Absurdly Early 2024 Predictions

[Root4GT]

Please quit furthering a debate you aren't willing to have.

Please explain in depth why you support your position? I have provided detailed responses and you simply fail to respond with any facts, or rather say I have opinions while you have facts. What exactly are you facts? FEI numbers while total points and yards allowed are not facts?

FEI - "FEI Overall Ratings (FEI), Offense Ratings (OFEI), and Defense Ratings (DFEI) are opponent-adjusted data representing the scoring advantage per possession a team would be expected to have on a neutral field against an average opponent, calculated from the results of non-garbage possessions in FBS vs. FBS games.

"Would be expected to have" is an opinion based on an algorithm that is assumption based. There is no true fact to that!

Come on man, support you position with more than FEI is the gospel! Do you have any more than that? Can you explain why you believe FEI is fact based? If so give it a shot. You have not yet!

 

[TampaBuzz]

This is a discussion board. Deal with opinions or use the ignore function. Lord have mercy I don't like you posts so stop posting. Sad at best!

Sheesh....You are worse than my wife at repeating your opinion over and over again ad nauseum. Your opinion about our defense was very clear the 1st and 2nd times you stated it. We all understand that you believe our defense stinks and is beyond all redemption. I am still waiting to hear back from one of our fellow posters about how many times I have to listen to my wife repeat the same thing (something about a Harvard study); but I don't think that applies here!

 

[Root4GT]

Sheesh....You are worse than my wife at repeating your opinion over and over again ad nauseum. Your opinion about our defense was very clear the 1st and 2nd times you stated it. We all understand that you believe our defense stinks and is beyond all redemption. I am still waiting to hear back from one of our fellow posters about how many times I have to listen to my wife repeat the same thing (something about a Harvard study); but I don't think that applies here!

And yet we have people coming on here saying our defense was not terrible, just below average. That;s garbage and you know that it's garbage.

Ignore works if opinions bother you. It won't bother me that you use the feature. Your problem, not mine!

 

[forensicbuzz]

Simply based on assumptions put into a formula. FEI is a fancy opinion not based on any facts except their opinion on how a team “would” perform.

Actual points given up and yards given up is a real measure, not an opinion based on assumptions. But believe what you want if it makes you feel better.

Simply read their explanation of how they come up with the number. It’s opinion, NOT FACTS!

There are a lot of things that go into determining whether a defense is good, average, mediocre, or terrible. Those data vary from person to person. Points per game. If you have a weak secondary and give up big passing plays occasionally that lead to points, but they stuff the run and really make the opposing offense one-dimensional, that's a bad secondary, not a bad defense. If you're bad against both, then you're a bad defense. Who you play does matter when comparing your defense to other defenses.

What you're getting hung up on is that you're looking at our defense in a vacuum and saying "We're a terrible defense," which very well may be true. We're definitely not a good defense or even an acceptable defense. No one is saying we are. What others are saying is that compared to other defenses we're closer to average than the bottom of FBS. These are not mutually exclusive opinions. Both can be true.

Personally, I don't give a rat's *** about other teams' defenses and how our defense stacks up against those defenses. I care about how our defense helps us win games, which is the same thing you're saying. At the end of the day, who cares whether you're a higher-rated defense than Tulane? It doesn't matter. What matters is that our defense helps us beat the teams we play.

 

[Root4GT]

There are a lot of things that go into determining whether a defense is good, average, mediocre, or terrible. Those data vary from person to person. Points per game. If you have a weak secondary and give up big passing plays occasionally that lead to points, but they stuff the run and really make the opposing offense one-dimensional, that's a bad secondary, not a bad defense. If you're bad against both, then you're a bad defense. Who you play does matter when comparing your defense to other defenses.

What you're getting hung up on is that you're looking at our defense in a vacuum and saying "We're a terrible defense," which very well may be true. We're definitely not a good defense or even an acceptable defense. No one is saying we are. What others are saying is that compared to other defenses we're closer to average than the bottom of FBS. These are not mutually exclusive opinions. Both can be true.

Personally, I don't give a rat's *** about other teams' defenses and how our defense stacks up against those defenses. I care about how our defense helps us win games, which is the same thing you're saying. At the end of the day, who cares whether you're a higher-rated defense than Tulane? It doesn't matter. What matters is that our defense helps us beat the teams we play.

Yup and our defense helped us beat Wake very clearly. The defense held it's own against Miami and combined with a brain dead coach gave our offense a small chance to win the game which remarkably the offense did. The defense also played well against UVA. UVA and Wake are the bottom 2 teams in the ACC. Other than those games against P5 teams our defense was a huge liability. Louisville - 39 points / Ole Miss - 48 points / BG - 38 points / BC - 38 points / UNC - 42 points / Clemson - 42 points / Cuse - 22 points (* for no QB) / UGA - 31 points. If that isn;t a really bad defense I guess I don't know what a bad defense is then.

My issue with the so called advanced metrics in college football is the comparisons are not against similar opponents and the sample size is small. College Football advanced metrics are no wan comparable to Major League Baseball advanced metrics where there are 162 games and all teams play very similar schedules so comparisons are valid. Also the statistics are generally individual metrics.

Anyway your point is very valid!

 

[link3945]

What exactly are we arguing here? We're around 100th in points per game, 93rd in SP+, 86th in FEI. All of them are in broad agreement over how good our defense was: not very. SP+ is likely to be more predictive going forward, since it attempts to adjust for opponent, situation, and pace of play. Points per game is a fine metric, but misses a lot of context.

EPA is probably an even better metric: EPA/play has us as the 90th best defense. Not bad against the pass, awful against the run. Awful on success rate, but limited explosive plays.

 

[Root4GT]

What exactly are we arguing here? We're around 100th in points per game, 93rd in SP+, 86th in FEI. All of them are in broad agreement over how good our defense was: not very. SP+ is likely to be more predictive going forward, since it attempts to adjust for opponent, situation, and pace of play. Points per game is a fine metric, but misses a lot of context.

EPA is probably an even better metric: EPA/play has us as the 90th best defense. Not bad against the pass, awful against the run. Awful on success rate, but limited explosive plays.

When you need to score more than 38 points in half your games to win your defense is a huge liability regardless of metrics. Only 10 FBS teams averaged 38+ points/game. When you have to be a top 10 scoring team to win any of half the games you play you have a real problem.

Again you can metric this to make it sound like whatever you want but the above paragraph makes it abundantly clear how bad our defense was.

 

[JacketOff]

What exactly are we arguing here? We're around 100th in points per game, 93rd in SP+, 86th in FEI. All of them are in broad agreement over how good our defense was: not very. SP+ is likely to be more predictive going forward, since it attempts to adjust for opponent, situation, and pace of play. Points per game is a fine metric, but misses a lot of context.

EPA is probably an even better metric: EPA/play has us as the 90th best defense. Not bad against the pass, awful against the run. Awful on success rate, but limited explosive plays.

The entire argument boils down to whether you want to classify our defense as: below average, not good, bad, or absolutely awful. Careful which one you pick though, because clearly the difference means a lot

 

[Root4GT]

The entire argument boils down to whether you want to classify our defense as: below average, not good, bad, or absolutely awful. Careful which one you pick though, because clearly the difference means a lot

Door #4 please

 

[UgaBlows]

Brent Key wants to win badly, I 100% believe that changes are coming for our defense both in personnel and coaching

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

The schedule next year looks brutal.

Without looking at graduations for any of these teams and having no crystal ball for transfer portal moves, here's what I see:

2 "Likely" wins (Georgia State, VMI)
3 "Probable" wins (Duke, Syracuse, VT)
2 "Toss Ups" (UNC, Miami)
2 "Probable" losses (NCSU, Louisville)(one caveat: we play State at BDS)
3 "Likely" losses (FSU, ND, Georgia)

If the favored teams hold serve and we split the toss-ups, we finish 6-6. If we can shore up our D and our OL, 7-5 would be excellent, and 8-4 would be outstanding.

But even at 6-6, we will have strung two bowl seasons back-to-back. I'll be a bit disappointed but still feeling positive about the program.

What do you think?

I agree with most of this, but I hesitate to call Ga State "likely" with how good their program has become and our most recent performance against a lesser BG team. With that said, I would probably move them into the "probable" win category.

 

[CEB]

Sheesh....You are worse than my wife at repeating your opinion over and over again ad nauseum. Your opinion about our defense was very clear the 1st and 2nd times you stated it. We all understand that you believe our defense stinks and is beyond all redemption. I am still waiting to hear back from one of our fellow posters about how many times I have to listen to my wife repeat the same thing (something about a Harvard study); but I don't think that applies here!

Screw Harvard… Academia is not life experience.
The correct answer is “one more time.”
If you doubt me, just try not listening one more time and see what happens!

 

[Thwg777]

The schedule next year looks brutal.

Without looking at graduations for any of these teams and having no crystal ball for transfer portal moves, here's what I see:

2 "Likely" wins (Georgia State, VMI)
3 "Probable" wins (Duke, Syracuse, VT)
2 "Toss Ups" (UNC, Miami)
2 "Probable" losses (NCSU, Louisville)(one caveat: we play State at BDS)
3 "Likely" losses (FSU, ND, Georgia)

If the favored teams hold serve and we split the toss-ups, we finish 6-6. If we can shore up our D and our OL, 7-5 would be excellent, and 8-4 would be outstanding.

But even at 6-6, we will have strung two bowl seasons back-to-back. I'll be a bit disappointed but still feeling positive about the program.

What do you think?

I don’t mean this as personal but can we perhaps have just 3 or 4 ‘buckets’ of games? Cupcakes for FCS games, games we’re favored in, near toss-ups, and games we’re an underdog?

‘Likely losses’ is how 3-9 teams view half their schedule. If we played free shoes Saturday, we’d probably be a TD underdog. Sure their QB is hurt but he ain’t playing us in Dublin either. We’d be a dog to ND tomorrow as well of similar magnitude.

 

[awbuzz]

What exactly are we arguing here? We're around 100th in points per game, 93rd in SP+, 86th in FEI. All of them are in broad agreement over how good our defense was: not very. SP+ is likely to be more predictive going forward, since it attempts to adjust for opponent, situation, and pace of play. Points per game is a fine metric, but misses a lot of context.

EPA is probably an even better metric: EPA/play has us as the 90th best defense. Not bad against the pass, awful against the run. Awful on success rate, but limited explosive plays.

Check the Top 20 PFF scores for the season, GTSwarm link. Note that a lot of secondary made the list. Verifies the "not bad against the pass" comment above.

 

[Root4GT]

Check the Top 20 PFF scores for the season, GTSwarm link. Note that a lot of secondary made the list. Verifies the "not bad against the pass" comment above.

Tech is now 128th nationally in rushing defense (225.7 yards per game), 119th in total defense (438.2 yards per game), 114th with 268 first downs allowed and sacks (1.5 per game), 111th in red zone defense (90 percent) and tackles for loss (4.7 per game), 103rd on third down (42.9 percent) and 101st in scoring defense (30.5 points per game).

Nothing good in any of those numbers. Collectively coaching and players preformed near the bottom of all FBS teams all year.

For most of our opponents passing was not needed very often. Clearly our DBs were our best defensive group though they are still a significant part of the numbers above.

 

[stinger78]

Tech is now 128th nationally in rushing defense (225.7 yards per game), 119th in total defense (438.2 yards per game), 114th with 268 first downs allowed and sacks (1.5 per game), 111th in red zone defense (90 percent) and tackles for loss (4.7 per game), 103rd on third down (42.9 percent) and 101st in scoring defense (30.5 points per game).

Nothing good in any of those numbers. Collectively coaching and players preformed near the bottom of all FBS teams all year.

For most of our opponents passing was not needed very often. Clearly our DBs were our best defensive group though they are still a significant part of the numbers above.

Root, my man, you used to be one of my favorite fonts to interact with. However, you’ve become the proverbial squeaky door/leaky faucet over this. We get it, bro. The D wasn’t good this season. At this point you’re just arguing ad nauseum over semantics - how bad bad is. Yes, the D needs help in a significant way.

 

[Root4GT]

Root, my man, you used to be one of my favorite fonts to interact with. However, you’ve become the proverbial squeaky door/leaky faucet over this. We get it, bro. The D wasn’t good this season. At this point you’re just arguing ad nauseum over semantics - how bad bad is. Yes, the D needs help in a significant way.

The real question is what can be done to improve the defense? Coaching changes? Possible as the DL and LB techniques do not look sound at all. New DC? Could scheme changes help and make a major difference? Hard to say.

More better players. That would clearly help. Getting LBs out of the portal who are upgrades should be possible. We did that a few years back with Ace. Getting DL upgrades from the Portal is very hard. We have gotten several over the last few years and gotten significant impact from only White.

Without a major step up from our defense it will be hard to win more than 6 games next year.

Stinger - I keep seeing people post that we had good players on defense? Our pass defense was good. None of that matters based on the results. Do you disagree?

Posters keep predicting 8 or 9 wins next year. Do you see that without a major upgrade to the defense?

People keep posting we should have beaten BG and/orBC. They both bullied our defense all over the field and both scored 38 points against us? Do you thing we "should" have won those games? Not with how our defense played in my view.

This board needs a reality check, not all posters but the large number who fail to recognize how limited our potential is unless we significantly upgrade the defense. I sure hope CBK has a plan to fix the defense. He fixed the offense last offseason. Fixing the defense is harder though.

What do you disagree with?

 

[stinger78]

D has got to get better to get to 8-9 wins next year, no doubt. I think we all agree on that. The more optimistic of us see some bright spots: Kennard’s play, Sylvain’s return, Efford’s emergence, Tatum’s improvement, and Biggers’ growth over the season. The DB should be OK. We need depth at DL/LB, with about 2-3 difference makers there.

I also think a 3-LB set would help tremendously. Our DL do not move real well and we need LB to cover the holes. I like the idea of hiring the guy at Cuse as a defensive analyst who knows the 3-3-5 D. I generally dislike that formation but it may be the best option we have at this point.

 

[roadkill]

The real question is what can be done to improve the defense? Coaching changes? Possible as the DL and LB techniques do not look sound at all. New DC? Could scheme changes help and make a major difference? Hard to say.

More better players. That would clearly help. Getting LBs out of the portal who are upgrades should be possible. We did that a few years back with Ace. Getting DL upgrades from the Portal is very hard. We have gotten several over the last few years and gotten significant impact from only White.

Without a major step up from our defense it will be hard to win more than 6 games next year.

Stinger - I keep seeing people post that we had good players on defense? Our pass defense was good. None of that matters based on the results. Do you disagree?

Posters keep predicting 8 or 9 wins next year. Do you see that without a major upgrade to the defense?

People keep posting we should have beaten BG and/orBC. They both bullied our defense all over the field and both scored 38 points against us? Do you thing we "should" have won those games? Not with how our defense played in my view.

This board needs a reality check, not all posters but the large number who fail to recognize how limited our potential is unless we significantly upgrade the defense. I sure hope CBK has a plan to fix the defense. He fixed the offense last offseason. Fixing the defense is harder though.

What do you disagree with?

This post actually started out on a good theme with a focus on what is needed to improve, rather than beating the same drum about how bad our D is. Thanks for that.

I suspect those posters thinking 8 or 9 wins simply have higher confidence in our ability to address player shortcomings at key positions and the likelihood of additional upgrades on our coaching staff – both of which are needed as you indicated. I’m not as confident as some so I picked 7.

Stinger - I keep seeing people post that we had good players on defense? Our pass defense was good. None of that matters based on the results. Do you disagree?

Disagree here in that it does matter in terms of where Key should prioritize corrective actions.

 

[Root4GT]

D has got to get better to get to 8-9 wins next year, no doubt. I think we all agree on that. The more optimistic of us see some bright spots: Kennard’s play, Sylvain’s return, Efford’s emergence, Tatum’s improvement, and Biggers’ growth over the season. The DB should be OK. We need depth at DL/LB, with about 2-3 difference makers there.

I also think a 3-LB set would help tremendously. Our DL do not move real well and we need LB to cover the holes. I like the idea of hiring the guy at Cuse as a defensive analyst who knows the 3-3-5 D. I generally dislike that formation but it may be the best option we have at this point.

Fair. I am not as high on Sylvan as many on here are. Kennard shows flashed and potential but gets washed out a lot from what i have seen.

I don't have a scheme I prefer. I want our guys to be able to execute blitzes much better. We signal the blitz way too early and against the better teams it is easily picked up. Blitzing is fine, we just need to be more successful. Is that scheme, technique or talent? Hard to tell just watching the game. Probably a combination of all 3.

If the defense can get to simply below average we will be a good team next year.

There is very little to criticize about the offense this year as compared to prior years. Keeping Singleton is very important as he is a player opponents need to scheme against. CBF showed he can game plan against good opponents. Only Clemson really shut down our offense. Out of 12 games that is really good considering where we were in 2022 on offense. OL depth could be an issue as we were fairly injury free this year with that group. They really improved a lot as the season progressed. We may need a Portal guy at guard or for depth. CGW did an excellent job there. I like our WR coach. They were much better this year as well. Their downfield blocking was surprisingly good. There is room for improvement on blocking the bubble screens.

We will miss Donte. He was a very good running back. Haynes is good. Need one or two more to step up internally or come in via the Portal.

Obviously Haynes King was a revelation this year. I don't think any of us expected him to play as well as he did. Keeping him healthy next year will have a lot to say about our season's results. Hopefully next year Pyron will still be with us and get some actual playing time.

My guess was 5 wins this year. Very glad I was wrong. Going to a Bowl, any Bowl was a good achievement. I would expect a solid showing from the Team. I believe Key will take winning the game seriously.