Another miserable season not cause for Edsall’s firing
PHILADELPHIA — What now?
The 2019 UConn football season, a slightly better but no less trying experience, is over. So, seriously, what now? “Flying out [Sunday] morning and going recruiting,” coach Randy Edsall said. “That’s all you can do. You go recruiting. … I’m going recruiting.”
Did you really expect Edsall, standing outside the Huskies’ locker room following a 49-17 loss to Temple Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, to say much more than that? He’s not built that way.
What would you want to hear, anyway? A long-winded justification for remaining as coach into a fourth year? I tried to get Edsall to open up about process, plan and program but knew I had the same odds of succeeding there as UConn had of succeeding on the field against the Owls.
UConn lost and we knew this would be. Edsall is the coach and we know this will continue to be, particularly after athletic director David Benedict voiced his full support during a halftime conversation.
Edsall should remain the coach.
Despite a 3-9 record in 2017, despite a 1-11 record in 2018,
despite a 2-10 record this season, despite a 6-30 overall record compiled while the program he built in another lifetime continued to sink to unprecedented lows … despite it all, it is important for UConn to see this through.
I can’t defend the record but I can defend the situation, which for now trumps results. You can’t keep changing coaches every three years. You can’t partner one major transition — from conference affiliation to FBS independence — with another. No more quick overhauls. You see this out, trust that traction can be gained in 2020 and revisit the situation a year from now or two years from now.
There is no harm in committing to see what takes shape while so much other program business is sorted out.
Edsall is flying to Florida on Sunday, on a day he is due a $300,000 retention bonus (payable within 60 days). Over the next week or so Edsall, under contract through 2021, will make his way through different parts of the country and eventually into the Montreal area, going about his everyday responsibilities as he should.
We can bemoan the lack of progress. We can question, and have questioned, Edsall’s way of communicating and some of his actions. We also have to understand that UConn would not necessarily be in a better place tomorrow with new leadership and another back-to-square-one scenario.
I don’t know where the whole project is headed, or whether anyone can succeed in his role, but I know one shakeup after the next is not the way to operate. Paul Pasqualoni was fired four games into his third year, succeeded by interim coach T.J. Weist. Bob Diaco was fired after three years and so began REStorred, Edsall 2.0, whatever you want to now label this chapter.
Edsall’s job is different than the job he had at UConn in 1999-2010. It is different than the job he had at UConn even six months ago, before realignment put the basketball programs in a better place (the Big East) and the football program in a position of having to get creative.
I came to Philadelphia Saturday not wondering whether UConn could defeat Temple, but seeking thoughts from the program’s two leaders. Many would argue, I said to Benedict at halftime, that the process should be farther along than it is.
“I totally disagree,” he said. “You can’t just look at it in the window of Randy’s three years. You have to look at the previous six years. When you have four different head coaches leading a program in the span of six years, you’re totally rebuilding from the ground up, just in the nature of how recruiting classes work. When you have a transition year between coaches, you in essence lose a class. A coaching staff, it takes a year or two to develop the relationships to recruit the kids that they want. Obviously, you can’t do that in 30 days. So we’ve had multiple transitions in a short period of time.”
Is Edsall still the right man for the job? Why?
“Absolutely,” Benedict said. “For the same reasons we brought him here. Randy understands how to evaluate kids we can recruit to UConn, which is different than other places. And he understands what it takes to develop kids. He’s very disciplined. He’s very straightforward with the guys. You’re beginning to see some of the younger talent develop. That’s an evolution and you can’t speed that up in the sport of football. It takes so many kids to be successful in a game and over the course of an entire season.”
I wondered aloud whether Edsall would consider moving on because this is not the job he signed up for.
“I think Randy is very committed to our program,” Benedict said. “This is more than a paycheck for him. This means a lot for him. … Randy cares about this place deeply. And I think it’s fair to say Randy has a legacy for what he did here the first time, and Randy wants to see this thing through and build this. … I look forward to you having that conversation with Randy.” I tried.
How much would it mean for you, professionally and even emotionally, to get this program back to where it needs to be?
About 10 minutes removed from the game, Edsall wasn’t ready to get into that.
“Again, I’m just focused on tomorrow,” Edsall said. “I focused on the season; the season is over. We’ll put things together that we have to do. … This is a harder situation this time around than the first time around. And the thing is, the young kids we have … sometimes you have to go through tough times to get where you want to go — and I don’t want to say tough times because guys are working. It’s just where we are with the program.”
The 2020 schedule is set and 2021 has started to take shape behind it. Even 2022 is coming together. Independence can be fun if the program can become functional.
Changing coaches right now wouldn’t help the process.
“We’ve made improvements,” Edsall said. “We’re better this year than we were last year. But I don’t think people realize how far this program had to go.”