[qwerty49]

In general, I think it's not very useful to spend much time analyzing Shaw's press conferences because I don't think he reveals much about what he's really thinking.

In Shaw's post-ND press conference, he indicated that he is turning his focus to recruiting. I got the impression that Shaw was trying to be as positive as circumstances would allow in an attempt to support his recruiting efforts. I think maybe he wanted to avoid scaring recruits away by being too negative about the program. I would view his comments in that context.

That said, I thought Shaw made a couple of brief comments that I found interesting:

"A lot of things we have to do, a lot of discussions we have to have, some difficult discussions. . . ."

"Some things coaching-wise, which I won't go into detail, that we need to look at. . . ."

I agree that press conferences are low on useful information.  But if Shaw was just trying to put a positive spin on the results to give potential recruits confidence in the program, he is also running the risk of insulting their intelligence (as he did with fans and the press).  When a team is really bad, and the eye test, the stats and the results show it, any whitewashing of that situation by the coach can only be viewed with mistrust.

He thinks he’s putting a positive spin on things by talking about consistency and that our top 10 plays in any game are as good as anyone else’s.  For those of us with a smattering of stat training: Since when do you measure the overall value of a data set by the tail of the bell curve?

He also implies we execute well in practice, less so in games. Well duh — don’t the 1’s still mainly practice against the 2’s? ie our starting OL against our 2nd string DL, and vice-versa? Jeez a lot of high school OLs might do well against our 2nd string D. And ditto for their DLs against our 2nd string O.

Nice try, and we know he has to try, but after the lipstick goes on the pig there are still tough decisions to make. And Coach seems unwilling to accept a CEO role which would go a long way to getting us to better days. That is his flaw, and is squarely on him.

[qwerty49]

In general, I think it's not very useful to spend much time analyzing Shaw's press conferences because I don't think he reveals much about what he's really thinking.

In Shaw's post-ND press conference, he indicated that he is turning his focus to recruiting. I got the impression that Shaw was trying to be as positive as circumstances would allow in an attempt to support his recruiting efforts. I think maybe he wanted to avoid scaring recruits away by being too negative about the program. I would view his comments in that context.

That said, I thought Shaw made a couple of brief comments that I found interesting:

"A lot of things we have to do, a lot of discussions we have to have, some difficult discussions. . . ."

"Some things coaching-wise, which I won't go into detail, that we need to look at. . . ."

I agree that press conferences are low on useful information.  But if Shaw was just trying to put a positive spin on the results to give potential recruits confidence in the program, he is also running the risk of insulting their intelligence (as he did with fans and the press).  When a team is really bad, and the eye test, the stats and the results show it, any whitewashing of that situation by the coach can only be viewed with mistrust.

He thinks he’s putting a positive spin on things by talking about consistency and that our top 10 plays in any game are as good as anyone else’s.  For those of us with a smattering of stat training: Since when do you measure the overall value of a data set by the tail of the bell curve?

He also implies we execute well in practice, less so in games. Well duh — don’t the 1’s still mainly practice against the 2’s? ie our starting OL against our 2nd string DL, and vice-versa? Jeez a lot of high school OLs might do well against our 2nd string D. And ditto for their DLs against our 2nd string O.

Nice try, and we know he has to try, but after the lipstick goes on the pig there are still tough decisions to make. And Coach seems unwilling to accept a CEO role which would go a long way to getting us to better days. That is his flaw, and is squarely on him.