Dave Reardon: Plenty of blame to go around for Hawaii’s football failures

When a football team is losing games, critical fans normally focus much of their displeasure on easy targets from among four people. They are the head coach, the offensive and defensive play-callers, and the starting quarterback.

Others are not immune from the ire of passionate fans and opportunistic trolls, but these four are the most consistently highly visible; throughout the game, they make decisions that affect every play with results that are easy for even casual fans to see and attempt to evaluate. And, in the case of the head coach, all of it is happening “on his watch.”

Hawaii head coach and defensive play-caller Todd Graham fills two of those roles for a team that has lost three games in a row for the first time since 2018 and has a 4-7 record heading into its last two games.

Graham’s son Bo is the offensive coordinator, and the quarterback is Chevan Cordeiro, who is listed as a sophomore but came into this season having already played in 25 games over three seasons.

Todd Graham hasn’t been criticized much for his work as defensive coordinator this season. Although the Warriors defense has had some bad moments and in some games yielded vast yardage and points, overall it has done a good job of keeping UH in games against fellow Mountain West Conference teams, often by forcing turnovers.

Bo Graham has come under the most fire. His credentials to be holding his job and his play-calling acumen have been questioned continually on social media and sports radio talk shows. “The Sports Animals” host Chris Hart was only slightly exaggerating when he said, “That’s all we’re getting calls about.”

I receive at least one email or social media message a day complaining about Todd and or Bo Graham, and most of them mention nepotism. There’s a “Fire Bo” petition online.

Todd Graham declined to talk about that, other than to say Bo Graham is evaluated the same way everyone else who works or might work for him is.

I requested to interview Bo Graham for this article, but he was not available Tuesday.

To be fair, play-callers are like quarterbacks in that they get more than their share of blame when things go wrong. The game-planning that leads to the play-calling is a “collaborative effort,” Todd Graham said. Also, when things go right, many more fans celebrate the play-makers than the play-caller.

“Most of the (radio show) callers don’t want anyone fired, they just feel like something needs to change,” Hart said. “There seems to be a common feeling that was best expressed by (former Hawaii sportscaster) Larry Beil. He said when he watches our offense he wonders ‘What are we trying to do?’”

Of course, the easy answer is they’re trying to score points and win the game.

But anyone who watched Saturday’s 27-13 loss to UNLV knows what Beil means. After the 79-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the game, the Warriors offense was horrible, netting just 161 more yards — and looking very bad doing it.

Then there was the key series late in the fourth quarter. It was UH’s last real chance to get a drive going that could result in a tying or go-ahead touchdown. With less than four minutes left, Hawaii — which at the start of the series had 48 yards rushing — ran the ball four times in a row for a net of 9 yards. That resulted in UNLV taking over on downs at the Hawaii 47 with 2:04 left and scoring an insurance touchdown it ended up not needing.

“Execution is a big part of it,” Todd Graham said when asked about the status of UH’s offensive play-calling. “You get out of rhythm and make mental mistakes, make the wrong read … it takes you out of your rhythm.

“A lot of it is the play-caller’s confidence. When you get out of rhythm, you’re not scoring points, you can make mental mistakes and lose your confidence.”

Whenever UH runs the ball unsuccessfully, especially without mixing in passes, it reminds fans of when Norm Chow was the head coach, and the Warriors went 10-46 in four seasons.

Like Chow, the Grahams follow a UH coach whose offense had a clear identity, and their versions of the run-and-shoot were almost always fun to watch, and led to winning seasons more often than not. It’s the offense that many of the current Warriors offensive players were recruited for, including Cordeiro. He played in it all through high school at Saint Louis.

He has missed two games due to injury. In the nine he has played in, Cordeiro has thrown 12 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions. Starting all nine games of last year’s pandemic shortened season, the numbers were much better, 14 and 6, and UH was 5-4 with a bowl win. In his first two years, playing in Nick Rolovich’s run-and-shoot, Cordeiro had 14 touchdown passes and five interceptions while sharing time with Cole McDonald.

It’s hard to determine why Cordeiro played better in his first year in a new offense than in the second. Perhaps it has to do with the injury and the layoff it caused for him.

Anyone can see he doesn’t look comfortable.

Some fans are calling again for June Jones, who first brought the run-and-shoot, to return as coach, as they do whenever the team isn’t winning.

Longing for the run-and-shoot is living in the past. But with the way the present looks, it’s hard to blame fans for wishing for the good old days.