Flat, we each march to our own drummer. Been that way as long as there have been people. Just look at the decisions that your kids make when they become adults; everyone has to process the situation and make decisions on their own.
I also do not know CML, so I can only offer what I perceive to be a fair read based upon what I've seen him say and do. The "thou shalt not steal", "thou shalt not strike women" and "thou shalt pursue thy education seriously" commandments seem to be his baseline for minimum acceptable behavior from his players. I think that you can infer a lot from that. There are other potential commandments, but they are only introduced on an "as needed", situational basis and have not been graven onto any stone tablets. It appears to me that he realizes that he is one of the moulding forces in his young men's lives, and he attempts to strike a balance between imposing limits and permitting growth experiences. Is he perfect at that? Probably no more than any of us have been perfect fathers, sons, brothers, etc. You give it your best shot and try to keep your personal honor intact. Probably the most important thing that I've learned is that young men of almost any age will respond to your expectations. Place higher expectations and you will get greater effort; have low expectations and low results will follow. I see Leach using that approach quite often. He also does not generally seem to fly off the handle and impose sanctions without looking at both sides of the story, which is something that we all probably have to struggle with from time to time. We are all works in progress, regardless of age, so I'm sure his maturity has come over time and at a price...as it does with us all.
Many seem to try to brand Leach as "stubborn". I think that misses the mark rather badly. I think Leach has a better understanding of trade-offs than most people. You can certainly choose to do things differently, but there are always consequences. Some consequences are good, some are bad. The Air Raid requires an exceptionally high level of personal discipline in order to have proper execution. Taking run opportunities when they present themselves is fine. Pre-engineering run decisions is a slippery slope for this offensive system. Letting the QB make the decision has elements of risk, but so does any approach, and CML's experience has taught him that the QB is the best place for the decision to reside. I'm sure that the film review after a game will show places where the QB should have made a different decision, and I'm sure those are discussed at some length. It's a learning process. Now that we all know that Luke had a broken wrist for most of the season, a number of things (including the perceived regression in performance this year) become more clear. I think this year was a bit of an outlier; how often do you have a QB with this type of injury play for the season? Hilinski was not ready to be the man, and both Luke and Leach made a number of adjustments. Were they perfect? Of course not. Did they evolve over time? Of course they did. Does Luke's greater reluctance to run this year as opposed to last year make a whole lot more sense? Sure, and that plus our weaker group of WR's, especially at the end of the season, put pieces of the Air Raid out of balance.
Every year has new kids and new challenges. The PAC is hard on green QB's, and that will be true next season for the Cougs. It looks to me as though the offensive supporting cast will be at least as good overall as this year, and in some ways it may be better. CML will continue to grow and evolve in his understanding of the consequences of system tweaks. The young men for which he has responsibility will be held to the same standards. The expectations that he sets will continue to be high.
I'll close with this. The difference between intelligence and wisdom is judgement. Judgement is acquired only through mistakes. It is the rare among us who can learn from the mistakes of others; usually we have to learn from our own mistakes. CML has acquired a lot of judgement over the years. None of us are ever done making mistakes, improving our judgement or increasing our wisdom. I can only imagine what CML learned from this season, played with Luke's physical limitations. I think we will see some evidence of that during summer ball. Why not spring ball? Because spring is when the next crop of players has to show what they can do, so first string choices can be made; that is the primary role of spring ball, and I'll be surprised if tweaks are extremely visible then. Our recruiting has seemed to improve a bit every year. Our depth has followed along with that. Incremental improvement only, but you can see the increments over time. O line improvements in particular will, I suspect, lead to more run game capability. Depending upon this coming year's QB and his skill set, as well as the improvement in WR's and need to use a 2 back set to provide an additional quality receiver, we will probably see more 2 back and a bit more running plays.
This has been a big year for CML and staff to acquire judgement. Not so much because they made a lot of mistakes, but instead because the circumstances at QB were downright weird, and unlikely to be repeated. We'll see where that takes us in 2018, based on the new group of players.
