Gary Darnell knew he was getting fired, especially after that mess of a defensive situation that cost us the Tennessee game, and probably the Michigan game as well, and nearly cost us the Hawaii game.
To be fair, the defensive disaster that happened in 1991 wasn't entirely his fault. The injury / DQ situation to our front seven wasn't too far away from what we saw in 2014.
At the start of the year, our best player, DT George "Boo" Williams, was kicked off the team for marijuana infractions. He was going to be a 1st rounder, and many folks believed that he was actually better as a DT than Chris Zorich was.
Then you had Air Force, chop blocking that killed off Eric Jones' career (he was our best pass rusher), as well as crippling Bryant Young for several games. He wasn't anywhere nearly healthy for that Tennessee game.