Samford the worst coached football team?

[Cujo]

Is there an explanation or excuse for this year’s results with our talent. We lost to the bottom of the league and beat the top of the league. So much potential wasted. I fear this is the definition of Success at Samford—the season is over and we didn’t make the playoffs, but we made a bunch of cool videos.

[sudog03]

I understand everyone is frustrated, but just in the interest of accuracy every conference loss we've had has been to teams with a .500 league record or better. Don't think it can be said we lost to the bottom of the league.

[Cujo]

Good point. After beating the hell out of us in a monumental second half collapse, Citadel moved to .500. UTC is .500 with win over us. Mercer is at least .500 with their win over us. We did beat two teams that have one win between them at the bottom. I exaggerated a little there. We are going to finish as a middle of the pack SoCon team with 3 potential NFL prospects on the roster. We haven’t developed the reputation for having superior talent and inferior results for nothing. I hope Devlin breaks the McNair record and we ruin ETSU’s season.

You think if we had upper end SEC talent that we could win the SoCon? I think we’d find a way to lose to a lower half team when the SoCon title was ours for the taking. We someohow find a way not to win a championship. It is almost like we try not to make the playoffs in anything.

[SU DOG]

I understand everyone is frustrated, but just in the interest of accuracy every conference loss we've had has been to teams with a .500 league record or better. Don't think it can be said we lost to the bottom of the league.

Did any of these SoCon losses occur to teams with more talent than we have? I know my answer to that question. If not this year(and that is now OUT) then when will we ever see us make a run in the Playoffs?

[Smurf]

This goes well beyond just this season. UTC was far below .500 when we lost to them last year. ETSU was a start up program when we lost to them in 2016. We have consistently had difficulty playing when there is a lot on the line or coming off quality showings. Regarding Mercer and UTC's record this year, the truth of the matter is when you are a good football team and you have high expectations, you don't lose to Mercer and you don't lose to UTC. These are middle of the pack teams. I can live with losses to Kennesaw State and FSU. I can't live with these continued losses against teams we should beat. Teams that excel simply do not allow that to happen. Ironically yesterday's dramatic turning of the tables from a 24-7 lead to a 42-27 loss is a sad but yet perfect microcosm of Hatcher's tenure; we rested on our early success and wound up losing to a team we should have beaten.

The preseason pick to win the conference will finish in the middle of the pack. The preseason ninth ranked team in the country is facing at best a six win season. A team with the preseason conference offense and defensive players of the year is one loss away from a sub .500 season. Talent like this doesn't come along often and yet miraculously Hatcher has managed to lead this team to just four FCS wins this season. His leadership of this program this season, given the reasonable high expectations both from within and from outside the program, is simply inexcusable and shameful.

[BlakeRx]

Perfectly stated, Smurf. Don’t know that we will ever take the next step with Hatcher as HC.

[FUBeAR]

The preseason pick to win the conference will finish in the middle of the pack. The preseason ninth ranked team in the country is facing at best a six win season. A team with the preseason conference offense and defensive players of the year is one loss away from a sub .500 season. Talent like this doesn't come along often and yet miraculously Hatcher has managed to lead this team to just four FCS wins this season. His leadership of this program this season, given the reasonable high expectations both from within and from outside the program, is simply inexcusable and shameful.

Not to (necessarily) be piling on, but I worked out the 4 possible SoCon Standings scenarios with the remaining 2 games going each way, applied the SoCon AQ tiebreaker to ties further down in those standings to ‘force rank’ all Teams, and (barring any FUBeAR’ed errors)...

http://mercer.freeforums.net/post/6871

...if Samford loses to ETSU, the Bulldogs would be ‘force ranked’ 7th in the SoCon. “Middle of the pack” is 4-6. If Samford beats ETSU, the Bulldogs will finish no lower than ‘forced ranked’ 5th.

If anyone cares, Mercer will finish ‘force ranked’ 3rd in the SoCon if the Bears beat Furman & no lower than 6th if they don’t. Furman can finish anywhere from ‘force ranked’ 1st to ‘force ranked’ 5th.

[77SU]

This goes well beyond just this season. ...Ironically yesterday's dramatic turning of the tables from a 24-7 lead to a 42-27 loss is a sad but yet perfect microcosm of Hatcher's tenure; we rested on our early success and wound up losing to a team we should have beaten.

Not just his tenure at SU but I dare say his career since being at Valdosta State. He started off well there but you also have to consider who his assistant coaches were. Since starting strong at Valdosta, he has based his entire resume on his early record and continues to spiral downward with each successive job.

Also we have to keep in mind he was hired by the same guy that brought us HCBS and “Witness the Beginning.”

[sudog03]

Spiral downward? We had our best regular season in 25 years last season. I have a few programs on campus where I can point to downward spiral, not sure football is one of them. Listen, we had a deeply disappointing season, I don't think you will hear anyone involved say anything any different. Equivocating each success while highlighting every flaw is not an effective way to evaluate IMO. If people can look at our defensive unit in the 2nd half yesterday and see just head and shoulders better talent, I just have to disagree. Still should have won.

[Cujo]

best season in 25 years and we still classically found a way not to win the conference and not to win a playoff game. Look back at all the chances we had to control our destiny over the last 10 years and note how we fail every single time. Every single time. It isn’t just Hatcher, his predecessor was a great recruiter who was a drag on his talent. The sad part is that many of us predicted the team we couldn’t beat was the worst team left on the schedule. I didn’t predict it because it was Cit, I predicted it because we are Samford.