beo

The sort of cheating Harbaugh was doing isn't something that can be done in the NFL anyways because most communication is done via headsets in helmets, something that doesn't really exist in the college game because the NCAA is perennially stuck in 1942. I wouldn't be surprised if this fiasco is what finally forces the NCAA's hand in modernizing things, and I also don't think it's relevant with regards to his NFL prospects.

It's just grandstanding. A lot of people around here claim to hate watching a soft team with no identity oopsie it's way into garbage football year after year yet every time an opportunity to actually develop an identity presents itself all of it sudden the tide shifts to pearl clutching along the lines of "Wait.. no! I'd rather keep losing than win in THAT way." This place would've hated Cam if he was on a different team because people in general tend to hate on successful people who have polarizing personalities. So the cope to justify it is that he "burned out" at his other locations. One thing that the Huddle does often is manufacture a narrative and then it gets regurgitated over and over again until eventually it becomes the one truth and if you disagree with it, clearly you're just some conspiracy nut who's off his pills. I find it very difficult to even fathom the argument that Harbaugh wouldn't be a great thing for this team. He didn't grow "old" in SF, he got ran out by a new, big shot owner who wanted to put his stamp on things. Sound familiar? The evidence given for this "he grows tired with his players" spiel is often just sighting his last season in SF, like going 8-8 is some horrible year when it'd be the best year we've had in SIX SEASONS. And that's while ignoring the context behind the scenes that he had the owner and notoriously god awful general manager breathing down his neck and ready to axe him the second an opportunity presented itself because there had long been a power struggle brewing in SF. Oh, and that one Deion Sanders report (lmfao) that often gets cited as the gospel ignores the very real possibility that it was leaked from someone within the organization who had it out for him in the power struggle (probably Baalke himself.) Something a SI article even reported on in the wake of the entire fiasco. (https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/12/29/jim-harbaugh-jed-york-san-francisco-49ers-coaching-search If y'all ever want to see Tepper get his hands out of football ops, you go and hire Harbaugh. We need a vocal coach that will come in and stand up to Tepper's bullsh!t. Because as egotistical as Tepper may be, he clearly doesn't enjoy losing either. We've been stuck in utter futility for 5 years doing things the Tepper way. If Harbaugh comes here, does things his way, and we start winning games? That could be the catalyst for change in Tepper's approach to running this team that we need to see. We should be practically begging for Harbaugh. He could be the difference long-term between us becoming a perennial, Lions-esque loser and actually morphing into a competent football organization. And no, that isn't even slightly hyperbole. Remember what the Niners were like after Harbaugh got pushed out? They were WORSE than we are now. York, similar to Tepper, was hiring yes-men like Jim Tomsula and what that got them was a cumulative record of 17-47 (.265) from 2015-2018. Even assuming this incredibly flimsy narrative is true and he does wear out his welcome after a few years.. if those few years not only showed Tepper that there are more ways than his and encouraged him to stop meddling in football ops, but we also made the playoffs a few times? Like are people seriously trying to argue that would somehow be a bad thing? Having a transitional coach just to get this team even on the general right TRACK would be good for us. Giving any coach personnel decisions makes me uneasy but if that's what it takes to get him here I'd honestly drink the bitter chalice and do it at this point. Harbaugh or a coach like him is the exactly thing this team needs. We need a coach that will show Tepper that there are more ways than his or the spiral into ownership hell is only going to get worse and we're just going to become the new Browns.

Don't forget the cherry on top; meddling ownership! I really don't even see how we're going to attract anyone to this place. Probably just get stuck with another uninspired retread or an extremely green up and comer that had no other options. Late Al Davis Raiders style!

It is legitimately unreal that man continued to get DC jobs after his Duke tenure. He was terrible at all of them too, held back CPJ's Tech teams immensely. I think he's now listed as OU's but I'm pretty sure Veneables calls all the plays there so he's a glorified high level assistant. Still fascinating, shows that coaching really is more about knowing people than anything.

Gameday! Mostly just cupcake matchups but hey, maybe something crazy'll happen.

Here's the funny part, we were 9th in attendance last year. 7th so far this year: https://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2022 If we don't buy the tickets, the transplant fans of other teams will. We're basically fuged no matter how you slice it. I think the point of his post though was that if they moved we could maybe get another expansion team with a hopefully not meddling owner and get to start over. Won't happen though because there aren't really any better markets out there. All we can do is pray that Tepper is visited by three spirits and vows to change his meddling ways. Which... lol.

The Carolinas are too profitable of a market when put up against other options. Where would he move it? San Antonio? Texas has the Cowboys, Texans and a lot of college teams to compete against and San Antonio itself is a Spurs town. What else is there in the US? Portland? St Louis? San Diego? Lol. We're fuged unless Tepper backs off and stops meddling because he isn't selling either.

Not usually one to care much about scrimmages/exhibition matches but Louisville just lost an exhibition to D2 Kentucky Wesleyan, who are projected to finish 8th in the G-MAC. Not sure if Payne will make it through the season given how much of a disaster that whole thing was last year. https://sports.yahoo.com/louisville-basketball-bullied-paint-drops-014003757.html

Since the season's coming up and I don't see a thread, decided to just make one myself. Starting off the morning with some big recruiting news as 5 Star forward Cooper Flagg has committed to Duke at like 7 AM sharp in the morning for some reason, dude must be an early bird or something lol. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/38778660/projected-top-pick-25-nba-draft-cooper-flagg-commits-duke

Congratulations to the Virginia Cavaliers for their first FBS win this season!

Keep in mind that these sort of pressure numbers are entirely subjective, which is why if you cross-reference sites you'll see varying totals. Win rate is the better stat for OL/DL, imo. For pass block or run win rate among OTs, Ickey sadly isnt even in the top 20. With that being said I'm not out on Ickey yet, this place was ready to burn Derrick Brown at the stake during his sophomore slump; I feel he'll probably be fine in the long run. Also, we do have some appearances on the defensive line. 31st as a team in run block win rate. Ouch.

I think the problem is that there are a lot of people here who come from not only very different walks of life but online climates as well. As a collective, the "Huddle" doesn't know what it wants, because shockingly the Huddle consists of more than three people and isn't just some uniform entity. I am usually against stuff like this, some are in the "eh if it helps it helps" camp, some people support it, others support it deep down but don't want to say it because they're too embarrassed by the concept to admit that they support it, etc. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people are just complaining to complain and just using the state as the forum as another thing to dunk on due to general, pent up frustration with the team. This includes the crowd going around trying to derail threads with actual football discussion in them with ad-hominem one liners BTW. Could some things about the site be better? Yeah sure. As someone who has a (non-forum) website of my own I've never had any issues with spam bots but I feel that's probably more in the Igo wheelhouse of issues rather than the mods. But the site itself nor its moderation are the core problem. The state of the team AKA the fact that the team's future now looks very bleak IF Young doesn't work out is the source of the ails. If Young can come out and win our next game against CJ h2h while looking good doing it, the morale of this place will probably raise significantly.

Has the ACC started paying refs by the flag? God damn. There is a 50% chance of a flag on any given play seemingly in this Duke-State game.

...And? You seem hell bent on trying to derail this thread for whatever reason. Got a metagrudge with the OP or something?

Our fanbase has unrealistically low expectations for a QBs supporting cast in part due to how fuging pathetically we built around Cam. I can't think of a legit franchise QB that got a shittier hand than Cam did as far as offensive supporting casts go in recent memory. Folks do not realize just how galactically far behind we were the rest of the league when Cam was here, remember how many posters were saying our WR core was "underrated" going into the year? lol. It's held over from the Cam era IMO, the fanbase simply has no standards for supporting skill position talent and expects the QB to carry the team on his back because Cam did it. To truly "elevate" a team as a QB, you have to be flat out ELITE. And even then you won't win much come playoff time in the vast majority of cases if the surrounding team is poo. Expecting a rookie in his 5th game to be such a player is a really unfair baseline if you ask me.

Just wanna say that I appreciate the approach y'all take to moderation. I know you only ever receive complaints and calls to ban and accusations of bias and all that, but I personally love how light and relatively uncensored the moderation is here; if anything I'd call for even less lol. If this place just became another super sanitized forum like the Reddit is, i'd probably have left years ago and I feel like I'm not alone in that respect.

Oh, ew. Are we actually predominantly running a zone blocking scheme now? I only saw this pop up recently and I've only really paid attention to the first 2 games of the year, and in doing so I was not really looking at the OL. But if we are it'd explain a lot of our struggles up front and also the lack of pulls, traps and other blocks of that nature. We definitely don't have ideal personnel for it IMO, as you said most of our linemen are mauler types who aren't exactly known for their ability to get out in space and up to the second level. It could work pretty well for Brady maybe but even guys like Ickey I don't think it's a good fit honestly as he's not particularly agile. Comes off as a desperate attempt at chasing trends when we had a really good thing going last year. Sanders also has atrocious vision which further clashes with this, when you're running zone you need to be able to find cutback lanes and he simply just isn't very good at that to put it nicely. We really need to just start Chubba if this is the case; we're looking for a back that can find and hit holes, that's his forte. But they definitely need to reconsider really the entire approach to the run game over the bye if they want to find any real success on the ground, because the playcalls are also extremely predictable (take a shot every time you see inside zone out of the shotgun) and when you mix that with playing the line outside of their strengths you are usually met with really lackluster results. This team is just so strangely constructed.

It took Romulus 30 years to build Rome and become an overnight sensation, give him time.

100% agree, it's a longterm thing. We'll see. I have a feeling they'll probably find some level of loophole eventually; no way those 3 teams will still be in the ACC come 2035.

I think big east and independent in football is the most likely outcome for Duke in the event of an ACC collapse. I do think Duke is in a slightly better position than given credit for with the football program on the up, when you combine the basketball and football money Duke looks a lot better standing-wise (as does UNC and any of the other BBall blue bloods, most top tier BBall programs are roughly on par with a low to mid tier P5 fb program in terms of revenue). I'm more concerned about Wake. They are absolutely screwed.

The ACC has the grant of rights blocking the exit of the teams though. In the last negotiation cycle the ACC basically traded some payout money in exchange for longterm stability which seems to be paying off at the moment. That's why FSU, Clemson and UNC haven't already left. Teams cant just leave, it's pretty much on the lawyers of the teams that do to try and find a loophole somehow but they haven't been able to do so to any real success so far. An ACC league source last year told CBS Sports, at that time, it might have cost as much as $500 million total to exit the league, including its grant of rights, as there were then 14 years left on the deal. Other estimates have been lower but still significant. (this number is probably bullshit but it's pretty much unanimous that it'd cost far more than any school is willing to pay to leave) https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/inside-the-big-12s-ironclad-grant-of-rights-contract-that-helped-keep-the-acc-together-amid-turbulence/

And what will the tv contracts look like in 3 years? My point is that it's too early to really call anything at this stage. We are treading in completely uncharted waters, we have no real precident for this. These schools will act in their own interests ultimately, whatever is the most profitable move is what will be taken. I never denied that the ACC can't fall apart, I said in my reply to the other poster that it is "CERTAINLY POSSIBLE". I just don't see what interest it serves for any of the other programs besides those few. It will suck and be a huge blow though, absolutely. But where exactly are the other programs in the ACC going? What exactly makes ripping the conference apart more viable for other members than it just remaining without those 3 teams? State, Miami, maybe Duke, Louisville and UVA are about the only teams I could see following suit, though IMO the last 3 aren't in that great of positions themselves and Miami was one of the few that fully supported the expansion to 3 teams so they seem to be set on remaining in the ACC right now.

This is certainly possible, but I think it's worth considering that the TV deal isn't up until 2036 which is quite a ways out. I just don't really see many of the other ACC teams jumping ship. State maybe to whatever conference UNC doesn't go to so that they can have a stake in the NC football market? Other than that, I see little incentive for any other members. It's true the ACC will be much worse off without FSU and Clemson, but the big 12 lost Texas and OU and seems to be doing fine. I just think there's a bit of fearmongering due to recent events, this isn't really the same situation as the PAC which dug its own grave playing hard ball in negotiations when it had no leverage to do so and had far less longterm security in its tv contract.

Also calling Duke's basketball program merely "above average" when we both have the same number of non stone-age rings is pretty hilarious but in the interest of not derailing the thread I'll let it slide.