I've remained silent on the boards for a while as I've watched the season play out and mostly because I can't for the life of me figure out which camp I'm in. I simply can't disagree with the assessment that Strong's team often comes in to games ill-prepared, consistently makes the same silly mistakes (penalties, mental lapses, etc.), and seemingly lacks any identify from one game to the next. There's a percentage of those shortfalls allocated to coaching and percentage allocated to a young team. I'm just not sure if it's 75/25, 60/40, etc., but it's insanely frustrating to watch and at times I find myself allocating 100% of the blame to coaching and want Strong gone. On the other hand, I don't know if a "2 seasons and you're out" precedent is one Texas needs to be setting. A quick way to lose the title of "a dream coaching job" would be to let our collective arrogance and lack of patience as a fan base appear as more trouble than it's worth to perspective coaches.
There's no arguing Strong has bungled the coordinator hires (both OC and DC in my opinion), but he's still "learning" how to be a head coach himself. We knew this when he was hired - hopefully he's learned a valuable lesson about how to fill out a coach staff going forward and won't make the same mistakes again. My biggest concern with a knee jerk firing of Strong and replacing him with Herman is even more "on the job" training. Herman has done great things in his one year - but what if Houston was already poised to be 9-3 or 10-2 due to experience and schedule? I guess I feel like holding tight for another year isn't the worst thing in the world. As others have pointed out, if Strong is fired, the next hire HAS to be right.