[Austroturf]

Very true. We have people on this board blaming this coach or that coach, but the problem has been years in the making. What we seem to lack on the OL (IMnSHO) is at least in part, leadership and a killer instinct. These guys are big enough and athletic enough, at least on paper. They just don't move people. It is not that they occasionally don't move people. They basically never move people. The few effective runs we have seen this year are almost all due to the defense making a mistake and going the wrong way (or something similar). It is not because we made a big hole, it is because the defense vacated the hole.
The TWU had an ethos and an internally based leadership structure that set expectations and ensured they were met. Who is doing that today? It seems no one is. Our team's OL plays soft. Our opponents know it and revel in it after so many years of getting pushed around. We can't be the team Shaw wants us to be until this is fixed. Period.
Yes, coaching matters. However, I don't think it can explain our lack of results on the OL. If we had a bunch of questionable bodies who were too small and too slow, then our only hope would be some kind of a coaching miracle to solve the problem. That is not the case. We have guys that are big enough and fast enough that they should at least some of the time win the battle in the trenches on running plays. We don't see this.

I agree with your assessment.  But if we agree that we have, on paper, the right recruits on the OL, who is responsible for instilling the "Intellectual Brutality" that was the hallmark of our best years (2010-2013)?  That has to come from the head coach through his staff.  It's a cultural thing; and in my view, the lack of this "killer instinct" (as you call it) is part of the main problem.  I have always maintained that Shaw's football culture has many virtues; but meanness and toughness are not among them.  Harbaugh may have been a hothead, but his best teams were built to fight it out.  A lot of that has disappeared in the eight years since his departure.

[Austroturf]

Very true. We have people on this board blaming this coach or that coach, but the problem has been years in the making. What we seem to lack on the OL (IMnSHO) is at least in part, leadership and a killer instinct. These guys are big enough and athletic enough, at least on paper. They just don't move people. It is not that they occasionally don't move people. They basically never move people. The few effective runs we have seen this year are almost all due to the defense making a mistake and going the wrong way (or something similar). It is not because we made a big hole, it is because the defense vacated the hole.
The TWU had an ethos and an internally based leadership structure that set expectations and ensured they were met. Who is doing that today? It seems no one is. Our team's OL plays soft. Our opponents know it and revel in it after so many years of getting pushed around. We can't be the team Shaw wants us to be until this is fixed. Period.
Yes, coaching matters. However, I don't think it can explain our lack of results on the OL. If we had a bunch of questionable bodies who were too small and too slow, then our only hope would be some kind of a coaching miracle to solve the problem. That is not the case. We have guys that are big enough and fast enough that they should at least some of the time win the battle in the trenches on running plays. We don't see this.

I agree with your assessment.  But if we agree that we have, on paper, the right recruits on the OL, who is responsible for instilling the "Intellectual Brutality" that was the hallmark of our best years (2010-2013)?  That has to come from the head coach through his staff.  It's a cultural thing; and in my view, the lack of this "killer instinct" (as you call it) is part of the main problem.  I have always maintained that Shaw's football culture has many virtues; but meanness and toughness are not among them.  Harbaugh may have been a hothead, but his best teams were built to fight it out.  A lot of that has disappeared in the eight years since his departure.