Shortly after Grambling State fired Hue Jackson days after the conclusion of another season that ended in unmet expectations, the ousted coach said he should have received another year to get it right.
“You have to give it three years when you come in the first year. You don’t want to walk in and run all the players at it,” said Jackson Tuesday night in one of two interviews he conducted hours after he was let go. “I’m not just talking about Grambling but about any place. You need to make sure you understand the lay of the land. And I would have felt it was warranted (to be fired) if this year looked like the first year.”
Jackson seemingly was right in his assessment of the team’s progress. Grambling State went from 3-8 in Jackson’s first season in 2022 to 5-6 in 2023. A two-win improvement on paper appeared to indicate an upward trajectory on the surface.
Jackson didn’t take advantage of an average SWAC West
But the underbelly reveals a bit more. Four of the Tigers’ five wins during the regular season came against Florida Memorial, Bethune-Cookman, Texas Southern, and Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Florida Memorial is a Division II school that finished third in the SUN Conference.
Bethune-Cookman and Arkansas-Pine Bluff were operating under first-year head coaches Raymond Woodie and Alonzo Hampton, respectively, and had gone a combined 3-13 collectively in the SWAC. Texas Southern recently fired head coach Clarence McKinney after a 3-8 season.
Early season wins over Prairie View, which will play in the SWAC Championship Game on Saturday against Florida A&M and Texas Southern, had the Tigers briefly in first place by early October. But a 2-4 finish down the stretch knocked them out of SWAC West Division contention.
Grambling State had wasted a soft strength of schedule that ranked 90th in the FCS out of 133 teams.
The team also did not take advantage of a promising offense that ranked second in the SWAC in total yards per game (375.2) and second in rushing yards per game (162.2) because of a defense that allowed 28.2 points per game and an overall on-field operation that led the FCS in penalties, with 108.
It also did not help Jackson that Grambling State lost on homecoming to Alabama A&M and dropped the Bayou Classic to rival Southern for the second consecutive season.
The 27-22 defeat to the Jaguars was especially damaging as the Tigers lost to a Southern team that featured interim coach Terrence Graves and sophomore quarterback Noah Bodden making his first collegiate start.
Grambling did have a chance to win late in the fourth quarter, but the offense failed to covert on four consecutive plays inside the red zone. The fourth-down play — a pass to wide receiver Lyndon Rash that fell incomplete — was criticized because it seemed the entire Southern defense was ready for it.
On Tuesday, Athletic Director Trayvean Scott said Grambling was a few plays away from being an eight- or nine-win team. But penalties, poor execution on defense, and inconsistent game management that cost games all fall on the head coach.
How disciplined a team is, its ability to execute, and the in-game decisions the coach makes also matter when determining whether to retain that person.
Turning the program around quickly at Grambling has not been impossible
While some believe it was nearly impossible for Jackson to turn the program around in two years, a look at Grambling football history since Eddie Robinson retired would say otherwise.
Two seasons after Robinson retired in 1997, Doug Williams, one of the program’s favorite sons, led Grambling to a 7-4 record by 1999 and captured the Black college national title a year later.
Following the first Williams stint, Melvin Spears took over a Grambling outfit that had gone 3-4 in the SWAC in 2003. In 2005, Spears led the Tigers to an 11-1 record and a Black college championship.
Rod Broadway, who has won everywhere he’s been in HBCU football, collected back-to-back SWAC titles over his first two seasons in 2007 and 2008 after inheriting a group that won three games in 2006 under Spears.
More recently, Broderick Fobbs — the man Jackson replaced — walked into a Grambling State program at its lowest point ever amid consecutive 1-win seasons and a team boycott in 2013 after Williams was fired. Two years later, Grambling won the SWAC West.
Jackson is the first coach since the Robinson era to exit Grambling without winning a division title, conference, or Black college national championship.
Scott said the next head coach should be “somebody who understands the expectations.” Those were established by the coaches who came before Jackson. And he did not meet them.
Jackson has never met them. Not at Grambling and not in the NFL, where he went 11-44 as head coach between then-Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns.
When has Jackson demonstrated as a head coach that a turnaround would be on the horizon if he had just a bit more time?
When a program hires a coach like Hue Jackson, with his pedigree and background, that sort of signals the expectation is to win quickly. This is especially true for a program like Grambling that has not won more than six games in a season since 2017.
Grambling was 8-14 overall and a 6-10 in the SWAC, with Jackson leading the way. The Tigers did not only lose to Southern twice but couldn’t conquer Jackson State or Florida A&M, the annual conference championship contenders. Wins over those opponents — not SWAC bottom feeders — would have signaled growth.
A school doesn’t attempt to invest $1.6 million for an ex-NFL coach to build. He’s there to win. Period. Grambling didn’t do enough of it.
Jackson has been a solid assistant coach. He’s an outstanding offensive mind.
Unfortunately, Jackson has not proven himself as a head coach. And that’s OK.
