As expected, Tom Cable followed his OC at Atlanta, Greg Knapp, to Oakland to become the OL coach under new head coach Lane “Play Happy” Kiffin. Dorrellistas were praying for the prodigal return of Cable to Westwood under our new OC ‘Training Jay’ Norvell. Thinking that Cable 2 at OL would complete the perfect coaching trifecta under Dorrell, apologists were predicting national championship run. Instead, we got a guy who never called a play in his life at OC and no OL coach heading into the second week in February. We can’t wait to see who Dorrell comes up with to replace his previous great OL coach pick, with “NFL coaching experience,” Jim Colletto - who took off, or was sent off, to Detroit days ago.
As expected, Jim Colletto is no longer our OL coach. Sure, the headline will read “Colletto hired as Detroit Lions OL coach” but it’s obvious to anyone following Bruins football that Colletto was gone anyway. To make it look good Dorrell gave him time to look for another job. How else does one explain it? Colletto has been an NFL coach many times before. The Lions job is not a “step up” for the journeyman coach. Any coach that has been around as long as he has would much rather stick around for a big winning season than leave for another retread position.
Next season the stars are aligned. So why is Colletto leaving?? read more
Tom Kowalksi of Michigane Live believes the holdup on hiring an OL coach for the Detroit Lions is the uncertainty surrounding OC Mike Martz. Martz has his eyes on the Dallas Cowboys head coaching position and may be interviewing for it, though there are no confirmations that we can find. In any case, that possibility is preventing the Lions from closing the deal on any OL coach, including the hiring of our OL coach Jim Colletto.
That is more plausible than Dorrell’s public comments on the matter. Dorrell basically said that read more
OL coach Jim Colletto is apparently close to signing with the Detroit Lions, according to Brian Dohn, LA Daily News. We have known this for some time, but now it seems from Dorrell’s comments on the matter that Colletto may even have an offer, although there are no reports in Detroit that any offer has been made.
“He’s really torn,’’ UCLA coach Karl Dorrell said. “He has an opportunity, and he obviously has an attraction of coaching in the NFL, but he had a great attraction about doing what he did here at UCLA last year. He’s mulling it over.’’ read more
Our prediction that OL coach Jim Colletto is gone is close to coming true apparently. Michigan Live is reporting that Colletto is interviewing with the Detroit Lions for their OL opening. The news is not being received well on the Pride of Detroit blog. One man’s trash is another man’s … well trash. Look for the spin on this … that Colletto was looking for “new opportunities.” Dorrell is probably allowing the man to look for another job first before firing him like he has has so many other assistants.
Colletto was a bad hire in the first place, and Dorrell was again impatient in allowing his assistants (Svoboda, Colletto) to “grow” - while he expects us to give him time and patience. Whatever. HT to Nestor at Bruinsnation for the tip.
In other news … Parcells retires and Carroll’s name comes up yet again. No doubt he won’t go to work with a controlling owner, but too bad Kiffin bit on the Raider job so quickly. Ha!
Who’s the next assistant coach to get the ax from Karl Dorrell?? One scapegoat might not be enough for another 6-loss season for KD. It’s sad and an indictment on the program he runs that Karl has shown no loyalty to his assistants and he has shown he will not fight for them (making Svoboda disappear after only a few games). Worse, recruits can see he is willing to put their coaches under the bus and change them every year they are at UCLA. Doesn’t say much to recruits about continuity.
As we noted earlier, we anticipate that OL coach Jim Colletto might be the next scapegoat. The OL did improve late in the season (not enough in our opinion), but the OL looked awful early on, Southpaw Jesus got beat up and hurt, and even in later games the OL looked horrible at times with so many penalties and with inconsistency. We could be wrong, but we put him at the top of our list.
Second on that list would be read more
It’s another January and it’s that time again for Dorrell to look for scapegoats. He usually fires assistants at this point in the year, usually in the next couple of weeks. It’s obvious where the firings are going to come from this year … the offensive side of the ball.
Jim Svoboda has basically given up his job already, having to read more
Yet another example of our football program’s coach-in-training experiment not working out so hot. What’s amazing about this is OL coach Jim Colleto has already had similar coaching jobs in college football and the NFL for 39 years and he still has his training badge on.  Lonnie White of the LA Times talks about the problems Colleto is having:
If UCLA offensive line coach Jim Colletto were still working in the NFL and his team had the kind of problems running the ball that the Bruins have had, he would fix it the old-school way — with more work.
But the NCAA limits personal contact between college coaches and players during the week and that has been somewhat frustrating for Colletto, who has coached in college and the NFL for 39 years.
If Colleto has coached in college and the NFL for 39 years why is having a hard time dealing with a rule that hundreds of other coaches don’t seem to be having a problem with?? 7 games into the season and Jim Colleto is still working this out??!  Maybe if Karl Dorrell had checked his resume, that he’s been fired from every coaching job he’s had, we would not have this problem.  UCLA is 8th, near dead last, in rushing in the Pac-10. That would place us firmly in the lower half of college football nationwide (#77). And most of our rushing yards came against bottom feeders Rice and Stanford. These stats are staggeringly bad when you consider our OL was expected to dominate this season on the rush! So, Jim, maybe you should put a call into Toledo or Rice and ask them how they manage to gain more rushing yards than we do. Thanks Karl Dorrell for another great assistant hire!
We will give Jim Colleto credit for two things: first, he can talk smack over Jim Svoboda (thanks Jim S. for the #79 ranked offense in the country); and second, he took some of the blame himself:
We may have given them too many running plays, maybe too much information,” he said. “… I have to do a better job of not overloading them.
You have to do more than that Jim, but nice that you don’t throw your players under the bus like some other coaches on your staff.
