, others?) and sign them to a contract that would result in a "coach-in-waiting" situation within a couple of years. That's essentially what happened with Belotti at Oregon.

That way, we'd sidestep two hurdles that we seem to have:
1) payment of exorbitant buyout for an existing coach;
2) concern over the hiring of a new AD.

I'm not saying this is a good idea - just an idea.
 

howeda7 said:
Heck Horton's been at an NFL OC too.
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Where did you get that idea? No, he has never been an NFL OC. In fact, he had never been an offensive coordinator until this year. Ever. He had been a head coach before (Nevada for one year and UNLV for five terrible seasons), but never a coordinator. In fact, his two NFL jobs were low-level offensive assistants on two bad teams (one of which the head coach was fired four games into the season). He was the assistant offensive line coach for the Rams (not the OL coach, but the asst OL coach). He was the QB coach at Detroit.
 

To be extra fair and anal, Horton had one OK season (7-5) and four bad ones (6-39) at UNLV.
 



tjgopher said:
Where did you get that idea? No, he has never been an NFL OC. In fact, he had never been an offensive coordinator until this year. Ever. He had been a head coach before (Nevada for one year and UNLV for five terrible seasons), but never a coordinator. In fact, his two NFL jobs were low-level offensive assistants on two bad teams (one of which the head coach was fired four games into the season). He was the assistant offensive line coach for the Rams (not the OL coach, but the asst OL coach). He was the QB coach at Detroit.
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I could have sworn I read that he had the OC title in Detroit or elsewhere when he was hired here, but if I am mistaken, apologies.
 

howeda7 said:
I could have sworn I read that he had the OC title in Detroit or elsewhere when he was hired here, but if I am mistaken, apologies.
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Scott Linehan is the offensive coordinator at Detroit. Horton was his QB coach.
 


howeda7 said:
That makes sense. He wasn't the OC in St. Louis when Linehan was HC?
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No, I already said Horton was the assistant offensive line coach at the Rams, not the OL coach, the assistant OL coach. Former Purdue assistant Greg Olson was Linehan's OC in St. Louis. Olson is now the Tampa Bay Bucaneers OC. Literally, outside of his six years as head coach, Jeff Horton was a QB coach, WR coach, and an assistant OL coach at varying levels for 13 years. The Gophers were the first team to hire him as a coordinator. Ever.
 



howeda7 said:
Why don't you think they would? All accounts are that Fulmer would and that the Shannon rumors last month were mainly coming from his camp. In Shannon's case I'm not sure the terms of his 'buyout' and whether he'd essentially be 'coaching for free', but there are usually ways around that issue.
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The more I have been reading about Shannon, the more I think he could definetly be in the mix. Really, at this point, it is almost impossible to tell who is going to be the next coach as the University is being very tight lipped about the situation. In my opinion, I think we are really down to about 5 people. Those being, Edsall, Calhoun, Hoke, Golden and possibly Shannon. Now I think you could possibly throw Horton's name in there as well. But it is really hard to tell.
 

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