After his most recent win, Kansas State head football coach Bill Snyder said of his team’s performance: “It stinks.”
The goal week in and week out is for your team to get better, win or lose, preaches Snyder. Snyder was all over his team for their sloppy play, even after dominating the Buffs and holding them to zero second half points.
Snyder is a good coach. Dan Hawkins… not so much.
With Hawkins, all we get is excuses and no real answers to our questions. CU continues to make too many mistakes and underperform with the talent level on the field.
All of the responsibility for this lies on the head coach and his staff.
You could debate for hours or write a 5,000-word essay on all of the dozens of things wrong with the Buffs this year, but one thing has remained constant the last four years: Dan Hawkins is not a good coach.
In the first two years of his campaign here at Colorado, there were legitimate excuses for poor performance, such as a lack of talented players on the Buffs’ roster. Four years later, the excuses are tired and no longer valid.
With the talent on the Buffs’ roster this year, the Buffs easily and realistically could have a 4-3 record. And that’s the absolute minimum.
A well-coached team, with the Buffs’ talent level, easily could have beaten Colorado State at home and Toledo on the road.
Hawkins remains ineffective at producing with the current talent, putting the right personnel on field and giving his team a sense that they can win each and every week. When your coach consistently tells you every game could be a win or loss depending on a handful of plays, how are you supposed to be inspired to win?
A coach needs to inspire his players to make those key plays during the game, not make excuses as to why the team didn’t execute.
So the ultimate question is where do we go from here? How can we salvage this mess of a situation?
Clearly Hawkins’ system does not work and his decision making costs us games. His season of atrocious calls was capped by his recent call to bench Tyler Hansen and re-enter his son into the Kansas State game.
Not only was this a stupid move when trying to win the game — Cody Hawkins went on to throw two interceptions in limited minutes — but it’s also a slap in the face to Hansen.
Hansen is clearly the better athlete and better choice to lead the Buffs, but Hawkins showed his true colors last Saturday when putting his son back on the field.
Hansen was asked to remove his red shirt halfway through the season for the second time in two years! Then the head coach benches him again when he struggles after only the first half? Are you serious?!?
And this is after Hansen single-handedly led CU to an upset win over a ranked Kansas team. How quickly Hawkins forgets who his best QB is.
Dan Hawkins should be ashamed of his terrible performance thus far at CU, his atrocious record on the road and his lack of playing the most talented players on the team. When will this misery and embarrassment end?
Poor Buffs fans — and poor Tyler Hansen.
We all deserve better.
Randy Williams is a chemical engineering student at the University of Colorado.
