The House of Blue

Firing Ortmeyer has been a big trade off. Nord is supposedly a good recruiter. But our return game was always solid under Ort. I guess it depends on which one you place the higher priority.

As for the pass defense- keep in mind that the reason Minter was let go at Notre Dame was that his units became notorious for giving up monster pass plays every Saturday. That's the trade off with his defense. You better have GREAT db's to run this scheme, because they will be tested early and often and exposed if they have any weakness.

Our return units consistently ranked in the top 20 under Ort. Last time we returned a kick for a TD? IIRC, against Louisville in 2009. How many kicks have been returned against us for huge gains lately? Off the top of my head, TD against Jax State, Tennessee to our own 17 yard line, TD for Georgia last year, TD for WKU last year. Seiber hurt us a couple of time against UT. And the Florida debacles I'll agree with you. But notice I said return game, which has been non-existent since Nord took over.

I hear you 100% on the pass defense. I made the exact same observation you did to the folks sitting around me in Commonwealth, and I got absolutely blasted. It seems most people are letting the defense off the hook. We have major issues there.

We dont have the talent or coaching in the secondary. Receipe for a disaster.

I can recall not too many seasons ago when UK had a fine defensive secondary. Is the difference between then and now the players more than the coaches?

The error of keeping Brown around is a microcosm of UKFB through the years. You can argue that an SEC school could find someone with coordinator experience but promoting Brown was not a huge stretch. He was paid like he was an experienced coordinator and given a big contract. He was a bad coordinator but instead of replacing him with a proven coordinator we keep him around to save money, about 650k for two years in a business which generates 30 million a year. This limits what could have been a break through season for UK and Joker Phillips last year and ultimately we end up spending the money anyway and keep him around a second year to save the cost of a DB coach (around 140K) and make him work with the new coordinator with the crazy "co-" title. What a bunch of small minded decisions. It was the same when we hired Curry who clearly needed a top notch staff to be successful. We give Curry a big contract but no money for staff or support. For this year I feel that coaching is playing a big role.

All else aside, I thought the black unis were very, very sharp. Even exceeded my expectations.

Even in Jeff's photo gallery, they just pop. Blue and black is a nice look IMO.