Bill Connelly's Georgia Tech Preview

a5ehren

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bobongo said:
From the article: "With all the recruiting chops in the world, you can slow yourself down if your offense can't find an identity". Could someone explain concretely what that nebulous term "identity" means? I've never quite understood this "identity" stuff. Sounds like just another word for offensive style, but whether the pundits say you've got "identity" simply depends on whether it's successful. So Patenaude had "identity" problems? From the article: "This was an ongoing problem for Temple and Patenaude". Well, he ran an up tempo, balanced offense both years, right? Sounds like Temple's "identity" was set, but is just used here as another word for making the offense offense work consistently.

Prediction: If we can get some good blocking up front and move the ball the football pundits say we have "identity", and if we don't, they will say we struggle with "identity".
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His point with that was that Temple's passing game was significantly more efficient than their run game, and Patenaude should have seen that and leaned into it more, instead of striving for "balance" for balance's sake.
 

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a5ehren said:
Our history with Head Coach changes is inconclusive, at best:
Curry -> Ross --- 5-5-1 -> 2-9 (I wasn't alive, don't know what happened)
Ross -> Lewis --- 8-5 -> 5-6 (Bill Lewis was a bad coach, and they lost a lot of talent)
Lewis -> O'Leary --- 1-10 -> 6-5 (Bill Lewis was a very bad coach)
O'Leary -> Chan --- 8-5 -> 7-6 (Chan Gailey Equilibrium)
Chan -> CPJ --- 7-6 -> 9-4 (Dwyer + Nesbitt + maybe our best defensive talent since Ross + a better Coach)
CPJ -> Collins --- 7-6 -> ??? (Losing a ton of starters...beyond that, who knows)
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See, take a look at that - going back almost 50 years, we've had 1 season where we won 4 games (or less). That's 6 head coaching changes. So that would give Bill Connelly a 1 in 6 chance of being correct. And he'd be basing it on Ross, which was 42 years ago. I'd love to hear him ignore the last 5 coaching changes and say "I'm going to predict 4-8, because 42 years ago..." And BTW, Ross took over from a guy who across his 6 years of coaching, averaged about 4 wins/year.
 
Lotta Booze

Lotta Booze

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bwelbo said:
What I said - it completely ignores history. When CPJ was hired, it was going to be a transition year (oops). Same thing before. We've changed head coaches and offensive/defensive schemes SEVERAL times, not just once, over the last 25 years. And yet, we have 1 single year under 0.500 in ACC play in the last 25 years. Not 1 single other ACC school can say that.

I mean sure, we could win only 4 games. But based on the last 25 years, we have a 7x higher chance of winning the Coastal Division than of winning only 4 games.

Remember last year? Pre-season we were predicted to finish like 11th in the ACC. Same bull**** - we never finish there. And where did we finish? 4th. Happens every year. Idiots.
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It does ignore "history" if you're talking about going at least .500 25 years ago. It doesn't ignore history in that it takes last year's results and tries to statistically project into the next year. His projection has our offense taking a step back and our defense staying about the same. I think if one looks at the offense without gold-tinted glasses then even without the scheme change considered an objective look at returning production would suggest a step back in the offense. I mean we lost our leading rusher and passer in Taquon and our top 3 leading receivers along with our best OL. I think many would think a step back there is a probability. HOWEVER, as a fan I think we may improve with LJ and think our rushing and receiving contributors have plenty of potential to mitigate those changes.

I do think on defense we'll (hopefully) take a step forward since CGC is a defensively minded guru. And if we do then that significantly helps our ranking overall along with win totals. But that remains to be seen and I look forward to overperforming there.
 
smokey_wasp

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I go back and forth on my expectations for this year, but I just can't see it being as dire as he makes out here, whatever the numbers say. We are too much of a wild card. It's not like the middle of the ACC pack has out-recruited us that dramatically in recent years. And against Duke, we may actually be better off, because Cutcliffe made it his mission in life to destroy CPJ's offense.
 

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We have a 5-star transfer, 2 4-star transfers, and our incoming class includes the guy who broke Herschel Walker's Georgia state record for touchdowns. I mean in all of the gloried history of running backs in Georgia history, Jamious Griffin stands alone. We also have some guys like Ahmar- Brown who folks have said are the quickest guys on the field. We'll likely have some new huge standout players and some great games, and we'll also likely have growing pains. It is what it is. But I mean sh## - not one single team in the Coastal division won 8 games in the regular season last year. We're not lining up to play against a bunch of world beaters. And we also play Citadel, South Florida, and Temple. None of them are probably any better than the competition in the Coastal Division. That's 9 games that are toss-ups or close to it.
 

gtwcf

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Should be an interesting Coastal Division this year. I really have no clue who will win it. We could very possibly have a circle of suck.

I think it's going to be VT and UNC in the basement. Wouldn't surprise me to see VT have a Louisville 18 type of season. They have culture issues and may self implode, regardless of what is being said coming out of spring practice.

I think we underestimate the talent level on this squad. I think there was not very good coaching on defense in certain position groups and overall scheme (I'll give Woody a pass since I dont think he got to implement what he wanted to do).

And on offense we've got a fair number of playmakers. I think there might be some new names, but I also dont think the talent level is too far off what was transitioned between Oleary and Gailey. Johnson got a pretty loaded group, but I'm also not expecting 9 wins year 1.
 
dressedcheeseside

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iceeater1969

iceeater1969

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MidtownJacket said:
https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...ia-tech-football-2019-preview-schedule-roster

Thought this was a pretty good look at the transition for us this year.
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I will jump to Coachs defense abit.

Start now - who has hired the long time assistant coaches that made the option work w lessor talent.? Yea, i think they knew that getting multi years at option scheme is not a positive on resume. Fire them and get a lot of hs coaches.

In early year i was working w Todd Spencer to try to get gt to recruit Texas. He said he was very grateful for help but he was busy trying to win ATL and ga like Coach wanted. He was so grateful and HAD SO FEW HELPING HIM THAT I GOT 2 TO BUY SEATS NEXT TO DWYER AND JOHNSON FAMILY at orange bowl. One armed wall paper handler in recruiting.

So we have no money for recruiting and we have option specialist assistant coaches. Imo, its rediculous to think they would all be good at both. As a busness man who built a large company in houston, i think they made a huge mistake in recruiting s ga before """"knowing"""" key coaches with in 20 miles (approx 2 million people) .

I don't like the under tone - on purpose & and lazy connotations.

To blame coach for lack of pazaz is unfair.
Till t stan came the gtaa was used as an antecedent the word " marketing".

Will the NEW ast coaches that can recruit like crazy be able to coach players and adjust in games?
 
GTRX7

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bobongo said:
From the article: "With all the recruiting chops in the world, you can slow yourself down if your offense can't find an identity". Could someone explain concretely what that nebulous term "identity" means? I've never quite understood this "identity" stuff. Sounds like just another word for offensive style, but whether the pundits say you've got "identity" simply depends on whether it's successful. So Patenaude had "identity" problems? From the article: "This was an ongoing problem for Temple and Patenaude". Well, he ran an up tempo, balanced offense both years, right? Sounds like Temple's "identity" was set, but is just used here as another word for making the offense offense work consistently.

Prediction: If we can get some good blocking up front and move the ball the football pundits say we have "identity", and if we don't, they will say we struggle with "identity".
Click to expand...

The way I understand the criticism of a "lack of identity" is a coaching staff that spends the whole year trying to figure things out. For better or worse, CPJ had a system and a plan to have his players execute his system come hell or high water. If things weren't working, he wasn't going to rework his scheme, he was just going to try to coach better and have his players execute better.

In contrast, we have all seen coaches that get off to a bad start. So they don't just try to improve execution, but they tweak and adjust their players and schemes. And when that doesn't work, they tweak and adjust again. Think wack-a-mole.

I am not making a subjective evaluation of either philosophy, just letting you know my understanding of the criticism.
 
Ibeeballin

Ibeeballin

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I’ve stated repeatedly, how my predictions of 8-4/7-5 is about how bad the ACC Coastal is than how great we will be. If we even receive C+ Production from the Oline i believe we will see that we see a nice jump O production bc i believe we have guys ready to unleash

Still shaky on the D, but would like to see Clayton to be out for presence
 
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33jacket

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bwelbo said:
Another idiot predicts our worst year in the last 25 years. Despite having been through several different coaches and offensive/defensive schemes before without having bad seasons, somehow this season will just be different. Despite all the historical data contradicting him, he just knows in his gut that he's right. Despite the fact people predict horse **** like this every year on us and they're wrong, he just knows in his gut that he's going to be right. Idiots.
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I get your point. But we sucked in 2015. And we sucked two years ago. We have sucked 2 out of the past 4 years, and one of the other years we were no better than a 500 club.

Now we lose some players. Totally new scheme etc, its not a wonder why his gut says we will suck again.

But thats why we play the games!!

On a personal note i voted my thoughts. We are around a 5 win team imo. Could go higher. Could be 4. But around that. What is vegas say? 5.5? 4.5? Anyone know? But i could see us at 5. 6. Something like that
 

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33jacket said:
I get your point. But we sucked in 2015. And we sucked two years ago. We have sucked 2 out of the past 4 years, and one of the other years we were no better than a 500 club.

Now we lose some players. Totally new scheme etc, its not a wonder why his gut says we will suck again.

But thats why we play the games!!

On a personal note i voted my thoughts. We are around a 5 win team imo. Could go higher. Could be 4. But around that. What is vegas say? 5.5? 4.5? Anyone know? But i could see us at 5. 6. Something like that
Click to expand...

I agree and disagree. We sucked 2 years ago because half of the team (exaggeration alert) was injured. We didn't suck 2 years ago, we didn't get to play a full schedule. We lost 3 games by a total of 6 points. We had more offense (by far in some cases) than half the teams we lost to, LOL. We were a 0.500 team with half our losses by 1 point. If he predicted a 6-6 season or something, I'd yawn and say he's probably on the right track. But he's not predicting 6 or 7 wins, he's predicting 4 wins. We haven't had 4 wins or less but once in 25 years.
 

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iceeater1969 said:
I will jump to Coachs defense abit.

Start now - who has hired the long time assistant coaches that made the option work w lessor talent.? Yea, i think they knew that getting multi years at option scheme is not a positive on resume. Fire them and get a lot of hs coaches.

In early year i was working w Todd Spencer to try to get gt to recruit Texas. He said he was very grateful for help but he was busy trying to win ATL and ga like Coach wanted. He was so grateful and HAD SO FEW HELPING HIM THAT I GOT 2 TO BUY SEATS NEXT TO DWYER AND JOHNSON FAMILY at orange bowl. One armed wall paper handler in recruiting.

So we have no money for recruiting and we have option specialist assistant coaches. Imo, its rediculous to think they would all be good at both. As a busness man who built a large company in houston, i think they made a huge mistake in recruiting s ga before """"knowing"""" key coaches with in 20 miles (approx 2 million people) .

I don't like the under tone - on purpose & and lazy connotations.

To blame coach for lack of pazaz is unfair.
Till t stan came the gtaa was used as an antecedent the word " marketing".

Will the NEW ast coaches that can recruit like crazy be able to coach players and adjust in games?
Click to expand...

The main issue with recruiting was money. Johnson had a bigger recruiting staff at Georgia Southern (3) than he had until all but the last couple years at tech. Gotta have eyes on everyone. And the ability to keep near consistent engagement with recruits in the modern era.

I had a couple former teammates that were younger than me recruited by the Johnson group ( i had a few calls while he was at navy when I was considering attending the Academy but academy recruiting is a different beast all together, they don't have scholarship limits really so you get like 37 kids a class) The big thing with the coaches under Johnson is they were honest to a fault. One of the guys that played with me ended up playing multiple years in the NFL, he asked me after a call with GT (who were one of the first to recruit him) if it was common for coaches to open up with "we watched your film, we think you can be a good ball player but we want you to know its going to be a competition." Basically they told it like it is, explained things bluntly and truthfully compared to the individual superstar sell I got from some places and he ended up getting from the school he committed to.

I will say this for johnson's staffs. When I suffered what turned out to be a season ender my senior year, his navy staff did tell me they still wanted me if I could get healthy. Most of the FCS schools just dropped contact. (i wasn't good enough to get more than a courtesy look from p5 schools , too short for a MLB in those schemes at the time)

Collins is great at selling things, he's younger, he comes from a different tree of coaching and has worked under coaches that are that way. Key as well, choice is a natural recruiter. The football side of me can't wait to see what we can do with some 3 and dones and 3 and transfers so I can see a GT gold jersey in new years bowls on the regular. The part of me that cares about the academics and total person package really hopes we don't have to sacrifice having coherent interviews and intelligent players like the Bedfords, Brauns, Roddy Jones's. And We don't suddenly start being in the running for the fulmer cup.
 

smathis30

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i get the anger, but transition years are transition years.


we get miami, Duke, and uva on the road, and we just historically have been garbage at those games at those locations in the recent history.

Teams that return 7 or fewer starters on O and D combined (Where we are at) have on average won 2.6 fewer games than the prior season, usually falling between a -4 and at best, matching the prior seasons win total. No P5 team has ever won more games than the previous season in the past 10 years. Anyone expecting over 7 wins, is delusional, from a historic perspective. Returning this few starters is extremely uncommon, and historically, an absolute indicator for a bad season.

Bill has made big changes to his formula the past few years that have changed it from being predictive towards games to being predictive towards the spread, as opposed to true winners, so anything looking at the former (like those good ole win percentage estimates) needs to be taken with a big ole grain of salt.

Dont get the hate for Virginia Tech, they are my personal favorite to win the coastal this year. They lost almost every important starter on defense heading into last year, and are now a much older team. ~18 total returning starters isn't something to scoff at, especially 11 that started at one point on defense.
 
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