n defense of Mac, if you are building for the future, what do you do? He could've completely changed the offense and try to win a game or two more. I grant you that and understand everyone's (including mine) frustration at the time. After giving it some thought, I have changed my mind. Treon was a stop gap. He was a short-term fix. He was duct tape. What we were able to do over the final games was continue to get experience for the other guys on offense. Everyone talks about how important experience is for players. Well, those other guys got experience in Macs offense and not in another offense that they'll never run again. Am I happy about the tight games or losses? Of course not, but if the experience helps us next year and beyond, it was the right choice.
One thought thru my head is Treon's desires. We've read where he is practicing this spring with non-QB activities, and I thought I heard where he was wanting/willing to switch last season perhaps (I can fully see him be willing, but I am unclear if he was wanting it of his own volition). Bottom line, he had experience from 2014 and was the only functional (ha!) backup to Will Greir. I can fully imagine that if he did have a desire to switch positions, Mac would have said no for 2015 and asked TH to hang in there because we very well may need him to play some QB in 2015 (anticipating possibly WG injury with no backups).
Whatever TH's desires may have been, he did the best he could with what he was asked to do given his personal skill set. I'll respect that and appreciate it, regardless of the outcome. But now we have a lot of QBs on campus and we can afford for TH to change positions. Desire from earlier, or perhaps seeing the writing on the wall for 2016 - whatever the reason, he's switching and we have real QBs for 2016 (we hope).
Looking back to 2015, he was indeed a stop gap. Mac is building a new system (a 'process' if you will) with the program. What is the message to kids if the coach changes direction like a drunk taxi driver based on who he has at QB? I think you're dead on in assessing that Mac was willing to take some lumps this season for multiple reasons:
1. He needed to establish his 'process' and not appear wishy washy.
2. He knew we had limitations at QB once WG left, but the rest of the team needed to continue to institute the process and philosophy
3. He knew there wasn't a lot he could do to fix the offense with TH, nor hold back the demoralization of the defense in later games given the deficiencies at on offense and in the kicking game.
4. He knew there wasn't a lot he could do for the bowl game in terms of keeping player focus and intensity when so many had already checked out (won the east, offense and kicking can't get better, defense had already given up). Fighting that would be a tremendous waste of energy on what can be a learning opportunity for the players.
The last bit really sticks in my head. Skill wise we has already hit our ceiling, there wasn't much that could be done. Mentally, you can't make players care about a bowl game when they'd been thru the last 3 games of what we 'played' - but you can let the players take the carefree approach and get their asses handed to them so they know the result of that lack of focus. Those leaving were already gone. The lesson is for the ones returning, that he's counting on to be leaders in the future.
While you want to win every game, reality is that sometimes you can't due to being out skilled, out willed, or out smarted. If you know you can't win a game, then you are working to win the next game and/or season. That's what I took from the coaching in the end of the season - sometimes you know you can't compete, so you work on the foundation for the future.
