You’re just going to have to trust Tom Herman.
With the news on Sunday that Rutgers offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer was set to join the Texas staff as a wide receivers coach/potential passing game coordinator, it’s clearer now than ever that Herman subscribes to the theory of surrounding himself with people he’s knows well through previous working relationships.
It’s a philosophy that Texas fans watched fail Charlie Strong when he made his transition to Louisville, so I will excuse all of you if you’re a little concerned that Herman could be walking into the same exact comfort trap.
Who you know isn’t always the better answer over who you can get and if you pay the price in learning the lesson the hard way, it can set a program backwards before it can go forwards.
Yet, if you think Tom Herman can be the kind of coach that surpasses the legacy created by a future Hall of Fame coach in Mack Brown, then you have to give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he’s doing.
Either he’s the right guy for the job or he’s not.
One of the reasons I’m willing to give Herman the benefit of the doubt is that I haven’t seen him making the kind of glaring initial mistakes that Strong made that seemed to scream he was in over his head. Deep down, we all should have known that Strong was the wrong choice when his idea of stepping out of his box to hire someone he didn’t really know turned into a second life-line for Bruce Chambers, a guy that probably should have been the last coach hired from Mack Brown’s final staff. That might sound harsh, but considering that it will probably be the last coaching job of Chambers’ career, I don’t think it is.
I just don’t sense that Herman has come close to making that kind of mistake.
