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Jim McElwain named AFCA Regional Coach of the Year

MJWilliamson

MJWilliamson

Bull Gator
Apr 23, 2007
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida coach Jim McElwain has already picked up one Coach of the Year award after leading the Gators to a 10-3 finish in his first season.

McElwain was named the Region 2 AFCA Coach of the Year, the American Football Coaches Association announced Monday.

The first-year head coach has now won the award in two consecutive years, becoming the sixth head coach to do so at two different programs after winning it following a 10-2 season at Colorado State in 2014.

McElwain joined Dabo Swinney, Kirk Ferentz, Mike Gundy and David Shaw as one the five AFCA Regional Coaches of the Year.

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AFCA (American Football Coaches Association)
Colo St - Region 5 CoY
UF - Region 2 CoY

The National CoY might not be won, because he/they could never prepare another QB to play (with 5 more available on the roster) beyond TH, after WG was suspended. IMOHO, going 5-0 with rsFr WG was very impressive, but going 5-3 with So TH was not....:oops:

I had also earlier said that he would win the National CoY, but now I'm not so sure. He certainly deserves the Region CoY award though.... :cool:
 
He won the SEC Coach of the Year

cqA7iL8.gif
 
Just think what would have happened if a few balls had bounced differently.

He'd be as hated as Muschamp. His quarterback and offense aren't any better than Champ's.
 
Ghost of Spaceheater said:
He'd be as hated as Muschamp. His quarterback and offense aren't any better than Champ's.
Click to expand...

One could make that case with Treon at QB. One could not make that case with Grier at QB.

The biggest difference? If Muschamp had this kind of year with this kind of offnse, he would think everything is peachy keen. McE knows it was not acceptable and I think he knows how to fix it, based on the offense in the first part of the year.
 
MJWilliamson said:
One could make that case with Treon at QB. One could not make that case with Grier at QB.

The biggest difference? If Muschamp had this kind of year with this kind of offnse, he would think everything is peachy keen. McE knows it was not acceptable and I think he knows how to fix it, based on the offense in the first part of the year.
Click to expand...

Nope! These were the averages of the offense under Grier:

PPG: 26.4
YPG: 340.4
Passing YPG: 218.4
Rushing YPG: 122
YPC: 3.38
3rd down %: 33%

Offense last year Under Champ:
PPG: 30.2
YPG: 367.6
Passing YPG: 179.9
Rushing YPG: 187.7
YPC: 4.4
3rd down %: 36%

Only difference is we improved passing YPG 39 ypg basically. That's the equivalent of hitting one more deep pass per game. Like I've been saying, it's a myth that the offense was good under Grier, it's been bad all year. It just looked prettier. Terrible running game, couldn't convert on 3rd, etc. And keep in mind last year's offense changed the QB 4 different times (Driskel-Treon-Driskel-Treon) and played better defenses. They would have posted better numbers with a Grier in place of both of those guys for example.

Now Muschamp's lack of recruiting and options he left behind is responsible for most of that. But our offensive coaches haven't been that great either (looking at Nuss). Even with Grier, who is probably the best QB we've had since Tebow, the offense stunk.
 
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MJWilliamson said:
One could make that case with Treon at QB. One could not make that case with Grier at QB.

The biggest difference? If Muschamp had this kind of year with this kind of offnse, he would think everything is peachy keen. McE knows it was not acceptable and I think he knows how to fix it, based on the offense in the first part of the year.
Click to expand...

1) You're projecting/extrapolating with Grier. You don't know that. I won't repeat everything Oozie has written on the subject. If you won't listen to him then you're not going to listen to me.

2) You don't know that. This is the great Gidiot (Gator Idiot) myth. Champ had the sort of offense he did because he had no choice. He had no choice because he didn't have a good quarterback on campus. Again, I won't rewrite what has been written in support of that because you didn't believe it when it was written. Thus, you aren't going to believe it now.

All I'm going to say about this topic is believing that a coach--any coach--honestly wanted to win games 10-7 with only 200 yards of offense is simply asinine. There's no other way to describe it.

Don't both offering me any additional argument because I'm not going to you engage you in it. I'm done.
 
seminole97 said:
'His quarterback'?
Is there a QB on the roster that was actually recruited by Mac yet?
Click to expand...

Recruited or signed?

Because while at Colorado State he didn't have his pick of recruits. Colorado State did NOT recruit Treon Harris, not as a quarterback or a defensive back.

While at Bama he recruited both Driskel & Brissett. Everyone did. Just as everyone recruited John Brantley.
 
Muschamp has nobody to blame but himself. Look at the QBs he recruited. It's pitiful. Heck look at the oline and RBs he recruited as well and look at his WR misses. He often never had a backup plan on the offensive side of the ball when it came to recruiting.
 
Ghost of Spaceheater said:
Don't both offering me any additional argument because I'm not going to you engage you in it. I'm done.
Click to expand...

So you are going to take your marbles and go home?

My goodness.

I cannot believe that anyone in their right mind could possibility contend that the Gator offense was not better with Grier.

Astonishing.
 
Last edited:
Ivey and Cece were named to the SEC all freshman team.

I would have thought Antonio would be a lock, but Ridley from Bama and Kirk from A&M made it over him, which I guess is fair.
 
To make things even, wonder what this year would have been like had Mac got to use the offensive line that was here last year. Muschamp would have been lucky to post 3 or 4 wins this year. Funny thing is that over his last 2 years Champ won 10 games. Mac matched that this season alone. Anybody with half a brain can see we were better coached and the game day management was way better.
 
MJWilliamson said:
The individual performances of the two QBs are night and day
Click to expand...

Don't disagree. But I took from your post that you were disagreeing with Space's point that McElwain's offense wasn't better than Champ's by countering with the offense's performance under Grier. What I was showing is that even with Grier the offense was still substantially worse than last year in every category but passing yards. And even that only improved by about 40 yards per game, which is really negligible. But for whatever reason people have the perception out there that we were lighting up scoreboards with Grier, it just isn't accurate. We got a long ways to go.
 
While I agree Treon is not the answer, we should cut him some slack. We had probably the weakest O-line I can remember in 30 years. No depth or experience.
 
MJ nobody was comparing Grier vs. Treon, let's not change the argument. You said we could not make the case that the offense with Grier was as bad as Muschamp's...that's inaccurate as I showed. We were better in ONE single statistic as compared to last year's offense, everywhere else we were worse even with Grier.

Now like I said a good bit of that has to do with what Muschamp left (or didn't) leave behind. But y'all have got to stop with this false narrative that the offense was good or even great under Grier. It still sucked, and the numbers clearly show that. And it wasn't like we played any dominating teams during that stretch. We played one top defense, Mizzou, and the offense scored 14 points, one of which was set up with an extremely short field. Kentucky's defense is 63rd in the country and held us to 245 total yards and 125 passing...with Grier. I could keep going.
 
I think in this case its much better to use your own eyeballs before you want to compare stats with Muschamps offense against this years one with Grier. Even if just for a few games, the offense never looked like that once with Will here. The offense will be fine under this staff, he's bringing in at least one top QB he wanted and depending on what Grier does and Easons decision.. All of this will seem meaningless in a year or two. The offense is in good hands, there's just not much you can do with Treon. Which goes back to my post in one of the threads recently about him, he has to be far too nurtured to play at this level mentally. Grier was out there throwing some darts off his back foot because he saw blitzes coming and got us in the right protections and plays, that's what any good offense needs and when you have that in college. It makes you look like a very smart coach.

Look at Clemson, people even think Dabo is a good coach now lol.
 
Another good way to look at it is how we performed against a defense's average. Let's look at the games Grier started:

ECU: Give up 409 ypg (we got 373)
UK: Give up 394.2 (we got 245)
UT: Give up 370.4 (we got 392)
Ole Miss: Give up 387.5 (we got 355)
Mizzou: Give up 302 (we got 337)

So 3/5 starts we averaged LESS ypg than the opponent gave up on average.
 
And again it ain't about the QB's...Grier is better. It's about the performance of the overall offense. And it still sucked even with Grier. We were a slightly better passing team, that's it. And against the best pass defenses we played in that stretch (UK and Mizzou) we had a combined ONE TD pass. Yep, one. And it ain't all on the staff either. We are clearly better coached on offense. And we were obviously limited by what was left behind, namely the oline. But the offense still sucked either way. Sucked with our best QB, and was horrific with the backup QB. So Space is right. If a few bounces had gone the other way people would be looking at this season way different.
 
oozie7 said:
And again it ain't about the QB's...Grier is better. It's about the performance of the overall offense. And it still sucked even with Grier. We were a slightly better passing team, that's it. And against the best pass defenses we played in that stretch (UK and Mizzou) we had a combined ONE TD pass. Yep, one. And it ain't all on the staff either. We are clearly better coached on offense. And we were obviously limited by what was left behind, namely the oline. But the offense still sucked either way. Sucked with our best QB, and was horrific with the backup QB. So Space is right. If a few bounces had gone the other way people would be looking at this season way different.[/QUOTE]
Maybe, but what were the expectations coming into this season? How many people predicted 10 wins for this team? I thought 7-5 would be good and 8-4 would be great.
Click to expand...
 
oozie7 said:
And again it ain't about the QB's...Grier is better. It's about the performance of the overall offense. And it still sucked even with Grier. We were a slightly better passing team, that's it. And against the best pass defenses we played in that stretch (UK and Mizzou) we had a combined ONE TD pass. Yep, one. And it ain't all on the staff either. We are clearly better coached on offense. And we were obviously limited by what was left behind, namely the oline. But the offense still sucked either way. Sucked with our best QB, and was horrific with the backup QB. So Space is right. If a few bounces had gone the other way people would be looking at this season way different.
Click to expand...

Yea but I think you can tell with the level of coaching that 10 wins even with this average at best team is not going to be some abnormal thing going into the future. They are going to recruit well and put some good offenses out there to compete. There isn't much negative I can say about Mac as a Head coach so far even though the last month has been infuriating to watch. What he's done the last two years as a HC is pretty astounding when you look at the final result.
 
46885 said:
Yea but I think you can tell with the level of coaching that 10 wins even with this average at best team is not going to be some abnormal thing going into the future. They are going to recruit well and put some good offenses out there to compete. There isn't much negative I can say about Mac as a Head coach so far even though the last month has been infuriating to watch. What he's done the last two years as a HC is pretty astounding when you look at the final result.
Click to expand...

No doubt. We are much better coached, even though I'm not a fan of Nuss. We should be much better in the future. We got a long ways to go though. A long ways. The offense might even take a step back next year as hard as that is to believe. I'm looking at year 3 for us to take a big jump.
 
oozie7 said:
Don't disagree. But I took from your post that you were disagreeing with Space's point that McElwain's offense wasn't better than Champ's by countering with the offense's performance under Grier. What I was showing is that even with Grier the offense was still substantially worse than last year in every category but passing yards. And even that only improved by about 40 yards per game, which is really negligible. But for whatever reason people have the perception out there that we were lighting up scoreboards with Grier, it just isn't accurate. We got a long ways to go.
Click to expand...

I agree overall with the point. I think someone said it best when they pointed out the ceiling with Grier seems to be a lot higher than the one with Harris.
 
Just a little FYI, (and a somewhat annoying pet-peeve for me). :rolleyes:

McElwain is an Irish name.

MacElwain is a Scottish name.

So please refer to him as Mc, instead of Mac....o_O

Calling or referring to Jim as Mac could be considered a minor insult to his actual heritage.
Not that there's anything wrong with being either. Half of my heritage is a Scott-Irish mix, while the other half is English. :cool: (does that mix make me a Great Britain?) :D
 
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