If our current staff (minus Bateman) is so good, shouldn't Mack just go ahead and promote our current co-DC?
That's a good point. But as you know, and as most posters here should at least strongly suspect, Thigpen as co-DC is a ceremonial title. Thigpen is a recruiter, first and foremost. He is not anything close to a great position coach, and he shows no signs of being able to be a top level DC.
Throughput the past season, little rumors would escape about dissension on the D side, of 1 or 2 of the position coaches at odds with Bateman. That would explain how over multiple games we would have multiple plays in which it looked like LBs are operating under a different play call than the DL, or the CBs seem to be operating under a different play call than the Ss.
Things like that happen, repeatedly, only under 1 of 3 scenarios: it is the first year of the staff; the players are dumb and lazy; there is undermining of the DC.
Mack put together a staff that largely is about recruiting first and about his friends and former players. It's a buddy staff, with Mack as the glib-tongued host of the party.
Bateman is somewhat similar to Manny Diaz with Mack in that Texas boosters wanted Diaz and UNC boosters definitely opposed Mack's buddy Greg Robinson, with Bateman getting the offer only after Robinson was quickly sent out of Chapel Hill. Diaz never was part of the buddy network of Mack's final Texas years - he was an outsider and easily blamed for ll that was going wrong.
Bateman is not part of Mack's buddy boys, and Thigpen is, but surely even Mack is not so far gone into believing that him overseeing his BFFs must produce the best possible staff that he would trust Thigpen to make him look sharp and able to win the ACC eventually.
The
huge difference between Mack and Saban is that Saban applies the same sharp, critical eye to potential assistant coaches that he does to recruits. Mack is more than happy to have himself surrounded with friends, and people beholden to him, for a coaching staff.
