Let's see are we making excuses or what?
GOL took over a 5-6, 5-6, 1-10 team and had us in the top 25 by year 3 for 5 consecutive years (97-01)
Gailey took over a team that had been ranked in top 25 for 5 years in a row and proceeded to never finish a season in the top 25 despite having the best WR in college football
Paul took over a team that had multiple NFL players and was successful until they left after 09. He has done worse with his recruits vs what he inherited.
Not exactly the same though. GOL left Tech after the '91 season and returned as D-coordinator in the '94 season. It's not like he was completely absent from the program. Based on what I've seen in the world of recruiting, I would have to assume that he helped recruit many of the players that were on the '94 team, and had already been in contact with many of the players he signed in the few years to follow. That gives him a bit of a leg up on anyone new coming in.
Chan was a good recruiter, but I'm hesitant to say he was great. It's not like we were signing top 20 classes every year, he just happened to land some big-time players in there...but if you look back, most of those NFL guys were not top-tier prospects coming out of high school. Look back at the 2002, 2003, and 2004 classes on Rivals. Clavin was a 4-star, not a 5, and he turned out the be one of the greatest to ever play here...look at the other 4-star guys from those classes though...did any of them go to the NFL?
The truth of the matter is that outside of the 2007 class, most of our NFL talent did not arrive at Tech with many expectations of getting to that level.
To this point, Paul's recruiting classes have not produced great results...I have to agree. However, 2011 and 2012 are basically the results of his first two classes. If we're going to give Paul credit for winning seasons in '08 and '09 with recruits that Chan signed in his 6th year as coach, shouldn't we give Paul's sixth year recruiting class a chance for the same success?
As mentioned in a previous post, coaching changes hurts recruiting. Changing coaches right now would hurt our classes over the next few seasons, but perhaps another coach would come in and win with the 6th and 7th year classes of PJ...then a few years later you might hear: "Yeah, but he's winning with Paul Johnson's recruits."
Roof will help get some studs on defense. Coupling that with the changes to the recruiting staff, let's just give it a few more years and see how it pans out with the recruiting classes he's pulled and is continuing to pull after his first two seasons.
Vad Lee @_VL2
