i think you and some others are looking at this from the wrong viewpoint.
reality is aside from 2014 we really haven’t been competitive in every game in a LONG time. the clemson’s , uga’s, notre dame’s and whoever was top 10 have been thumping us for a long time pretty regularly. crying about how we aren’t competitive in those games now like it’s some brand new phenomenon is just scraping the barrel for something new to complain about. college football is a different landscape than it was even a decade ago and unless some dramatic rule changes come in from the top of the ncaa we aren’t gonna be able to compete with clemson and uga for consistent periods for quite a while. i would also add the any given saturday mentality like we have the roster or can ever even think about developing the roster to play with a team like this years uga is just foolish too
on the other hand there are certainly reasonable goals and expectations we should have that are clearly not being met. we should be able to compete for the coastal considering the teams in our division aren’t football factories, we should be better against teams like UNI, citadel etc. Playing all games against non top 10 teams close was a start and we did improve from one year to the next but next year some of these have to turn into wins
Your last couple points I agree with. You may have been replying to others with the “blowout” loss thing but to me, 1 or 2 blowouts are irrelevant. Ending our season with two horrific ones hurt, but it was the best UGAg team in four decades and a Notre Dame team with a legit shot at the playoff. We sucked, but those don’t really matter.
I have a problem with the string of 4-5 games previous. I certainly didn’t expect that Duke would be the start of a 5 game win streak, but it sure as heck could’ve been.
NIU was just bad to start the year and Pitt felt worse at the time than it actually was, but the game with Clemson was kind of encouraging and coupled with a great UNC win and pulling one from the fire with Duke, we had a really good outlook for turning the corner.
UVA, VT, Miami and BC were all very beatable and we couldn’t muster one. Instead of stepping up, we played pretty uninspired football. I think we were out scored in the fourth quarter in 7 of our last 8 games (including the Duke win). BC was the back breaker for me. The last and worst of the four (even though I acknowledge they were much better with their QB back).
Long and short, I’m sure you can go back past 2014 and find several more examples of blowouts (or uninspired, inexplicable losses even if the scoreboard didn’t look bad). That one loss isn’t anymore meaningful than say.... the one good showing against the tarheels this year.