Kaepsknee
New Fish
@bananasnblondes - normally I agree with you. This is not a normal off-season hire.
The staff and the recruiting is really big for Oregon this year. This is supposed to be around a 30 recruit class to get the roster up to 85. If Taggart had left after next year wouldn't be as big for continuity because we were going to take a smallish class ~20 next year.
There's a decent argument to be made to give Cristobal or Leavitt a shot at the head job, and essentially a tryout. There aren't any good hires out there. The coaching carousel has been exceedingly crazy this year. Oregon swung for the fences last year, and put together one of the best staffs in the country to go with the Taggart hire. The head coach's play calling was one of the weakest points of last season.
If either of these guys sucks, well, I'm not sure Sumlin would do a whole lot better. Show them the door after year 2-4 and find a real coach with adequate time to pre-position the new coach and staff rather than scrambling to make a hire in less than a week. In this economy.
Taggart leaving definitely hurt Oregon. So let's mitigate the harm.
A lot of words to say that Oregon Football only cares about retaining 2/3 of a good class and damned everything else beyond that.
Oregon Football isn't dead but it won't win a Pac 12 North Championship in the next 5 years. You can cook that shit.