Has anyone heard a reason why Butch

[JasonS]

I completely agree with both aspects of this post. BJ's sideline presence bothers me as well. It bothered me all last year that everytime you would see him on the sideline his arms were folded and his head was down (I know that it was not all the time but it sure seemed like it). You rarely see him get excited about anything except for the negative.

Actually the whole getting Brian Kelly confused with Butch Jones comment kind of represents what is being said here as well. BK would have gone for it because he does have that mentality and BJ was just OK with getting the points. That my friends is a problem. Would any of you been OK with just kicking a field goal if this game was against WVU, Pitt, or any other BE team? No....the whole idea is to win the game not just get 3 every time. What this says to your team is I have no faith that you can execute a play that will get us a touchdown. If the play calling wasn't awful that might have made the difference as well but it still said, "Nice try guys, lets get the 3 and head on home." Not a great message in my opinion.

I agree that Butch should have gone for 7 and not 3 down on the goalline. Frankly, I don't know that many would disagree with that. To say all Butch does on the sideline is scream at his players and the officials is a bit extreme though (which an early poster basically said). If you want to say that about Brian Kelly, I would go along with it (especially this year). I don't have a problem with Butch's sideline demeanor and anyone who thinks that is the reason this team didn't play better last year or against Tennessee is sorely mistaken. As a coach, you cannot be someone you aren't. That makes you a fake and I think we can agree Butch Jones is not a fake. You could not ask Brian Kelly to have a Tony Dungy type demeanor just like you couldn't ask Tony to have a BK scream fest. It is not in either one's character and that is ok. There are many ways to win football games. Everyone has their own style.

 

[david aka the TYZ]

For the record, I would have still gone for it had it been my call, I just said that I understand taking the points. To be the devils advocate for a second though, if we're talking about building confidence, maybe Butch thought that by getting some points his offense would feel better putting together a scoring drive than by being pushed back again on a fourth down play. Lets be honest, we could do a poll of how many would have gone for it and do another poll of how many actually think we would have converted it. The results would be drastically different. Its easy to say great teams' coaches would go for it, great teams aren't down three touchdowns late. I will say the rule of thumb seems to be that in the first half you take the points, in the second half you go for it. He didn't, I understand the call, don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm not going to call for his head over it.

I get as much as anybody that the loss is frustrating, but this call was not what cost them the game, I think it's just one glaring example of what went wrong last week. So what happens when we go for it and miss and then Tennessee marches 96 yards or so for the score. Is our confidence better? Are fans happier? Lets say we scored the touchdown and then had the same kickoff and gave up the same touchdown drive we gave up. And we lose by 19 instead of 23 (or whatever the margin was). Is our confidence better? Are fans happier?

We have one fan saying Butch sits with his hands folded the whole game and another saying he yells at players the whole game. Which is it? Maybe Butch doesn't have much to cheer about when his defense has gotten manhandled and his offense can't move the ball one yard in crunch time. We want him to be Mr. Sunshine on the bench yet we as fans get to be pissed off and yell and are ready to fire him. I honestly don't watch Butch on the sidelines to see what he does. I know at some point he does something right to get these players to like and respect him. I know he was successful at other programs. I know his recruiting has been hands down better than our previous head coach. We're two games into his second season where he was handed an empty cupboard on defense. These things take time. I want to win now as much as the next guy, but maybe its not realistic to expect this team to win like we did a few years ago. I believe that as the season progresses we'll see improvement out of these guys. The offense already looks better than last year's. I would like to see a different approach on defense, but i don't think that's going to happen. Hopefully he is bringing in some playmakers on that side of the ball and we'll start to see some guys making some plays.