Actually, Urban always went into specifics. He would say, the long run we gave up was because of bad alignment and "we" (meaning both players and coaches) need to get that cleaned up. The truth is that bad alignment is on the coaching staff. People aren't going to say fire Banker because they make a mistake. People are going to say fire Banker IF he doesn't fix the mistakes.
If he answered how to fix the pass issues with: We are not playing with good eye discipline and we need to do better as coaches and players. He is stating the truth and putting accountability on both players and coaches. Explains to fans that they know the issues and they are going to work to fix them.
Like you said, I don't expect him to come out and be completely honest. I don't expect him to say, our defense is getting out coached. That is also the truth but then the people would be calling for his buddy's head. That last case doesn't matter, because that is going to happen anyway.
"need to get that cleaned up" is general though. Riley has done this in varying verbiage and gone into specifics in varying verbiage.
When the season started, I had the same basic theory, if the fans knew to a greater degree what was going on, there would probably be a little more understanding on the whole. That has not to a large degree panned out. I don't think the SEC in general is a good example of any more understanding to be honest. Auburn fires coaches like we change underwear.
This is for several reasons. One is that alot of fans, don't buy into the notion that Damon Benning put forward a few weeks ago that "you are who you are and you probably aren't going to wake up one week and have a pretty good pass defense during the season". He was indicating that by and large we would see movement game to game, but basically the major improvement would come in the off season. If you look at any conversation that fans have on the street or on message boards, they continually center around "is this the week the light bulb comes on?". It can, but it probably won't. So you have a situation where former players and current staff, are looking to the off season to make major gains, but fans hyping and deflating themselves on a 7 day schedule.
Then you have the issue of fan expectation on timelines for absorption. Basically, if on one week Riley says we have XYZ issue and we're going to work on it, if we ever have that issue again, everyone throws up their hands incredulously and is like "this is Nebraska. we address mistakes and we never make them again, Osborne and Peter never let a guy make the same mistake twice". Then you get highlights from Tommie's Take where he says something like "I've been at practice, I've seen them teach good fundamentals, then I go out and watch on Saturdays and one play the line does fine and the next minute DPE is on his back 7 yards behind the line. at some point, it has to be on the players to *receive* coaching"
And it goes on, but yah, I appreciate the insights from the staff, because I'd rather hear about it then just be left to my own devices, but really the sum affect of what its done for people is just make them really really positive about who they want fired since Riley pretty well straightens out for them that "everybody thought the secondary screwed up here but it was actually the LB that got sucked out of position".
