I just want to finally see what Rhule himself wants, and just go from there. Because I think he arrived with one idea/identity in mind, and through various reasons and decisions he ended up somewhere else.
- They brought in Sims who they projected to be a certain type of freewheeling big-play-potential QB who could throw bombs and make things happen with his legs, inbetween bruising rushing attacks from RBs -> He was a bizarre disaster, beyond just a "bad evaluation" he had the yips unlike anything I've ever seen. But we saw the original "vision" for the type of QB/offense he wanted.
- He then signed 5* legacy recruit Raiola, who he absolutely could not NOT take, but who was the opposite style of QB. Totally risk averse, completed tons of passes but they seemed to always be about 3 yard throws and couldn't run to save his life. Beyond that, he and his family were given tons of latitude within the program, and the offensive identity was seemingly retrofitted to what he could and couldn't do as a QB, rather than having a QB who fit what Rhule wanted to run.
- I think that contributed to how he started his tenure stressing the importance of OL and DL to having them both as glaring weaknesses in year 3. He kept Donnie Raiola at OL coach when he shouldn't have, he directed more resources to WRs who could catch Dylan's passes and prop up his stats than to OL who could protect him, etc.
- He knocked it out of the park with Tony White and an aggressive gang-tackling hard nosed defense -> Rhule micromanaged in year 2 then when White left he hired an unproven DB coach and insisted on him running Tony White's system, which looked much worse and went very poorly. But again, we saw the original "vision" of the type of defense he wanted.
- Culturally Rhule went from "we're going to be a tough physical team, no nonsense, get social media out of here, IF WE DIE WE DIE" to insisting to everyone how important podcasts and McAfee appearances were to recruits, wearing gold chains, posing in goofy flashy social media photos, etc. I don't doubt that a lot of that stuff brought us some attention with recruits and their families, but the change in priorities made it all seem embarrassing once we tanked the end of the season.
Anyway, I don't know exactly where I'm going with this other than to say, I am hypothetically still onboard with what he said was his original vision coming in, and I think he's attempting to course-correct back to that after letting things spin out a bit. Colandrea, Geep, Aurich, etc seem to be way more in line with the OG Rhule ideas for NU, and I still hope it works.
