Yahoo Sports Randy Edsall: 'It's just a shame' what happened at UConn from 2011-2017
Randy Edsall took UConn to the Fiesta Bowl after the 2010 season. He left for Maryland right after that.
After he was fired at Maryland, Edsall returned to the Huskies in 2017. The team hadn’t finished above .500 in the six years since Edsall first left. UConn was 3-9 in 2017 and has been thoroughly outmatched against Central Florida and Boise State to start the 2018 season.
Edsall has taken note of what happened while he was gone. He was quite frank about his team on Tuesday and said it was “just a shame” what happened at the school since he had left.
From the New Hampshire Register:
“We’re doing everything we can but if somebody thinks we’re going to take some fairy dust, just sprinkle it and all of a sudden it’s going to change, you might as well go and keep drinking alcohol or something because this isn’t easy, but it’s fun,” Edsall said. “It’s fun because these kids want it, they want to do it and they’re out there trying. Most of them shouldn’t even be playing (as freshmen).
“I have more patience now that what I used to but I see that we’re all on the right track and we’re doing the right things. I know maybe it’s not going to be as quick as maybe what some people might like but if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it the right way and when (you) have it going, you can turn it over to somebody else. You can’t cut corners, you can’t take shortcuts. It’s just a shame what has happened from 2011-17; you can’t get it back but it’s a great lesson when you don’t do the right things how quickly it can go. You saw what the time it took to get it there but if you don’t do the things you are supposed to, it’s going down and it’s going to take a little bit longer to get back to where you want it to be and that’s the reality of it in this sport.”
Edsall was hired a second time to replace the fired Bob Diaco after the 2016 season. Diaco’s teams went 11-26 in his three-year tenure with a best season of 6-7 in 2015. That was an improvement on Paul Pasqualoni’s time with the school. Pasqualoni was 5-18 before he was fired four games into the 2013 season. Interim coach TJ Weist finished the season 3-5 before UConn hired Diaco.
Clearly, Edsall thinks things weren’t done the right way when Pasqualoni and Diaco were in charge. But that’s probably of little consolation to UConn fans who have watched the Huskies suffer through those first two games of the season.
Yeah, Boise State and UCF are the two best teams outside of the Power Five conferences. But UConn has given up 1,470 yards combined in those two games, including allowing 818 yards to the Broncos in a 62-7 loss on Saturday. Those yards allowed are the most in college football through two games. Oregon State, the next-to-last team on the list, has given up 605 yards per game.
If the total yardage stats weren’t striking enough, UCF and Boise State combined to average nearly 10 yards per play in those games. Woof.
Things can only get better from here for the Huskies. We think. But if they don’t, Edsall will start running out of opportunities to blame his predecessors for his team’s poor play.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter
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