San Diego State football has been a rare success in a city known for bad sports teams. The Aztecs will play in their 10th consecutive bowl game this month, and they have won 3 Mountain West championships in that span. Despite being the coach for the last 9 of those 10 years, including all 3 conference championship teams, some fans have called for Rocky Long to be fired.
This group of fans claim that he “cannot take the team to the next level”. This “next level” of course, is a New Year’s Six bowl. However, these claims are short-sighted. Here are the reasons why:
Getting to a New Year’s Six Bowl requires near perfection. Just one bad game can ruin your dreams of this. 11-1 and 10-2 teams can fail to make a New Year’s Six Bowl, and nobody can be dissatisfied with 11-1 or 10-2.
The fact that we have gotten to the point where we are complaining about not getting to “better bowl games” shows how far we have come. From 1999-2009, the Aztecs failed to post a winning season or qualify for a bowl game, going 11-22 in the final three years under Ted Tollner (1999-2001), 19-29 under Tom Craft from 2002-05, 9-27 under Chuck Long from 2006-08, and finally going 9-4 and returning to a bowl game in 2010 after going 4-8 under Brady Hoke in 2009.
Rocky Long has gone 80-38 in nine seasons and will soon coach a ninth bowl game in as many seasons. He has taken this program from a complete joke and afterthought to a perennial contender for conference titles in the Mountain West that has beaten over a quarter of the Pac-12 teams, including ranked Stanford and Arizona State teams.
The issues that plague the Aztecs are actually overcome by Rocky’s defensive game plans and the culture he has created, thus winning games in spite of their flaws. The real issue for the Aztecs is at offensive coordinator. Andy Ludwig and Bob Toledo were experienced and solid veteran coordinators from 2011-15. Then came Jeff Horton.
In Horton’s first two years, any play-calling that may have been questionable was masked by having two NFL draftees at running back. Those two draftees are Donnel Pumphrey, the all-time FBS leader in rushing yards, and Rashaad Penny, who set single season school records in rushing and all-purpose yards on his way to becoming a first round pick.
Without those two, Horton’s offenses have routinely ranked in the bottom third in the entire FBS the past two years, despite having running backs that while not at Pumphrey’s and Penny’s level, look explosive and talented.
Boring and predictable play calls have severely handicapped the offense’s potential, constantly putting them in tough spots. A more imaginative offense and we would instead be talking about playing for the Mountain West title and a potential Cotton Bowl berth this Saturday.
While Rocky has on occasion made decisions we don’t agree with and isn’t college’s version of Bill Belichick, he is a very good coach who has done a lot of good things for our San Diego State Aztecs that we should appreciate.