The day after Missouri hired its offensive coordinator, I feel the title of my (semi) regular column here is at least halfway appropriate. A lot of us aren't necessarily taking a lot of time to read up on Derek Dooley, but hoo boy, are we reacting.
That's the chic, Internet-age thing to do, you know. Something happens and we immediately jump on our keyboards to fire off some hot takes about it. Some of you are reading this and thinking, "Why is Gabe being a dick to the people that pay his salary again by insulting them?" But I'm not. I'm as prone to the heat-of-the-moment overreaction as any of the rest of you. It's the times we live in and, especially, the medium in which I work.
So in the interest of full disclosure, let's run through the reasons this whole Dooley as OC thing seems like a bad idea and might not work:
*He has never been an offensive coordinator or called plays.
*He has never coached quarterbacks and is now tasked with ushering Drew Lock (assuming he returns) through his senior season and molding him into a first-round draft pick.
*The reason most of us even know who Derek Dooley is stems from the fact he failed miserably as a head coach at Tennessee, losing 19 of the 23 SEC games he coached including a 51-48 four-overtime loss to a bad Missouri team in 2012 that was the straw that broke the camel's back in Knoxville.
*The search lasted somewhere around a month with a number of names floated and interviews conducted and Dooley was never so much as mentioned by anyone. It at least makes you entertain the possibility that there were a number of people higher on the wish list who didn't take the job.
Those are the reasons not to like it. And they are valid reasons.
But now I'm gonna put on my boring, no fun hot takes, adult in the room hat for a little bit.
I'm not gonna spend the next few paragraphs convincing you Derek Dooley is a good hire. I'm just gonna spend them convincing you that I don't know for sure he's a bad one.
Assistants get hired and we all immediately have a reaction.
DeMontie Cross? Great hire. Finally brought the dude back to his alma mater. Oh, well, except it didn't turn out so great and maybe there was a reason he held four different jobs in the six years prior to returning.
Jackie Shipp? Love that hire. Oklahoma pedigree. Coached NFL guys. Replaces a dude who was here for like three weeks. Wants to be here. Oh, he got in an altercation with a player and was fired mid-season.
Alex Grinch? Terrible hire. Never would have gotten the job if he wasn't Gary Pinkel's nephew. He's one of the fastest rising assistants in the country, just got hired by Urban Meyer, and will likely be a head coach in the next three years.
Speaking of Pinkel, remember his staff? After the 2004 season, "these MAC coaches are never gonna win anything here in a big boy conference." Three years later the very same staff was coaching the No. 1 team in America, tied at halftime of the Big 12 Championship Game, 30 minutes from a chance to play for the whole ball of wax.
My point? We don't know. We want to think we know. We can look at a guy's Wikipedia page and decide we know. We can fire off hot takes on our little private message board, or, even better, take them to Twitter where the whole world can see them, and we can pretend we know. But we don't know. Because nobody knows. It's impossible. Barry Odom doesn't even know if this hire is going to work out.
Here's the other thing: Offensive coordinators are the easiest punching bags in football. They take more heat than anyone who isn't the head coach...and sometimes more heat than even the head coach. Because we all watch games and think our team is the better team. They'll win....as long as the coaches don't screw it up. Just put the pieces in the right place and there's no reason they shouldn't score pretty much every time they have the ball. FOR GOD'S SAKE JUST CALL THE TOUCHDOWN PLAY!!!!
Josh Heupel was, in the eyes of many, one of the primary reasons Mizzou couldn't get out of its own way for a season-and-a-half. He ran three-and-outs at breakneck speed, put a bad defense on the field for 38 minutes a game and made it look even worse than it was, nearly caused Corey Fatony's right leg to fall off and helped guide Missouri to five wins in his first 18 games running the offense. And then all of a sudden, Heupel was irreplaceable when he left to be the head coach at UCF.
The Texas Bowl just served as more proof of that for us. I mean, Joe Jon Finley had never called plays and if he'd just let Drew Lock throw deep (damn the fact that he ran most of the plays that night with his feet in his own end zone), Missouri would have beaten Texas like a drum. And Finley went from the guy that many wanted to see get the job for continuity's sake to a guy that shouldn't be allowed to carry Josh Henson's playbook around.
Oh, Josh Henson. Perhaps never has there been a better example of the pratfalls of being the playcaller.
Henson took over OC duties at Mizzou prior to the 2013 season when David Yost unexpectedly left. Missouri had the nation's 16th-ranked total offense that year. Three receivers caught at least 50 passes, four guys ran for at least 500 yards and even an injury to the starting quarterback couldn't derail the offense.
The next season, Mizzou fell all the way to 98th in the country in total yards. A great defense bailed them out and won the SEC East, but the shine started to come off Henson. By the end of 2015, the Tigers were fourth from the bottom in total offense, didn't score an offensive touchdown for a calendar month and Henson was out and the main reason Missouri football had fallen off.
I'm not saying Josh Henson was a great offensive coordinator, but it's crazy how much better he looked when he had James Franklin running and throwing to L'Damian Washington, Marcus Lucas and Dorial Green-Beckham than he did when he had Maty Mauk spinning and darting around the backfield (and downtown Columbia) and throwing to a young J'Mon Moore and not much else.
See, the scheme counts, but the players are kind of important. So we circle back to Dooley. Is it possible that Lock running a unit that brings back the entire offensive line, a freshman all-American tight end in Albert Okwuegbunam, and a 1-2 backfield punch that should contend with any in the SEC in Larry Rountree III and Damarea Crockett just might be able to make Derek Dooley appear to have some idea what he's doing? Call me crazy, but it sounds just nuts enough that it might work.
So for those that have already fired up the torches and sharpened the pitchforks, I get it. It's what we do and, if we're being honest, there are some reasons to think those tools of outrage might come in handy. If they do, Missouri's probably looking for more than a new offensive coordinator before Dooley's three-year deal is up.
But if you have an interest in taking the boring approach, in waiting and seeing with me, there's plenty of room over here. It might take away some of our fun for the next nine months, prevent us from making our fellow cyber-warriors laugh with our witty one-liners. But maybe Dooley will be all right and the world won't burn after all. Who knows? Certainly none of us.
