Looking at the 2014 depth chart in the ACC championship game to the 2015 uga game
QB - 1 returning starter Stays the same with 2/2 in depth chart.
BBack - 0 returning starters - all 3 in depth chart graduated
Aback - 0 returning starters 4/6 graduated. Other two in depth chart played, with Snoddy being a backup and Isiah willis starting
WR - 1 returning starter in Michael Summers, who quit team. 3/5 graduated. Antonio Messick backs up Brad Stewart, Ricky Juene starts.
OL - 4/5 starters returning. 9/10 in two deep return. Lose Chris Griffin (OL) for the season, so down to 8/10. He was a backup to Errin Joe, who started almost every game in 2015, so that would hurt more for 2016 than 2015. OL is the biggest injury excuse ive seen given that we literally only lost 2 people in the two deep form 2014 to 2015.
Chamberlain. Parker and Trey Klock start at the end of the year, With Errin Joe moving to Shaqs old spot at guard, leaving OT an opening for Parker. Trey Klock beats out Chamberlain as well as a RS-FR. So that is 3 freshman that have beat out starters for those taking notes.
So on offense, we returned 6 starters on paper, and only lost one backup on paper in Chris Griffin, with Dennis Andrews being suspended. Injuries didnt destroy the offense, losing 80% of the depth chart due to graduation did. 2014 was a season that was an accumulation of a REALLY REALLY REALLY GOOD 2010 recruiting class on its Rs-SR year, and a 2011 class on its natural SR year graduation. The 2010 class only produced 19 starter seasons (e.g. players from that class started the majority of the games in a season 19 times) which really isnt that much, but when you consider that almost 2/3 of it was 2014, it shows how much getting old matters.
The 2011 class had 27 starter-years, which is the most a single class production weve had outside of the 2009 and 2007 classes, which each produced over 30 starter-years.
CPJ relied on a get-old stay old system for people to know and develop knowledge of the spread option, and when multi-year starters emerged, thats when GT succeeded the most. No class since 2011 has produced over 25 starter-years, which has been part of the recent struggle, outside of the 2013 class being a giant flop.