A Thread to Rehash GT HC Comparisons

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,880
It's also not a rebuild if you have tools in place to run a successful system. There was no need to "rip the band-aid off". That was the coach's decision and ultimately his fault for not playing to a team's strength (he should be held accountable for his choices). He should have transitioned the team more slowly to the pro style he wants to run.
Yesssss. I remember several posts from Temple fans who pointed out that Collins inherited one of the best running teams in the US from Matt Rhule. And said he was going to keep to the formula Rhule had set: run the ball and play good D. And proceeded to put in a pro style shotgun spread that put the best RBs in the roster on the pines. Much, they said, to their chagrin. These posts made me apprehensive from the first.

But he ended up doing well there and we'll have to hope he ends up doing well at Tech. Sooner rather then later, if he knows what's good for him.
 

Pointer

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,801
Yesssss. I remember several posts from Temple fans who pointed out that Collins inherited one of the best running teams in the US from Matt Rhule. And said he was going to keep to the formula Rhule had set: run the ball and play good D. And proceeded to put in a pro style shotgun spread that put the best RBs in the roster on the pines. Much, they said, to their chagrin. These posts made me apprehensive from the first.

But he ended up doing well there and we'll have to hope he ends up doing well at Tech. Sooner rather then later, if he knows what's good for him.
I wouldn't say well, he inherited a 10 win team.

But I also wouldn't say he did poorly.
 

tomknight

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
556
.... Most of us who believe this newest experiment will end in misery .....

.......1. someone with his personality and marketing skills could also be a top 10 HC when it comes to strategy, leadership, discipline, and gameday decision making.

...... Also, the more difficult time to compete at GT was from 2008-2019 .........

It all comes together, right in one post.

Call up Army I guess.
 

griffin mizell

Georgia Tech Fan
Messages
45
If ibeeballin was not on this board it would not be worth reading.Tech games since 1965 Penn State,seen it all,met every head coach but one.Seen games from the sideline east and west stands.Coaching changes are harder at Tech.PJ made it work because Gailey left him talent.And I love the option by the way.Time and talent ,Collins knows defense.Both my sons played college and pro ball albeit adifferent sport .Both are now coaches.Not happy with the results so far but it will come.
 

Vespidae

Helluva Engineer
Messages
4,950
Location
Auburn, AL
Look at the state of college spending from 2012-2018 and realize that the AD at the time refused to give CPJ more than 2 recruiting staff (when our contemporaries were in the double digits). Just like in recruiting, the effects take years to show their head. It’s not a surprise that GT began to decline under the previous AD, and it’s almost criminal how much people blame CPJ for things out of his control. TS and GC have a mess to clean up, but imo, the mess is much closer to 80% previous AD and 20% players recruited for the wrong offense.

just my opinion

This is close, but there’s more. The GTAA (and the donors) wanted CPJ gone after 2013. As in GONE. He had lost internal support and the AD was cutting off his air supply. Then 2014 happened and ... they were stuck.

Everyone thinks CPJ was loved by all. He wasn’t. He was a good guy who had become difficult to work with and truth be told, the AA was not unhappy he retired. In fact, I‘d say, relieved.

The TO is a moot point. It’s over. Move on ...
 

CuseJacket

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
18,899
All frustration and joking aside, of course we have to give Collins more time. 1.5 seasons is obviously not enough. However, I do think Gailey coached in a much easier ACC and in a college football where the haves had not quite obliterated the have nots in resources. I believe Johnson would have had much more success in the ACC of the early 2000s before our resources were so outnumbered.
I am sympathetic to this point of view. As you know the problem is there is no way to prove its validity, but I definitely acknowledge that resources matter.

As to our ability to compete with the haves and have-nots, I'll define "haves" as Clemson and Georgia of those regularly on our schedule. We stopped being competitive with both by 2017 (Clemson arguably sooner) and CPJ's offense couldn't compete, let alone our bad defense. So it's dubious as to which offensive system makes sense against those teams going forward unless there's a material shift.

Furthermore, here are the last teams to beat Clemson and Georgia in the regular season since 2017 (that aren't in the "haves" group):
Clemson: Syracuse, Pittsburgh
Georgia: South Carolina

Takeaway: the offensive scheme advantage is moot based on those who beat the "haves", and in the case of Syracuse and Pittsburgh there is no material recruiting advantage compared to GT.

For the rest of our regular schedule, there isn't an insurmountable amount of separation. Miami, FSU and UNC will likely continue to out-recruit us. The remainder of the pecking order is up for grabs. That's been the case across the prior two regimes, save for maybe VT who was ahead of us during most of Gailey and part of the way thru Johnson.
 

Skeptic

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,372
I'm not sure I'm welcome here right now, but I'm going to say the same thing I've been saying for 2 years:

When you hired Geoff Collins, you decided that you were going to run an experiment.

You ran an experiment with Paul Johnson, and that experiment was "because of the academic requirements of GT, we don't believe we're ever going to be able to recruit well enough to win by doing the same stuff everybody else does x's and o's wise, so we're going to do something completely different, and see if we can make people beat us left handed".

After 10 years, when he retired, you decided you wanted to run a DIFFERENT experiment, which was "You know what? I'm not ABSOLUTELY sold that GT can't recruit well enough to win that way, so lets get a staff of really really good recruiters, and see if we can make that happen".

So...fine...if you're going to hire a guy who is NOT particularly innovative in terms of x's and o's, but can recruit his balls off, then you give him 4 years to recruit his balls off, and have an entire program full of guys he recruited, and you just shut up and eat losses until then.

The reason is, when you don't do anything special scheme wise, and you just plan to win on having better jimmies and joes, you're going to get your *** kicked until you do, and when two guys are running the exact same scheme, a 21 year old is going to do it better than a 19 year old. When you win is when you have YOUR 21 year olds against THEIR 21 year olds, and yours are more talented, because they were higher recruited, and you landed them because you have a coach that can recruit well.

So basically, my point is GEOFF COLLINS IS WHO WE THOUGH HE IS. He's a slicky-boy recruiter who is nothing special with a play-sheet, and if you're going to win with him, it's likely going to be in a couple years. The downside is that you're going to suck for a while. The upside is that if it works, it's a SUPER sustainable model, because recruiting builds on itself.

When you hire a geoff collins type, you commit for 4 years, and you have to be willing to hear no evil and see no evil in the meantime.

It might suck, because you might get through 4 years, and realize that you were right in the first place, and GT really CAN'T consistently recruit well enough to win playing the same game everybody else does, but you have to give it those 4 years and REALLY find out. At least that way, you know one way or the other, really.
I agree with most of this, though admittedly I thought, and think, the Collins hire was a mistake, driven mostly by the fact he coached in Atlanta a couple of years. Regardless, four years is a good window but the problem is they gave him seven. In the meantime a little enthusiasm on the sideline might help. They showed him a couple of times and I thought he was dead. At some point they have to show they can compete.
 

Skeptic

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,372
I have a neighbor who played for Coach Welsh and was part of the great 41-38 game up there when Uva was ranked #1. He speaks very highly of the guy. I also live in Tennessee so I know plenty of UT guys who think they are doing a "40 year walk in the desert" penance for getting rid of Fulmer. Some of them admit to agreeing with the decison at the time.

I don't know how serious you are about Woody and Monken but I think our "historic transition" is the final nail in the coffin for your style of football in the P5 group of schools. This may be fair or not, but perception is reality however and no AD in the foreseeable future is going to roll the dice in such a big way.
I appreciated the skill needed for the under-center triple option, and the beauty of it in execution. I would like to be wrong but we will never see it again in P5 competition, and one of the reasons is attendance. It requires football savants to appreciate it, and winning to sustain it. (by winning I mean 9-10 games a year.) So Army is the last holdout for the pure triple, and Navy while having some initial success at expanding its play list, is stumbling about again. So Monkey is the guy to watch.
 

gtg936g

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,142
This is close, but there’s more. The GTAA (and the donors) wanted CPJ gone after 2013. As in GONE. He had lost internal support and the AD was cutting off his air supply. Then 2014 happened and ... they were stuck.

Everyone thinks CPJ was loved by all. He wasn’t. He was a good guy who had become difficult to work with and truth be told, the AA was not unhappy he retired. In fact, I‘d say, relieved.

The TO is a moot point. It’s over. Move on ...
This is what I have never understood from an objective point of view. We had a coach that went 11-3 in 2014 and up until that point had played in several ACCCGs in spite of being underfunded and even intentionally sabotaged by the AD. The AA being happy he is gone is the epitome of stupidity to me. I just do not comprehend why people are so glad CPJ is gone when he won games in spite of the deck being stacked against him internally and externally.

Are they all happy now that they have a guy that is easy to get along with but doesn’t win?
 

ilovetheoption

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,803
You are welcome here anytime. Thanks for the thoughtful post. We could use more of it vs. the knee-jerk fire/hire one-liners that don't encourage discussion.

I agree with the "give it time" approach given who we hired. And admittedly, I generally believe in "give it time" no matter the coach. Financially and competitively I think that gives us the best chance at longer term success.

I would love your outside opinion on this, and it's to 1) challenge the premise and 2) determine in advance what the hypothetical outcomes will mean, both good and bad.

1) Challenge the Premise
Paul Johnson's win % and ACC Championship game rate were the same as Chan Gailey's
(I am dismissing the 5-6 FBS year where we made the ACCCG due to DQ's from other teams and an anomaly year even for the ACC Coastal. 5-6 vs. FBS was basically Gailey's annual performance, but he did not have every other team in the Coastal stink all at once).

Some look at that as bashing Paul Johnson and being unappreciative, but let me be clear for my preference for CPJ over CCG, when it comes down to it. But we cannot ignore the data, which sometimes conflicts with emotion. Gailey's far superior defenses to Johnson's was his means to the end.

So basically, what did the CPJ tenure prove relative to Chan Gailey, the latter being a ho-hum X's and O's guy, but with an emphasis on defense and recruited a little better?

2) Determine in advance what the CGC outcome means (4 years from now)
Even if Collins fails, it does not mean we cannot compete via his methodology.

Let's say, for example, Collins recruits in the top 35 for the next 4 years but delivers results worse than a top 35 team. That is basically saying we can be a top 5-6 ACC team talent-wise, but the coach couldn't manage gameday.

To me what this one hypothetical says is that GT has a nice ceiling for recruiting talent, and maybe a competent coach is all we need to hold serve or supersede the Gailey and Johnson years.

This is a long way of saying the experiment has a lot of variables that could lead to conclusions other than "we can only compete with the under center (triple) option". The inverse hypothetical can be true that Collins succeeds, and that doesn't mean "the under center (triple) option held us back".
Good post, and thought provoking!

I'll give my thoughts, but you know my biases, and are free to grade on a curve, so to speak :)

1) I'm going to do something cruddy and re-challenge your challenge. Paul Johnson is, in my mind, not the be-all and end-all as a head coach. I DO think he might be the be-all and end-all as an offensive coordinator, though, but his failure to ever get an above average defense at Georgia Tech is his failure. The notion that the two are anything other than VERY tangentially connected I think is a falsehood. I fail to see a reason that Paul Johnson couldn't have an ounce more charisma, and hired Nate Woody 4 years earlier, and not had 1 standard deviation better defenses. That offense is going to hold down OFFENSIVE recruiting, and yeah there is maybe a SMALL degree of collateral damage from coaches saying "you don't want to practice against that, you'll get your knees hurt and it won't prepare you for the NFL", but a good recruiter/defensive coordinator tells prospects "you're going to be playing against the scout offense, and you're always going to be playing from ahead, which means lots of INT's".

Now, obviously that speaks to point 2 of your post, which is "why not have it all?"

Well, to my mind, you HAVE proven that you could succeed with the first model, and you HAVE NOT proven that you could succeed with the second model.

In the modern era, you have proven that you can have consistently excellent offense, and consistently "good enough" defense, you just haven't had them at the same time. You had "good enough" defense under Gaily, and you had excellent offense under Johnson. Now, maybe Paul Johnson himself wasn't the guy to recruit/coach a good enough defense to be "good enough", but there's no reason Jeff Monken, for example, could not be.

It was ALWAYS weird to me that Johnson hired "bend but don't break" defensive coaches, given that in my mind a high risk/high reward defense is a much better fit with Johnson's offense. I thought Woody was a GREAT hire for that reason, and I thought they were going to do really good things together at GT.

Well, I was right..... sort of. He's gotten together with Monken at Army, and those guys are a handful, despite having the worst football talent in America.

So, you've proven all the pieces can work at GT, you just never had them at the same time consistently enough.

What you have NOT proven is that you can consistently recruit and retain top 20 recruiting classes at GT.

Remember, when you're running the same schemes everybody else is (and I assure you, GT is. Their offensive schemes are just ABSOLUTELY bog-standard modern spread offense), you fail or succeed on A) teaching ability and B) recruiting (and really, more on recruiting). If you get top 35 classes, you're going to get top 35 results.

If top 35 results are good enough for you, then top 35 recruiting classes are good enough.

I assume you want top 20 results, which means top 20 recruiting classes, and (per 247) since the year 2000 (which is a relatively arbitrary measure, I admit, but it captures the sort of "modern era" of recruiting, with kids beings scouted since they were freshmen and the internet and all that jazz) you have had top 20 recruiting classes in:

2000 (number 19)
2007 (15)
...and that's it.

Now, that 2007 class came with Collins as head of recruiting, but he's had 2 classes as head coach so far, and they've been numbers 27 and 39.

The question this begs is: Is Collins a GREAT recruiter or just a competent one?

If Collins is a GREAT recruiter, then you're in trouble, because the number of people who are GREAT recruiters AND above average x's and o's guys is relatively slim, and they usually coach at places like Georgia, not places like Georgia Tech. If Collins is a GREAT recruiter, and what he can get at GT is top 35 classes, then it's really NOT a sustainable model, because there are relatively few GREAT recruiters, and your next coach isn't likely to be one, because there's no moneyball inefficiency there. Everybody wants a great recruiter, so they're really hard to come by, and the ones you can get are just statistically unlikely to be great x's and o's guys, too.

There IS a moneyball inefficiency with guys like Monken, because of the "undesirability" of the system. You can get better x's and o's results than your "expected value" at your school.

If Collins is just a competent recruiter, though, then maybe you're cooking something there, bbecause you ought to be able to find a competent recruiter who is a good x' and o's guy. If GT really CAN compete heads up with the rest of the ACC in recruiting, and doesn't require EXCEPTIONAL recruiting talent to achieve "slightly above average" recruiting results (which is what you're getting now), then good.

I'm just saying one model has been PROVEN at GT (in separate pieces) and the other has not. That said, Flight was always possible, we just didn't know it until the wright brothers came along. So maybe Orville Collins will be remembered similarly.

JJesus, sorry for the rambling, war and piece length answer, but it's sunday and I'm puttering around the house sore from doing yard work yesterday and I came back to this like 4 times, haha :)
 

JacketOff

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,818
I appreciated the skill needed for the under-center triple option, and the beauty of it in execution. I would like to be wrong but we will never see it again in P5 competition, and one of the reasons is attendance. It requires football savants to appreciate it, and winning to sustain it. (by winning I mean 9-10 games a year.) So Army is the last holdout for the pure triple, and Navy while having some initial success at expanding its play list, is stumbling about again. So Monkey is the guy to watch.
Navy went 11-2 last year and beat Army 31-7.
Army went 5-8 with 2 wins against FCS teams.

This year Navy is sitting at 3-3 after admittedly not having any contact during their fall practice to comply with Covid protocols. They’re also playing a legitimate conference schedule.

Army is 6-1. They’ve played 3 games against FCS schools, and the 3 FBS teams they’ve beaten have a combined record of 6-14. They’ve also played games where they scored 10 and 14 points respectively.

I think Monken and Coach Ken are both great coaches. But let’s not crown Monken as the newest 3O god based on a year when they’ve played nobody. Navy and Coach Ken are innovating the traditional 3O with as good - if not better - success as Monken and Army with the under center wishbone style.
 

Vespidae

Helluva Engineer
Messages
4,950
Location
Auburn, AL
This is what I have never understood from an objective point of view. We had a coach that went 11-3 in 2014 and up until that point had played in several ACCCGs in spite of being underfunded and even intentionally sabotaged by the AD. The AA being happy he is gone is the epitome of stupidity to me. I just do not comprehend why people are so glad CPJ is gone when he won games in spite of the deck being stacked against him internally and externally.

Are they all happy now that they have a guy that is easy to get along with but doesn’t win?
You have big donors (big for Tech) who think we should win the national championship every year. They HATED the TO.

Regardless, I think in today’s environment ... Tech would struggle with the TO. I loved it. But, the game has changed.
 

Pointer

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,801
Good post, and thought provoking!

I'll give my thoughts, but you know my biases, and are free to grade on a curve, so to speak :)

1) I'm going to do something cruddy and re-challenge your challenge. Paul Johnson is, in my mind, not the be-all and end-all as a head coach. I DO think he might be the be-all and end-all as an offensive coordinator, though, but his failure to ever get an above average defense at Georgia Tech is his failure. The notion that the two are anything other than VERY tangentially connected I think is a falsehood. I fail to see a reason that Paul Johnson couldn't have an ounce more charisma, and hired Nate Woody 4 years earlier, and not had 1 standard deviation better defenses. That offense is going to hold down OFFENSIVE recruiting, and yeah there is maybe a SMALL degree of collateral damage from coaches saying "you don't want to practice against that, you'll get your knees hurt and it won't prepare you for the NFL", but a good recruiter/defensive coordinator tells prospects "you're going to be playing against the scout offense, and you're always going to be playing from ahead, which means lots of INT's".

Now, obviously that speaks to point 2 of your post, which is "why not have it all?"

Well, to my mind, you HAVE proven that you could succeed with the first model, and you HAVE NOT proven that you could succeed with the second model.

In the modern era, you have proven that you can have consistently excellent offense, and consistently "good enough" defense, you just haven't had them at the same time. You had "good enough" defense under Gaily, and you had excellent offense under Johnson. Now, maybe Paul Johnson himself wasn't the guy to recruit/coach a good enough defense to be "good enough", but there's no reason Jeff Monken, for example, could not be.

It was ALWAYS weird to me that Johnson hired "bend but don't break" defensive coaches, given that in my mind a high risk/high reward defense is a much better fit with Johnson's offense. I thought Woody was a GREAT hire for that reason, and I thought they were going to do really good things together at GT.

Well, I was right..... sort of. He's gotten together with Monken at Army, and those guys are a handful, despite having the worst football talent in America.

So, you've proven all the pieces can work at GT, you just never had them at the same time consistently enough.

What you have NOT proven is that you can consistently recruit and retain top 20 recruiting classes at GT.

Remember, when you're running the same schemes everybody else is (and I assure you, GT is. Their offensive schemes are just ABSOLUTELY bog-standard modern spread offense), you fail or succeed on A) teaching ability and B) recruiting (and really, more on recruiting). If you get top 35 classes, you're going to get top 35 results.

If top 35 results are good enough for you, then top 35 recruiting classes are good enough.

I assume you want top 20 results, which means top 20 recruiting classes, and (per 247) since the year 2000 (which is a relatively arbitrary measure, I admit, but it captures the sort of "modern era" of recruiting, with kids beings scouted since they were freshmen and the internet and all that jazz) you have had top 20 recruiting classes in:

2000 (number 19)
2007 (15)
...and that's it.

Now, that 2007 class came with Collins as head of recruiting, but he's had 2 classes as head coach so far, and they've been numbers 27 and 39.

The question this begs is: Is Collins a GREAT recruiter or just a competent one?

If Collins is a GREAT recruiter, then you're in trouble, because the number of people who are GREAT recruiters AND above average x's and o's guys is relatively slim, and they usually coach at places like Georgia, not places like Georgia Tech. If Collins is a GREAT recruiter, and what he can get at GT is top 35 classes, then it's really NOT a sustainable model, because there are relatively few GREAT recruiters, and your next coach isn't likely to be one, because there's no moneyball inefficiency there. Everybody wants a great recruiter, so they're really hard to come by, and the ones you can get are just statistically unlikely to be great x's and o's guys, too.

There IS a moneyball inefficiency with guys like Monken, because of the "undesirability" of the system. You can get better x's and o's results than your "expected value" at your school.

If Collins is just a competent recruiter, though, then maybe you're cooking something there, bbecause you ought to be able to find a competent recruiter who is a good x' and o's guy. If GT really CAN compete heads up with the rest of the ACC in recruiting, and doesn't require EXCEPTIONAL recruiting talent to achieve "slightly above average" recruiting results (which is what you're getting now), then good.

I'm just saying one model has been PROVEN at GT (in separate pieces) and the other has not. That said, Flight was always possible, we just didn't know it until the wright brothers came along. So maybe Orville Collins will be remembered similarly.

JJesus, sorry for the rambling, war and piece length answer, but it's sunday and I'm puttering around the house sore from doing yard work yesterday and I came back to this like 4 times, haha :)
Excellent post, you touched on a few things I was trying to get people's opinion on in my recruiting Potential thread.

I also think you point about having the bend don't break and not getting Nate Woody sooner may have to do with CTR being strongly suggested as DC by donors and the AA.
 

lv20gt

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,549
I just do not comprehend why people are so glad CPJ is gone when he won games in spite of the deck being stacked against him internally and externally.

Of course you don't. Any criticism will get brushed asides as an issue with someone else which will just fuel your paranoia of everything being stacked against him.

The four years prior to 2014 were more or less a copy of what we were trying to get away from with Gailey, and the 4 years after were net .500 football with two missed bowls. 2014 was a great year but was a fluke. And you don't judge coaches based on flukes. I mean you will because it paints Johnson in a better light, but overall Johnson was more or less as successful as his predecessor who folks were also happy about leaving.
 

TechPreacher

Banned
Messages
258
This is what I have never understood from an objective point of view. We had a coach that went 11-3 in 2014 and up until that point had played in several ACCCGs in spite of being underfunded and even intentionally sabotaged by the AD. The AA being happy he is gone is the epitome of stupidity to me. I just do not comprehend why people are so glad CPJ is gone when he won games in spite of the deck being stacked against him internally and externally.

Are they all happy now that they have a guy that is easy to get along with but doesn’t win?

The big donors owe CPJ a big apology. I guess their egos can handle a losing pro style better than they can handle a winning spread option. Phooey on all of them.
 

gtg936g

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,142
Of course you don't. Any criticism will get brushed asides as an issue with someone else which will just fuel your paranoia of everything being stacked against him.

The four years prior to 2014 were more or less a copy of what we were trying to get away from with Gailey, and the 4 years after were net .500 football with two missed bowls. 2014 was a great year but was a fluke. And you don't judge coaches based on flukes. I mean you will because it paints Johnson in a better light, but overall Johnson was more or less as successful as his predecessor who folks were also happy about leaving.
Hopefully we will get a fluke by which you can judge Collins.

The OP was correct in what he said. There was a strong contingent in the AA that wanted him out as early as 2011. I never really understood why, nor do I understand sabotaging your own AD at the behest of donors/AA. Whether it is Collins, Gailey, or Johnson I will never understand why you sabotage your own team. The only upside is getting the guy out. The downside is that it takes huge investment to catch up and the reality is that we do not have it.
 

Vespidae

Helluva Engineer
Messages
4,950
Location
Auburn, AL
The big donors owe CPJ a big apology. I guess their egos can handle a losing pro style better than they can handle a winning spread option. Phooey on all of them.
In all honesty, I love the TO. It’s something Tech could have been the master of ...

You should hear Nick Saban talk about the TO. He thinks it’s a phenomenal offense. But it’s also one that is outlived.

The reality is ... kids want to be part of the sports-entertainmen-media nexus. And that’s never going to happen to a specialty program. Tech either goes big, adapts or ... is the ACC version of Vanderbilt.
 
Top