By: Aidan Riggs
CINCINNATI – On October 19, The Cincinnati Bearcats beat new Big 12 member Arizona State 24-14, improving to 5-2 and 3rd in the conference.
It’s now November 30th, and the Bearcats have lost 5 straight and will miss a bowl game for the second straight year, ending the season at 5-7.
What happened? How did this team which was trending towards 8-9 wins, fall back to a spot similar to where they were in last year?
Well, where do we start…let’s look at some of the numbers of the Satterfield era.
The leader of the squad, Scott Satterfield, has now wrapped up his 2nd season at the helm with an overall record of 8-16, and 4-14 in Big 12 play. Now in both of those years, the team has started off strong to then stumble down the rest of the season ending in losing streaks.
These records are jarring when you look into them. The Bearcats do not have a win against a legacy Big 12 team. Their conference wins, Houston (2x), UCF, and Arizona St, were all in different conferences two years ago. And this doesn’t even mention that ASU had to travel across 3 time zones to play in Nippert this season. The Bearcats are also .500 against teams you’d consider ‘rivals’ on the schedule (UCF, Miami OH & Pitt). This includes two losses where a rival took a trophy out of your hands in your home stadium, in humiliating fashion both times.
At the end of the day, Coach Satt has not put teams on the field ready to compete at the level the Bearcats are now playing at. No matter where you attempt to put the blame, whether it’s on the conference change, how the program was left by the predecessor, or even who is on the staff with him, this team can not currently compete at a Big 12 level.
So hearing all of this, where do we go from here?
To the dismay of many, the Bearcats have cornered themselves with Coach Satterfield. His enormous 6-year, 22.5 million dollar contract contains an outlandish 8 million dollar buyout if done before 2025. The number will be cut yearly through 2028, in order of $4.0 M, $2.5 M, $1.5 M, & $1 M. If you couldn’t tell, these numbers are not easily affordable. The school had to cough up 3 million dollars to the University of Louisville while hiring the man, and I can assure you that the athletic department does not have multi-million dollar checks just lying around.
So without blowing your entire athletic & NIL budget on bringing in a new coach, what can you do? Number one on my list (whether Satterfield is here or not) is to replace Special Teams Coordinator Kerry Coombs.
Kerry Coombs has been a Bearcat coach for 8 total years. He’s now in year three of his second stint with the school, a stint where he was forced to serve as interim head coach for the Wasabi Fenway Bowl in 2022.
Special Teams have easily been the most inconsistent piece of the Cats’ play in 2024. So many missed FGs and XPs, muffed punts, and huge returns allowed were consistent pieces of the puzzle all season. The word consistency can be used so much here because it simply never was there. It seemed throughout the whole season that they were never on the same page, never communicating correctly, and couldn’t do anything right. Something has to change and Coombs happens to be at the helm of it.
Now there are many more problems with this team other than just the special teams, and what the Bearcats will now need to focus on is recruiting and retaining players.
Within the past couple of weeks, this coaching staff has taken a lot of heat from the media and fans over some of the recruits they have lost. Losing lower-ranked recruits to schools such as Ohio State and Florida is frustrating, seeing that this staff clearly has an eye for finding some hidden gems that take the larger schools time to notice. They also have to be aware of the possibility that some of your better players could always pick and leave for the portal in the winter. Big-time names such as Joe Royer and Brendan Sorsby, have eligibility remaining and will more than likely attract interest from other schools in the offseason.
Losing a majority of their offensive and defensive production from this year’s squad to the portal would be tragic for the fate of the program. You simply cannot allow another completely new squad to come through the locker room doors and expect success.
While the staff must focus on retaining talent, it also must look at filling in the gaps the team currently has. Not only will players be graduating at many positions, but you also were very weak and somewhat thin in some other areas this year. Their weakest position group (in my opinion) felt like the DB room. The Bearcats implemented the 3-3-5 defense this season with the most important group of this being the DBs. This was a room made up of almost entirely new players this year and some potential mainstays did emerge from the group, Jiquan Sanks and Antwan Peek Jr. for example. But even with young players like them, they need way more. Getting more veterans in the room to help build up these young guys could go such a long way in the development of the team’s secondary.
This season was a rollercoaster—high emotions early in the year, filled with hope and optimism. Ending the year gutted and feeling hopeless. This program needs some juice. All the energy from 2021 is gone, no other way to put it, it’s gone. Cincinnati is not on the map like it was, and this program needs to change that. The goals of this team and its fans are reasonable with where they now sit in a power conference with an expanded playoff. The team just needs to find a way to deliver. This next month or so will be a strong indicator of where the program is heading. Keep your guys and bring in some strong ones to fill in your gaps, you might be able to build a stronger and consistent program. If you lose your stars and fail to improve your roster, you’ll stay mediocre and lose the fanbase even more. The balls in Coach Satt’s court, let’s see what he does with it.