I Like It For The Jokes January 7, 2013
An offensive coordinator whose last name is a unit of measurement? Does it get any better than that? The jokes are limitless.
Next fall – and it will only be next fall because Illinois only hangs on to offensive coordinators for one season because we don’t know how to build a football program – will be nearly limitless in the number of possible jokes. Our new offensive coordinator’s name is a short unit of measurement.
GOOD GOD THIS OFFENSE CAN’T EVEN MOVE THE FOOTBALL TWO CUBITS AND A BARLEYCORN.
I should back up for those of you who are confused. Co-OC Chris Beatty was let go. Co-OC Billy Gonzales was moved to just WR coach. And reports say that we’re hiring former Western Michigan head coach Bill Cubit as our offensive coordinator.
If you’re still confused, a cubit is a very old (as in biblical-old) unit of measurement. It’s generally 18-20″ – the length from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. Holy crap. The middle finger. More jokes!
WHAT’S A CUBIT AGAIN? THAT’S RIGHT – IT’S THE LENGTH FROM MY ELBOW TO MY MIDDLE FINGER, BILL.
I really don’t understand how that works. Say someone is supposed to build a table 2 cubits high. What if that person is Meyers Leonard? Does that table need barstools? Better yet, what if that person is Fred Sykes? Everyone sits on the ground?
(That was the best joke in this post. The nine of you who got it are boarding your roflcopters.)
So I love the Cubit hire for the jokes. Pretty much limitless next fall. But that might be the only thing I like about the hire.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of getting an experienced coordinator. Cubit was the offensive coordinator at Missouri and Rutgers and Stanford before getting the Western Michigan job. As we talked about last summer, we were going into the season with two offensive coordinators who had never called a single play before. And the one who ended up calling the plays was a high school coach only six years ago. Their lack of experienced showed last season, so replacing them with a 59 year-old former head coach who has done nothing but coach offense his whole life is a good thing.
But a pass happy coach? That has me scratching my head. I mean, sure, I’d love to return to the Mike White days (or even the Ron Turner offensive days – just not the Ron Turner defensive days). Our best teams in the last 30 years have generally been defined by a high-powered passing attack (Eason, Trudeau, George, Kittner). But has anyone bothered to look at the roster?
We have a run-first senior QB. We just recruited a run-first high school QB (one of the top high school QB’s in the country). I know that some people hate run-first QB’s, but I love them. Get a line that can block the scheme and it’s nearly impossible to stop if your QB is athletic enough. I watched Ohio State and Braxton Miller last year and dreamed of what this offense could be under Aaron Bailey if we can get the line figured out.
And now we hire a coordinator who has built most of his teams around a stand-9-yards-deep-and-sling-it-around QB? Um, we don’t have any 9-yards-deep-and-sling-it-around QB’s. The closest thing we have is Reilly O’Toole, but he didn’t arrive with that reputation (he doesn’t have that kind of arm and his hitch limits him from getting it out quickly). O’Toole arrived as a game manager. He can make enough throws, he won’t make mistakes, he can engineer drives. That’s not Alex Carder or Tim Hiller, the last two QB’s that Cubit had at Western Michigan. They were both “won’t make a play with their feet but can stand back there and get the ball out quickly” guys.
Which means if that’s the offense Cubit wants to run, we’re probably three years away from having a QB ready to run it. It would have to be someone in the 2014 class, and they won’t be ready until 2015 or 2016. Would Cubit (or Beckman) still be around by then? More than likely not.
Now, I’m making a big assumption here – I’m assuming that Cubit won’t be flexible and shape his offense around a read-option QB. If he has an Aaron Bailey (seriously, people, he’s a better runner and athlete than Juice or Nate), he’d be crazy not to use him that way. It would be insane to take Aaron Bailey’s feet and plant them 9 yards deep.
And I guess I’m also assuming that Bailey can’t be that pocket QB. He has the arm strength. A much better arm than Scheelhaase or O’Toole. It’s just that he ran the triple option in high school and only threw it eight times per game. Maybe Cubit is just that good at coaching quarterbacks and can turn Bailey (and O’Toole, and even Scheelhaase) into efficient passers. If Mick McCall can continue to do that with nobody recruits at Northwestern, maybe Cubit can do that for us.
But I’m an Illinois football fan. Nobody ever does that for us. We simply find ways to screw everything up. Which is why I can’t see anything here besides “running QB’s and a pocket-passing OC”. Nothing good ever happens for us. Well, except for jokes.
I KNOW NOW WHY HIS NAME IS BILL CUBIT. NEED A YARD ON THIRD AND ONE? GET A CUBIT.
Don’t worry – I’ll have time to work on those before next fall.
And finally the real reason behind the home and home with Western Michigan is revealed.
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Long live the Chief.
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Seems like it would be the tail wagging the dog if we had based the hiring of our coaches based on a high school kid we’ve recruited. I could be wrong but the recent pass-heavyiness of Cubit may be just that – recent. And maybe it was based on the personnel he had at hand. I don’t recall Missouri, Rutgers or Stanford as being pass happy offenses at any time in recent years. Looks like Stanford only passed for 2,050 and 2,700 yards as a team in both years he was there.
I agree with Robert. You have a system. You recruit and develop to that system. And you stay the course with your system.
Mick McCall has adapted to available talent with run and pass-oriented spread offenses. Bill Cubit has always had pass-oriented spread offenses for the past 20 years, with a west-coast flavor (lot of precision passing and timing routes), and has only dabbled in run-oriented spread concepts.
Can Cubit adapt to available talent and become a run-oriented spread OC? Maybe, but it sure seems like a strange thing to ask of a guy who has been doing something different for 20+ years.
Stanford, Rutgers and Missouri didn’t throw the ball as much when he was the OC, but they also had TERRIBLE offenses under Cubit. All of his success has come with a good pocket QB and WR who run precise routes and catch everything.
Cubit ran a traditional “pro-style” offense when he started at WMU that featured a lot of passing, but was run out of 21 and 22 personnel sets as well as some single back stuff. over time his offenses at WMU evolved into pass first, 4-5 WR sets that looked very similar to Mizzou – a lot of short passes, rarely throwing vertical routes down the field.
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i think that, on paper, the Cubit hire is exactly what we need. Tons of experience at the BCS level as an OC, tons of experience as a HC, not a lot that the guy hasn’t seen before.
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my concerns come in with how he relates to Beckman. Although Cubit did run a lot of 21/22 packages and single back stuff he still did that with a traditional pocket QB. And when he finally spread it out it was spread and throw, not spread and run read option. how will he fit with what Beckman wants to do, which is a run-oriented spread a la Urban Meyer? I don’t really care which offense we choose to run, i just want all of our coaches on board with it. And as we saw last year, that may be a problem. It seems to me that in a Cubit system ROT would have a clear edge as the starter. It also seems clear to me that NS is clearly the #1 guy based on the fact that he played a pretty miserable 12 game season and we never truly saw ROT get a chance other than when NS was injured or just playing dreadful, dreadful football. What if Cubit really wants to play ROT? and TB says no, NS is my guy? that could be pretty bad.
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the second question, as Robert mentioned, is what do you do with Aaron Bailey? I would personally like to see him RS, work on his passing technique and try to give him a go at QB as a RS-FR or if ROT is the better of the two, then as a RS-SO. If Bailey isn’t a fit, he may have to move to the backfield or the WR position a la Marquis Gray at Minny, who seemed to bounce from QB to WR eternally. I would prefer that they pick a position for Bailey and go with it – either try to make him a QB or try to make him a WR but not both. Otherwise you get a frustrated young man that can’t really play anything because he hasn’t gotten the reps at either position.
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it strikes me that the Cubit hire contains a lot of risk/reward. On the one hand, he had very successful offenses at WMU and is tremendously experienced. On the other hand, all that experience (and frankly, i think he is more qualified to be the HC than TB) may put him in direct confrontation with the HC. I think right now, at this moment in time, it was a great hire. Through the power of hindsight we might all be lampooning this hire in 9 months as just another mistake in a long line of them. But right now? Probably the best choice we could have made.
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Look at the NFL nowadays, it’s a pass first league. Any hot shot high school kid who has dreams of moving to that level will want to go to a school that passes. This might not be all that bad, and could be a good way to recruit stud receivers who would not have given UIUC a second thought – affect on Bailey’s Illini career notwithstanding. We certainly do need receivers.
So you want to recruit the players Cubit needs to be successful starting in the 2014 class. That means we might have some offensive success in 2015 when those guys have a chance to develop. I guess that will be helpful if Beckman’s replacement likes to throw the ball.
I’m looking forward to the Bill Cubit offense if he starts ROT at QB this year. If he goes with Scheelhaase or Bailey, it will be a disaster.
Ranger – good point on Marquis Gray. Jerry Kill recognized that he wasnt a very good QB and once he got a pocket passer in there like Philip Nelson, Nelson started as a true freshman and the upperclassmen Gray was moved to WR. I HOPE that Cubit does the same thing with Bailey and Scheelhaase. The Bailey thing will be interesting to watch in the next several weeks till signing day because I believe the only reason Aaron Bailey signed with Illinois was that it was the only school to promise him a shot at QB. The other big schools on him wouldnt do that. If Illinois goes back on that with Cubit at OC, he may look elsewhere.
Also Robert which is it?..you said ” I’d love to return to the Mike White days (or even the Ron Turner offensive days.Our best teams in the last 30 years have generally been defined by a high-powered passing attack (Eason, Trudeau, George, Kittner). ”
Then you say a couple lines later, ” I know that some people hate run-first QB’s, but I love them.”
Please, please focus on sights, the attempts at humor is more offensive than the Illinois attempts at offense.
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Man, I WOULD love to return to the Mike White and Ron Turner days. Always good when your school grooms guys for the NFL – makes it more appealing to go there. I think the Redskins just found out the shortcomings of the running QB. I think this fad of pistol offenses and running QBs will be short-lived (in the NFL that is – it will always have a place in college football).
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Rochillini I would recommend Tate’s column-no “attempts” at humor there. I’m sure he can zero in on the sights, also.