In reply to: Football Scoop: ND in 3 of 13 most interesting non-conf gms. posted by G.K.Chesterton
But its still uninteresting.
Probably more "interesting" to the Cincy fanbase than ours, but still kind of interesting nonetheless:
1) They still absolutely despise Brian Kelly for how he left. They make the esteemed posters of NDN look like we're BK's best friends.
2) The Freeman hire.
3) Mickens played there and, like Freeman, was on the staff for many of their current players.
4) Michael Young starts for them.
5) Denbrock is their OC.
6) They had an argument (not saying it should've been a winning argument, but they could at least legitimately make one, along with A&M) to get into the CFP in the 4th spot. They will likely use that to try to play up the revenge factor.
7) This is my personal opinion, but I still think Fickell could be a good realistic possibility to replace BK in a few years, so it'll be interesting to see how he does in this game.
years... IF he's able to replace a DC that rightly gets a lot of credit in his system (possibly Denbrock too if the below post has some heat to it) and sustain Cincy's level of success by replacing those coordinators, particularly in a short window, I say hell yeah to him replacing Kelly.
Constantly replacing gifted coordinators has been the absolute hallmark of Saban's success: he's actually used it as a springboard to adapt and improve his teams by rotating out the best new guys in his system and constantly setting them up for success. Of course it helps when you can keep pulling out failures from other locations and making them "analysts" but still..
Brian Kelly seems to swing and miss all to often at coaching hires (Chip Kelly and Brian Van Gorder come to mind, in addition to a few other position coaches), so having a guy that can make more seamless transitions would be vital to the long term health of the program, IMO.
If Denbrock was offered the job and took it, that means UC would be replacing both its OC and DC.