The pressure is on Fabish this week
It feels a little crazy to use the "M" word this early in the season.
"M" and in "must."
"Must win," that is.
But I don't think there's any other honest way to put it:
Columbia MUST WIN this Saturday's home opener against Georgetown. Otherwise, the consequences will be dire for the rest of the season and this coaching staff.
Georgetown isn't the weakest opponent on the Lions schedule, (that would be Marist), but it's definitely one of the weaker ones overall. A loss to the Hoyas would send the already growing pressure on interim Head Coach Mark Fabish to a boiling point for sure.
Georgetown suffered its first loss of the season last week at home against Stonehill. I had predicted Stonehill to cover the spread, but not win. The Hoyas, who had been winning on the backs of a strong and varied running game, ran well again last week but had a tougher time defensively and could not hold the lead.
More specifically, Georgetown has 790 total rushing yards through just three games and are averaging a hefty 6.1 yards per carry. On the more encouraging side for the Lions, the Hoyas have only recorded two sacks so far this season and are allowing a decent 4.3 yards per carry on the ground as well.
But since the Lou Little Cup series began vs. Georgetown in 2015, the Hoyas have given Columbia plenty of trouble most of the time. Last year's blowout win by the Lions was out of the ordinary to say the least. No one should expect this game to be an easy win.
This game won't be so much about how strong the Hoyas are; it will be about how much more prepared and capable Columbia looks and plays like throughout the game.
If Columbia can right its ship this weekend and get a solid win, not many people will be thinking too much at the end of the year about the poor loss at Lafayette. But a loss here will be debilitating in more ways than one.
20 comments:
Um.... yeah. I can't remember an Ivy team that lost to Georgetown (or a PFL team) and ended up having an otherwise successful season.
With all due respect, I think these comments are just a bit unfair. Mark has had the job for about two months. No coach has ever been on the hot seat in week 2. Let’s give him at least a few weeks to get his sea legs. Coincidentally, just yesterday I had occasion to speak with one of his former Penn teammates. He and Mark remain close friends. He has the highest regard for Mark, both as a person and as a coach. He predicts that Mark has the intelligence, energy, integrity and common sense to be a great coach here. I only wish we would support him instead of giving him an ultimatum for week 2.
I'm going to disagree with you and say Jake's comments are spot on. We came into the season believing we had the best group of skill players in years - not a stretch as Canty, Jenkins and Giorgi were all-Ivy and Libman should have been - plus a decent defense and a lot of questions about the OL. Week one, the OL looked really poor and the D looked meh. The league overall is strong and if we can't beat Georgetown at home, then 3-7 or worse seems likely. The Lions got better as the season progressed last year, and it could happen again. But getting better needs to start this week. I don't know Fabish at all and so I can believe all you say is true, but he didn't inherit a dumpster fire. He inherited a 6-4 team with a lot of skill returning. Losing to Georgetown won't cut it.
It all starts with the OL—and we knew going in that we had little experience there. So hopefully it will gell but not necessarily overnight. Hard to put this on Mark.
Usually I agree with you, Jake, but Geogetown is certainly not a must win game for Coach Fabish. Give him a break. Lafayette was Columbia's first opponent and the Leopards had two games under their belt including one against Duke. For all we know Lafayette may good enough to go undefeated the rest of the season. I do expect that we will defeat Georgetown, but it is not a "M" game. In fact, Georgetown is a pretty good team and has played us tough in all of the games during the Bagnoli Era.
Another aspect to this analysis is the not insignificant challenge Coach Fabish has had with the very short runway circumstances created for him to assume the reins, never mind the expectations that Bagnoli and the team itself, filled with known talent, already had. In my view, the optimal way to maintain the culture and positive momentum that the Bagnoli era created is to give the Interim Head Coach full support and at least a full season to accumulate a body of work that can be intelligently assessed. Listen, we were all disappointed with the Lafayette game, no doubt first and foremost the players and coaches, but everyone played hard, the opponent had a very good game and is clearly a talented and well-coached squad, it was a season opener on the road, and there were no bad turnovers or obvious breakdowns that have so plagued CU teams in the past, even as recently as last season. The players and coaches can right the ship, so let's give them all some breathing room to do it.
And again, did anybody really expect the OL to be a smooth and cohesive unit during their first game as a unit? Let’s be fair and supportive.
I will say it again. Baby Gronk is the key to the OL success. He is very similar to Brian O’Neill with the Minnesota Vikings. Just wait. He and the line will gel
Agree with most of these comments. Let's give the HCOF some runway. Ultimately the standard should now be getting to .500 or close to it in league play. If they struggle with GT, the Ivy slate will be a long slog indeed.
Here's hoping they right the ship Saturday!
Despite the lack of spark in the Lafayette game, the team did play with discipline in not committing turnovers or drive killing penalties. Let's hope that same discipline, matched with improved line play, results in a convincing win.
Will Paul Ferraro come out of retirement please !
Will someone check that out? Big winner who should have been the head coach. He was the reason Bagnoli had some CU success. Believe me it wasn't the Hurry Up and Wait Offense
I am disappointed in our Columbia football community as exemplified here and elsewhere in not giving this deserving young man an opportunity over the course of the season to show that he deserves to be the permanent head coach. Let’s give him our full throated support—he jumped into this job on the eve of training camp and has been given virtually no slack here. Pilling and Al want the program to succeed and would not have given the helm to Mark if they thought he was not the right guy..
Did you write the above, Al?
No one is saying not to give the interim coach an opportunity. But, what is your definition of an “opportunity”. If the team goes 3-7 with wins against Marist, Cornell and Brown, has he earned the job permanently? Do you say at the end of the season, “Well, you know, he got the job right before training camp last year, he is entitled to an entire year to prove himself”?
He is supposedly an offensive minded coach. In Coach Bagnoli’s “CEO style of management”, the odds are, this coach was solely in charge of the offense, before being thrust “unexpectedly” into his new role. Maybe, it is only fair that he be judged only by how the offense performs this season.
We ought forget about whether he was “deserving”, or not, and focus on whether the players are receiving the same quality of coaching that the players on all the other seven Ivy League teams are receiving.
You are correct, we will not know until the end of the season, but a loss to Georgetown would make it difficult to name another, current Ivy League coach whose team would have lost such a game.
On an unrelated topic, for those of us who prefer to post comments under a nom de plume rather than as “anonymous”, can somebody explain how to go about posting with such a handle?
I agree 100%. I would also say that I appreciate the fact that we as fans are not simply rolling over (at least some of us are not) after a very bad loss. It speaks to the fact that the football program is now a solidly mid-tier program within the Ivies. No longer are we the cellar dwellers, and it’s the case that heightened expectations have accompanied our rise as a program. Think about how unwilling to tolerate mediocrity (or worse) the Princeton and Yale fanbases would be were they seeing performances like ours this past Saturday. I guarantee you there would be rumblings, and to me, that’s actually a good thing. It shows that fans care and are concerned about accountability, and the program is no longer being left for dead.
That said, I recognize that we’re talking about only one game this far. I don’t think anyone is saying that Fabish should be let go because of this one game, and if anyone is, that’s obviously rash. But at the same time, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the G’Town game is a must-win affair for a coach with an interim tag whose first game was a major disappointment given the talent we have.
The reality is that if we lose to G’Town, we’ll be staring down the barrel of an 0-3 start (since I don’t think we can drop our first two games and then somehow prevail against Princeton on the road).
If we begin 0-3, where will we end up? At 2-8? 1-9? These are obviously worst-case scenarios, but I think we can all agree that a losing record should not be grounds for removing the interim tag (again, given the level of talent on the roster and the fact that many of us thought we might be in the running for winning the league before Al stepped down).
Some among us are quite adept at manufacturing excuses, but that’s not how I operate. I look at results, and if the results aren’t what they should be, then my conclusion is that changes need to be made. But that evaluation will be based on the team’s performance over the course of the full season. So if we go 8-1 the rest of the way, for instance, then I’m saying Fabish should have the interim tag removed. But if we go 1-8, we should look for someone else.
In my view, if we finish the season .500 or worse, it’s time for a new coach. If we win at least seven, I believe we’ve found our guy. If we go 6-4, I’m not sure, but I’d probably lean toward starting a search.
ESPN just published an article about Colorado and Deion Sanders. I quote,
“Perhaps the most impressive part of Sanders’ 3-0 start is that the sum of the roster has played better than its parts. Savvy hires at offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator have forged identities on both sides of the ball.”
If that can be said about the Lions at the end of the season, the Interim Coach, should be retained.
Because, if that is how the team can be described, they were likely to have had an outstanding season.
By this time tomorrow, we will have learned more than we know now. Hopefully, we are not disappointed.
Roar Lions, roar.
It's a cliche of course but all teams have to learn how to win. It's made easier if players have been, and especially if they have played meaningful minutes, in a winning program and there is continuity on the coaching staff. A head coaching change is huge and indeed that new head coach has to learn how to win in that position. Fabish is coaching both new coaches at their positions and new starting positional players. It's a huge ask by the administration of someone without head coaching experience given the short time frame to do all this after Coach Bagnoli's departure.
Belichick's mantra of improving every game over the last will best serve Fabish and the coaching staff. I expect coaches and players will be better against Georgetown because of their own learning curves and self-pride and not because of Georgetown's potential relative lack of abilities.
My only concern with Coach Fabish is his fairly conventional offensive play-calling scheme. I think that will do him and the team more harm as he gets into the Ivy schedule than anything else as it is fairly straightforward to plan against. Perhaps the new coach from Rutgers can be a meaningful consigliere to Fabish in getting him away from his own self-conditioning.
Columbia 30, Georgetown 0 in a blowout victory this afternoon where only the harshest of critics could find anything wrong with Columbia's performance. Both of our lines were outstanding and Joey Giorgi is a terrific running back. Columbia vs. Princeton is a "must" see game for Lion Fans. With Yale losing today to Cornell, the Ivy League title is up for grabs
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