Of course there is a balance. This thread will be great reading if Leavitt bolts after this year for another DC job.
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Jim MF'n Leavitt
- Thread starter The Alabaster Yak
- Start date
Of course there is a balance. This thread will be great reading if Leavitt bolts after this year for another DC job.
CU was in a tough spot - we weren't going to pay Oregon money to keep JL as a DC and coming off the season we had there's no way we were going to push Mac out in favor of Leavitt so his leaving was unavoidable. But I wonder several years from now who will end up the better HC.
Mostly I'm just laughing at how some people talk about Leavitt now that he's gone. The guy could walk on water with fans here until the day he left (AllBuffs delivered him cases of Pepsi for God's sake), then he heads to Oregon unexpectedly and suddenly people find reasons why he was such a problem and really Mac is the defensive mastermind and Leavitt got too much credit.
Our defense (and team in general) was better when he was here despite all his peculiarities. No need to trash the guy because he left. He was a very good coach at CU.
JL was Avery good DC here and before that was a very good head coach.
He is also though a guy who has a history of wearing out his welcome.
He will get another shot at being a head coach soon and I expect he will do very well for a couple years then they will start looking for someone to replace him.
I don't see him as a good fit as a head coach in Boulder.
He is also though a guy who has a history of wearing out his welcome.
He will get another shot at being a head coach soon and I expect he will do very well for a couple years then they will start looking for someone to replace him.
I don't see him as a good fit as a head coach in Boulder.
I know this is a popular sentiment here, but I think it's mostly AllBuffs fantasy. The guy coached 5 years at KState and only left to take the HC job at USF where he coached for 14 years (13 seasons). His 49er tenure (4 years) only ended because Harbaugh's staff wasn't retained.
If I can expect 12 good years out of Leavitt before he becomes too much to handle, many programs would take that all day long.
One of his fellow defensive coaches with the 49ers got the head coaching job though, so him not remaining is definitely weird.
No, Jim Tomsula getting the job in the first place was stranger than Leavitt not sticking around, and Tomsula was a terrible, terrible hire.
I never said it wasn’t weird that tomsula got the job but a defensive line coach not retaining a good linebacker coach who was under contract is concerning no matter how you look at it.
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tomsula got the job because he was management's rat on the coaching staff. tomsula will never have a head coach job in the nfl again. he broke the code.
this had nothing to do with leavitt. leavitt has his pluses and minuses but he's not a rat face snitch traitor on a staff like tomsula was.
this had nothing to do with leavitt. leavitt has his pluses and minuses but he's not a rat face snitch traitor on a staff like tomsula was.
No it's not. Working on Tomsula's staff would have been a dead end job - that HC hire was atrocious and ownership is a cluster f**k. He also probably didn't take a pay cut to become DC at CU and was better positioned for another HC gig on the college level. Either way, it had nothing to do with him wearing out his welcome in SF.
HE WAS UNDER CONTRACT WITH THE 49ERS. Why is this so hard to understand? If Tomsula wanted him to stay on staff as a LB coach he would have. Yes, Tomsula was a garbage hire and the ownership is a mess but that doesn't mean anything in this situation. Obviously a guy like Fangio would have been mad about sort of being passed up for a job by a position coach but you would think a DL coach would have liked to keep some of the defensive staff he worked with if he had the chance, which he did.
Or maybe a brand new coach with no business being hired to the job would see someone like Leavitt as a threat. Look, lots of really good coaches move on when a head coach is fired, I don't see this as some unusual situation or evidence that Leavitt had worn out his welcome in SF. It happens all the time.
The upsetness. I smell the upsetness....
The new head coach wouldn't see a positions coach as a threat. I never said he wore out his welcome, all I said was that it was weird that he was fired from there by a fellow defensive staff member when the backers looked to good under his coaching (obviously there was a ton of talent there to work with). He didn't move on when Harbaugh was fired, he didn't have any big time offers to be a DC in the NFL or in college and he ended up at CU very late in the process so lets stop acting like he just moved on by choice. I know the players on the team like him, my high school buddy that played for the 49ers said he was a good guy and a good coach, but there is some evidence there to support the fact that he might rub a lot of people the wrong way on his coaching staff.
1. Wasn't retained by a fellow defensive staff member in SF despite being under contract.
2. Rubbed Mac and Co. the wrong way during his time in Boulder and didn't do well working as a team with the other coaches
3. Didn't like being told what to do and given direction, including doing what he wanted on the recruiting trail or just not recruiting players other coaches got to campus
4. Tried to get involved in offensive meetings both at CU and UO.
Would I love to have him as our DC right now? No doubt. But there are signs that he might not he a viable long-term solution if he isn't the head guy where he has all the power.
Mtn suggested he has a history of wearing out his welcome which is what I responded to because I think that reputation is overblown.
Tomsula also didn't retain Vic Fangio who guided one of the league's best defenses for 4 years under Harbaugh so this was not unique to Leavitt. Also Tomsula got fired after 1 bad season so I'm not holding that guy's staff decisions against Leavitt - Tomsula was a disaster.
Of your 4 points, 2-4 are speculation and I'll remind you CU didn't fire him (they even tried to give him a raise) and Oregon hasn't fired him either so apparently his being a pain in the ass hasn't impacted his job status or ability to get paid big dollars. And to your first point - a staff not being retained by a new HC happens every single year, it's not as strange as you think it is.
I really don't get why you don't understand this. Yes when a new coach comes in they will fire coaches but Tomsula was already on staff and was a defensive coach so that is a completely different situation. Like I said earlier, Fangio is understandable because he essentially was passed up but someone below him for a job and he had a **** ton of opportunities, unlike Leavitt that ended up at DC at CU.
2-4 aren't speculation at all. All of the beat reporters admitted way before he left that there was friction between Mac and Leavitt and the rest of the staff. Leavitt has been caught on TV getting involved with offensive meetings on the sidelines at both schools. He refused to recruit Isaac Slade-Matautia when Adams got him on campus because he believed he wasn't good enough but then when he gets to Oregon he recruits him there. He landed two prospects in two years at CU.
No, CU didn't fire him and he left for a big payday but that is a worthless statement since Mac keeps guys around for way too long. Leavitt was only here for two years and he did a great job so of course he wasn't going to be pushed out. Oregon signed him to a massive contract so he isn't going anywhere so that is another worthless statement. Just because someone he is hard to work with doesn't mean he doesn't wear one people which is the whole point of this conversation and a lot of evidence points to that being true. He is a good defensive coordinator, no one is saying differently, it is okay to say that he doesn't walk on water though.
So he's a good defensive coordinator who might be a pain in the ass on occasion, but really hasn't negatively affected his career aside from the end of a 14 year tenure at USF. Sounds like we agree.
My only point was that I think his being difficult is overrated as it relates to having a guy like him on staff. He seems to be a net positive everywhere he has gone.