An Honest Assessment of Mel Tucker

Having said all that, we have no idea how he will do at State. 

High risk/high reward.  Fickell certainly had a higher floor, but Tucker may have a higher ceiling.  The fact Saban hired him three separate times is a compliment (though not all Saban hires work out).

Not proven HC, but a good recruiter.  The assistant money seems huge - curious who his staff is.  He has the potential to build a good one.

Also, MSU has sunk to the degree the fan base will likely be patient.  Lots of relief just for new blood.

Had he been hired last year coming out of Georgia, this would have been thought of a much bigger higher, IMHO.  His one year as HC was very inconclusive, but it did show that his impact would not be felt immediately.

He's just a big unknown.  Since it's MSU I fully expect it to work out great for them because of course it would.  But basically his whole college career has been a defensive assistant under already established great defensive coaches.  And in the NFL, I think his career started pretty well, was a big up and comer and then it fell off.  He got fired from the last couple of NFL jobs due to poor results.  The last several years of his career has been a downturn from the early parts.

Not sure how much to take away from that.  At Colorado the defense got worse when he took over and SP+ change from the year before I think was actually slightly negative which is not good (they've shows that almost all improvement great coaches usually get are in the first 2 years of taking over a job I believe).  

His main calling cards are that he did well at Bama under Saban and at Georgia under Smart. He's a defensive coach and so it's almost impossible to separate his influence from Saban's and Smart's. 

Moreover, I would expect most coaches to be able to win given Bama and Georgia's talent advantages. How many mediocre coaches have gone through Saban's program only to flame out - McElwain, Nussmeier, and Sark being examples. 

MSU fans are deluding themselves into thinking that he's the savior of their program. Many of their arguments are predicated on justifying the exorbitant price MSU is paying him and that he was one of their top choices all along. MSU has to pay him that much because no coach with a winning record would touch their toxic program.

Gonna say the Tucker Track record doesn't do much to convince me that the trajectory of that program is on the verge of changing for the positive.  Throw in culture challenges, and I think the stench will still be emanating from EL

I don’t know how he will do, I’m sure he will recruit above States standard, dk if he can coach them up though. I found it interesting he ripped the kids and the ncaa transfer portal last year than posts he’s staying at CU, 3 days later he’s having a press conference at MSU. I think if he has any success at MSU he will jumped to the next big thing. 

Wojo's article seems fair.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/columnists/bob-wojnowski/2020/02/12/wojo-michigan-state-spartans-fired-up-mel-tucker-arrives-just-right-time/4737919002/

My assessment is that he’s been a good coach when he’s had overwhelming talent advantages and he’s been below average when his talent has been middling. That tells me he’s not a killer Xs and Os, football IQ guy. 

Record wise, there’s one data point, so nothing you can project with really. I think the success of this hire turns on the talent he can get to EL and the quality of assistants he can hire. The diagnosis on that looks....bad? They’re going to take beatings this fall, and it’s really late to start recruiting kids in 2021. Maybe he can swing some kids he was recruiting at Colorado, and his assistants can swing some previous relationships they had, but 2021 will be a mishmash class for them. As for assistants, we will see. He’s been given a large pool of money, but the fact that they’re willing to offer Vince Marrow $1 Million tells me they’re going to spend it poorly (shocker!). Marrow has been excellent at recruiting kids that Ohio State and Notre Dame and Michigan don’t want. That’s great at Kentucky because previously many of those kids went to Michigan State. That’s not great for MSU in the sense of how far they are behind OSU and Michigan and PSU right now. Marrow is also not a good position coach. So you’re going to pay a bad TE coach $1 Million to maybe get you back into Top 30 recruiting classes. Maybe.

So I agree with your assessment - probably year 3 before he can be fairly judged on his own merits, and year one and two could be rough. Anything about .500 is success for him at first, I think. 

Tucker cratered the Colorado defense from 58 to 105 in one year (sp+). For a defensive coach that’s a big red flag. And recruiting at UGA means nothing. Like you said, every year there were other UGA coaches ranked as better recruiters than him. He could succeed. But I would be pretty shocked.

Just make sure to kick them while they are down and win big against them this Fall.  Do not let them have their Jim Tressel game where an early win gives them more legitimacy than they should have.

From a Michigan perspective, Mel Tucker is kind of a whatever coach. I don’t think it moves the needle a ton but they did pull a rabbit out of the hat after that hilarious coaching search debacle.

 The thing we should focus on more is that assistant pool. With that they can actually get some quality guys and one of Morks biggest problems was hanging out to terrible assistants. After he lost Narduzzi he started downhill. You just need A+ assistants to compete these days. We can’t let MSU out spend us. 
 

Also not so sure on the thought that no way MSU starts bagging. They just dropped a ton of cash and are trying to bring in coaches with ties to the SEC. I wouldn’t put it past them to go all in and keep dropping cash to drag themselves back to relevance. They had a taste of success under Dantonio and are willing to chase that high at all costs. Hence the massive overspending on Tucker.

I think that’s the first time I double posted. Oops

The one thing I know for certain is that Mel Tucker coaches football.

At worst (for MSU), it seems like Mel is a competent coach and recruiter.  We've seen some of those fail in EL due to the challenges they face as a program, and I'm not confident Mel has what it takes to be anything other than slightly annoying over the years, occasionally beating us in recruiting and pulling off a fluky victory or two.

At best (for MSU), Mel Tucker is the DC mind we saw at Georgia and he can get MSU's recruiting to a respectable level and perhaps approach some of Dantanio's success.  But Dantonio wasn't going to consistently beat Harbaugh in his best days, and neither will Mel.

This is a "meh" hire IMO, but we'll have a better idea of the threat after he hires his staff.  2020 is unlikely to be pretty, and could very well be a four-win season for Sparty and Tucker.  

If the talk about the BOT pushing a diverse higher were true, then him getting let go will take an act of God.  He'd have to tank the program harder than Dantonio did to make the board even begin to think about a change.  My guess is if he sustains seasons averaging 7 wins, he's not going anywhere.  He gets a couple 5 wins in a row and the fanbase and money may force a change.  

I didn't know anything about Mel Tucker until this coaching search, but I'm relatively happy with the hire. He's unproven as a HC, but seems to be a decent DC and recruiter, which was better than we were looking at post-Fickell.

It's clear the team needed an injection of energy, and Mel brings that. Fickell would have provided that too with a better HC record (though actually less top25 wins in 3 seasons than Tucker had in 1).

As for the cost, we aren't paying $12m a year for Mel Tucker and co, we are paying $12m for literally ANYONE to take this job in February. That's on Dantonio's timing killing us.

I'm in the "Dantonio wrecked this team mentally the last 4 years, and any coach could improve that immediately" camp, so I'm hoping even if Tucker isn't a great head coach he can improve the team. Our assistant coaches might have been some of the worst in the B1G, hopefully we can get an upgrade on them too. His OC at Colorado had a La Tech background.