By Denny O'Brien
©2010 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.

As a former East Carolina defensive back, Ruffin McNeill was widely embraced as the successor to Skip Holtz. He solidified his favor with a hail mary victory over Tulsa, a nail-biter win at historical nemesis Southern Miss, and an overtime thriller over rival N.C. State at home.

It was only a month ago that McNeill had the Pirates 5-2 overall and atop the Conference USA East division with a perfect league mark. A postseason bowl seemed inevitable, while a third consecutive conference championship was well within reach.

Life was good for ol' Ruff.

But as the Pirates, now 6-5, limp into the final game of the regular season, the criticism has quickly caught up with the praise. The offense that continues to score points in bushels suddenly can't do so at a pace that compensates for ECU's many shortcomings on defense.

It's hardly the scenario you would have envisioned after the Pirates throttled Marshall 37-10 and held the Herd scoreless after intermission.

Instead of demonstrating significant progress on a weekly basis, the Pirates have regressed substantially since then. The bleeding has reached the point to where ECU now ranks last nationally in total defense and points allowed, while only one team — New Mexico — ranks worse against the run.

Given the caliber of competition the Pirates have faced in recent weeks, this is not a case where the schedule has gotten stiffer down the stretch.

“We'll have a breakdown,” senior defensive tackle Josh Smith said after the Pirates 62-38 loss to Rice. “And it's not like they are getting first downs off of them. They are getting touchdowns off of the mental breakdowns.

“You can't play ten-man football at this kind of level and expect to accomplish anything.”

On several occasions against the Owls, it looked more like the Pirates were trying to compete with eight defenders. ECU was unable to get penetration with its defensive front, and Rice rushers spent most of their day in the Pirates' secondary as a result.

Many of the Owls runs were through gaping canyons and past linebackers seemingly out of position. Some of that can be attributed to ECU's apparent inability to be properly set before the snap and evident confusion over assignments.

The fact that recent opponents have game-planned specifically to target the Pirates' weaknesses — of which there are many — certainly hasn't helped. It's kept the ECU offense on the sideline and forced quarterback Dominique Davis to press the issue out of a mindset that he must carry his teammates into the end zone on every possession.

As McNeill approaches the offseason, he does so navigating uncharted waters. He's still fairly green at managing a staff and has never been responsible for assessing the performance of his assistants from the vantage point of a program's CEO.

And it is customary for any head coach to evaluate his staff when the season concludes, especially considering that most assistants operate on one-year contracts.

That doesn't mean that staff adjustments are the definitive answer for ECU to be successful moving forward. Perhaps patching the Pirates' defense could be a combination of modifying schemes to match the personnel, shifting over some of the unused offensive talent, and replenishing the roster with healed veterans and talented newcomers.

Those ideas are certainly worth considering. But regardless of the actions McNeill takes, the messaging around them is also important.

Former ECU head coach John Thompson's ultimate downfall wasn't solely tied to losing games. His early dismissal was linked more closely to the fact that he lost the complete faith of both his players and the fans.

While the scenario for McNeill doesn't remotely compare to Thompson's, there are certain lessons that can be learned from it.

During press conferences and along the rubber chicken circuit, the messaging during the Thompson era never paralleled the results. Instead of acknowledging the severity of ECU's deficiencies and taking ownership for correcting them, Thompson often deflected them by insisting the Pirates were “getting better.”

That's a hard sell when you lose 59-7 at Louisville or 55-10 in Hattiesburg.

While McNeill doesn't have to fully reveal his blueprint for defensive improvement to the media and fans — in fact, he'd be wise not to — he would be shrewd to articulate the urgency around it and assure that he is addressing it. He's earned enough favor for that to be sufficient.

The bottom line is, McNeill has some serious decisions ahead. They aren't easy ones, either.

How he handles them, along with the results they produce, are critical to the program's future.