Brent Key is not the answer

[bobongo]

P

i thought all of those guys were 3-stars.

But they're smart 3-stars.

 

[LongforDodd]

....

And why didn't Tech recruit Castellano? He's from right down the road, you know. I suspect it is because he's 5'11' and likes to run. The staff is looking for QBs over 6'3" who stick in the pocket. And we miss opportunities. Lots of them.

Did BC recruit him as a QB? I could be wrong but I thought I remember hearing on one of their telecasts that he was recruited for another position but begged the staff to let him have a go at it.

He played alot like JT last week. But guys like him and JT generally don't get a shot at QB in offenses that aren't run oriented especially in P5.

 

[LongforDodd]

We’ve been talking about the problem of recruiting on the DL for as long as I can remember. About 20 years ago it became clear that the number of elite DT coming out of high school was perhaps the smallest group of prospects of any position. A percentage of these prospects came from failing school systems, a percentage lacked any kind of stem preparation, and the few that were left were gobbled up by factories.

Non-factory schools responded by finding players with big frames and trying to develop them. Tech did this along with converting offensive linemen and finding players from other countries. Some of these approaches worked but mostly this was making do.

Today you will find lots of teams with 300 pound DTs. But few teams actually have elite athletes at this position. What many teams can hope for is to find DTs who, though not game changers, are not total disasters. They then try to have a combination of scheming and top notch linebackers.

Granted convincing good DLmen to come here is extremely difficult but maybe we should be focusing more on getting LB's that can blitz and stuff the run.

 

[slugboy]

We’ve been talking about the problem of recruiting on the DL for as long as I can remember. About 20 years ago it became clear that the number of elite DT coming out of high school was perhaps the smallest group of prospects of any position. A percentage of these prospects came from failing school systems, a percentage lacked any kind of stem preparation, and the few that were left were gobbled up by factories.

Non-factory schools responded by finding players with big frames and trying to develop them. Tech did this along with converting offensive linemen and finding players from other countries. Some of these approaches worked but mostly this was making do.

Today you will find lots of teams with 300 pound DTs. But few teams actually have elite athletes at this position. What many teams can hope for is to find DTs who, though not game changers, are not total disasters. They then try to have a combination of scheming and top notch linebackers.

A lot more people can weigh 300 lbs than can weigh 300 lbs and move

 

[Tjacket]

Granted convincing good DLmen to come here is extremely difficult but maybe we should be focusing more on getting LB's that can blitz and stuff the run.

A lot more people can weigh 300 lbs than can weigh 300 lbs and

Granted convincing good DLmen to come here is extremely difficult but maybe we should be focusing more on getting LB's that can blitz and stuff the run.

Bring Jason Seymour back to the Flats as DC. I think that is the missing from last year.

 

[Techster]

I thought that James Graham never really got the chance he needed to get at QB. If the OC has only known how to, or was willing to, install some option into this O, Graham may have done quite well as a transition QB. Alas, it was not to be.

The beauty of hiring Willie Fritz would have been his ability to adapt to the personnel he has. People often thought he would run the option, but that was the personnel Monken left him at GA Southern. So he kept the option because his best players could be maximized with those concepts, but he also added modern schemes to it. Fritz's GA Southern's offense was a joy to watch. Then he moved to Tulane, and struggled for a bit to get the right players, but now his offense looks nothing like what he ran GA Southern, and he's continuing his winning ways with different types of players. That's called a dang good coach.

I think Fritz would have had a lot of success here after CPJ. There was enough talent to continue winning...at least more than 3 games a year. James Graham would have definitely benefitted from Fritz.

 

[lv20gt]

The beauty of hiring Willie Fritz would have been his ability to adapt to the personnel he has. People often thought he would run the option, but that was the personnel Monken left him at GA Southern. So he kept the option because his best players could be maximized with those concepts, but he also added modern schemes to it. Fritz's GA Southern's offense was a joy to watch. Then he moved to Tulane, and struggled for a bit to get the right players, but now his offense looks nothing like what he ran GA Southern, and his continuing his winning ways with different types of players. That's called a dang good coach.

Fritz was already running an option offense prior to coming to Southern. It was a bit different than Southern's but it was still option based and one of the reasons that he was chosen was the belief that the talent that Southern had at the time fit well with what he was already doing. Even then he came in and changed a good number of things including going from the gun and moving from mostly man blocking to mostly zone blocking. Sure the play calling was dictated by the talent running it 80% of the time, but even at SHS he was running 66% of the time. The adjustment was less adjusting the offense as a whole, and more adjusting the play calling within the offense. Same thing can be said for when Johnson came here. He put in his system and adjusted the play calls for what he had. And with Collins we saw something similar. We did adjust the play calling to what we had running it 10% more than Collins did his last year at Temple, and our QBs combined for 187 carries compared to the 73 carries QB had at Temple in 2018.

I have never understood the idea that it was a good decision to try and have a coach with no experience in an offense try to run it on a temporary basis while he recruited for a completely different one. You could argue we should have hired a different coach who had a more similar offense but that was an administrative decision and probably one that was influenced by big money donors who wanted a complete detachment from the TO.

 

[LT 1967]

We’ve been talkithe off

Today you will find lots of teams with 300 pound DTs. But few teams actually have elite athletes at this position. What many teams can hope for is to find DTs who, though not game changers, are not total disasters. They then try to have a combination of scheming and top notch linebackers.

This comment may be out of date, but I recall Jimmy Johnson's comments concerning his time at Miami (From his Book). He tried to recruit rangy line backers and build them up into fast D linemen. He also mentions using constant up-field pressure rather than the hold and wait system for the offensive play to develop. He had a dispute with his first Defensive Coordinator about this due to a contract that required him to keep Schnellenberger's staff for one year after he took the Miami job.

Kim King also mentioned in his book that we always had difficulty recruiting Big War Daddies for the D line.

 

[stinger78]

Fritz was already running an option offense prior to coming to Southern. It was a bit different than Southern's but it was still option based and one of the reasons that he was chosen was the belief that the talent that Southern had at the time fit well with what he was already doing. Even then he came in and changed a good number of things including going from the gun and moving from mostly man blocking to mostly zone blocking. Sure the play calling was dictated by the talent running it 80% of the time, but even at SHS he was running 66% of the time. The adjustment was less adjusting the offense as a whole, and more adjusting the play calling within the offense. Same thing can be said for when Johnson came here. He put in his system and adjusted the play calls for what he had. And with Collins we saw something similar. We did adjust the play calling to what we had running it 10% more than Collins did his last year at Temple, and our QBs combined for 187 carries compared to the 73 carries QB had at Temple in 2018.

I have never understood the idea that it was a good decision to try and have a coach with no experience in an offense try to run it on a temporary basis while he recruited for a completely different one. You could argue we should have hired a different coach who had a more similar offense but that was an administrative decision and probably one that was influenced by big money donors who wanted a complete detachment from the TO.

I can mostly agree. We did run it a bit more TFG’s first year - almost out if necessity. However, for my part, I did include the disaimer of if CDP knew how to run it. He may not have, but to know option ball and have a option-built team, and still not run any of it “because it’s not what we want to do” is short-sighted, IMPO.

 

[TooTall]

Is Florida finding its footing under Billy Napier? We'll find out soon

The 5-2 Gators say their culture change is working, but a pivotal stretch that starts with Georgia on Saturday will show just how far Napier's rebuild has come.

www.espn.com

A good read for an open minded fanbase, which neither UF or GT have. It stresses the time needed to clean house and get your guys in. Napier had a full season, HCBK had half a season. It cant be fixed that quickly, even with the portal. Like UF, our best players are young and hopefully bought in.

 

[yeti92]

Granted convincing good DLmen to come here is extremely difficult but maybe we should be focusing more on getting LB's that can blitz and stuff the run.

Part of the LB issue imo is those guys just not knowing what to do instinctively yet. Tatum got a little playing time last year, but Moala is brand new to our system. They are both in the stage of spending too much time thinking about what to do imo. If you remember, Eley was not good his first year here for the same reason. I don't know what our scheme ends up looking like next year or who the DC and LB coach are, but hopefully there is enough carryover to see improvement next season.

 

[billga99]

I also think the defense is struggling because of the inconsistency of a hurry up offense. If you have an offense with no huddle, going 3 and out is a killer. So having more consisency on the offense of end will definitely help the defense. I think that is part of the reason we have struggled so much in Q4 when the offense has struggled to move the ball. In terms of changes, I don't know yet. Bringing in coaches for one year and getting rid of them sends a very bad message to get new coaches hired. I realize our demoted DC doesn't fit that mode but a lot of the other defense coaches were hired this year.

 

[Root4GT]

I also think the defense is struggling because of the inconsistency of a hurry up offense. If you have an offense with no huddle, going 3 and out is a killer. So having more consisency on the offense of end will definitely help the defense. I think that is part of the reason we have struggled so much in Q4 when the offense has struggled to move the ball. In terms of changes, I don't know yet. Bringing in coaches for one year and getting rid of them sends a very bad message to get new coaches hired. I realize our demoted DC doesn't fit that mode but a lot of the other defense coaches were hired this year.

Our defense was bad last year. The 3 prior years it was terrible. The 6 or so years prior to that it was a below average ACC defense. There was nothing to indicate this yea's defense would be anything but very bad. Unfortunately they have lived up to that expectation.

 

[slugboy]

Pros:

• Hired assistants willing to try new things. Open to better ideas
• Accountable
• Understands football—can explain what’s going on
• Committed
• Has learned from good coaches
• Willing to make the changes that need to be made
• Has brought in, with staff, talent on offense and some defensive positions

Cons:

• The team has issues with fundamentals. To his credit, he’s fixing that, but it’s not fixed yet
• Communication issues (10 players, etc)
• Defense is a hot mess

When he came in, offense and special teams were two of the worst units in the country. Offense is up to average, and special teams are no longer a superfund project. Defense got much worse.

In repair terms, our building’s electrical wiring is no longer smoking and sparking, but the water is leaking everywhere. There are fixer upper projects, and then there’s us. Offense and special teams still need improvement, and he can’t ignore them to fix the defense.

How he tackles the defense in the offseason is the $50k question.

 

[stinger78]

Pros:

• Hired assistants willing to try new things. Open to better ideas
• Accountable
• Understands football—can explain what’s going on
• Committed
• Has learned from good coaches
• Willing to make the changes that need to be made
• Has brought in, with staff, talent on offense and some defensive positions

Cons:

• The team has issues with fundamentals. To his credit, he’s fixing that, but it’s not fixed yet
• Communication issues (10 players, etc)
• Defense is a hot mess

When he came in, offense and special teams were two of the worst units in the country. Offense is up to average, and special teams are no longer a superfund project. Defense got much worse.

In repair terms, our building’s electrical wiring is no longer smoking and sparking, but the water is leaking everywhere. There are fixer upper projects, and then there’s us. Offense and special teams still need improvement, and he can’t ignore them to fix the defense.

How he tackles the defense in the offseason is the $50k question.

More like the $250K question?

 

[lv20gt]

I can mostly agree. We did run it a bit more TFG’s first year - almost out if necessity. However, for my part, I did include the disaimer of if CDP knew how to run it. He may not have, but to know option ball and have a option-built team, and still not run any of it “because it’s not what we want to do” is short-sighted, IMPO.

I was mostly referring to the point about Fritz keeping the option because that's what he had the players for as if he wasn't already utilizing the option concepts at his previous stop.

But I don't agree that we had an option built team at least as far as being a benefit serving as a temporary offense. We didn't have a QB who had any real experience being an option QB. Oliver had some experience, but it was mostly limited to called runs that were more akin to direct snaps to a running back than an option QB. Had Johnson not retired we would have very likely seen a simplified offense that featured mostly called runs and double options with easier reads to help out the QB while he developed. If we would need to develop a QB just to run the option anyways it wouldn't make sense to try and force that.

The "best" argument for continuing to run the option as a stop gap measure is the OL being a better fit for it. But that is a moot point because even had we hired Fritz he would have likely changed up the blocking as well, like he did at GSU. We were missing the pieces needed for the offense we wanted to run, but we also didn't have the pieces to make it easy to incorporate the option game while trying to transition. We would have needed to invest too much practice time and development into running the transitional offense for it to be a benefit for that purpose.

 

[stinger78]

I was mostly referring to the point about Fritz keeping the option because that's what he had the players for as if he wasn't already utilizing the option concepts at his previous stop.

But I don't agree that we had an option built team at least as far as being a benefit serving as a temporary offense. We didn't have a QB who had any real experience being an option QB. Oliver had some experience, but it was mostly limited to called runs that were more akin to direct snaps to a running back than an option QB. Had Johnson not retired we would have very likely seen a simplified offense that featured mostly called runs and double options with easier reads to help out the QB while he developed. If we would need to develop a QB just to run the option anyways it wouldn't make sense to try and force that.

The "best" argument for continuing to run the option as a stop gap measure is the OL being a better fit for it. But that is a moot point because even had we hired Fritz he would have likely changed up the blocking as well, like he did at GSU. We were missing the pieces needed for the offense we wanted to run, but we also didn't have the pieces to make it easy to incorporate the option game while trying to transition. We would have needed to invest too much practice time and development into running the transitional offense for it to be a benefit for that purpose.

I hear you, and you may well be right. However, from my 20-20 hindsight position, I sure wish we'd have tried something different. Also, we don't know what Fritz would have done with our personnel, so citing him is really unhelpful, IMPO. You have what you have, and the only real question is what you are going to do with what you have. We had Oliver and Graham who were recruited for the position under CPJ, and we had Yates in 2019 who was a dual threat QB. With them, the OL which you mention, along with Mason and Dontae Smith, I believe that we could have run more option (and not necessarily CPJ's version) and been fairly successful. Better than 3 wins and a loss to Citadel.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

That sounds like Reggie Vickers....??

No, it actually was a ways back during Champ's time there. I don't remember the player but it turned out that his inflated opinion of himself was not warranted. He transferred to North Alabama and disappeared.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

And the other issue is a .500 season gets you in a bowl game. That was not true historically.
Bowl Games in 1940: 5, Bowl Games in 1949: 9, Bowl Games in 1950: 8, Bowl Games in 1959: 8, Bowl Games in 1960: 8, Bowl Games in 1969: 11, Bowl Games in 1970: 11, Bowl Games in 1979: 15, Bowl Games in 1980: 15, Bowl Games in 1989: 18, Bowl Games in 1990: 19, Bowl Games in 1999: 23, Bowl Games in 2000: 25, Bowl Games in 2009: 34, Bowl Games in 2010: 35, Bowl Games in 2014: 39, Bowl Games in 2023: 42 (84 teams out of 128 FCS Programs)

An old joke but an apt one for these days. If the bowls had been in charge of World War II, Japan and Germany would still be in the running.

 

[Southern psu fan]

Key has now had multiple opportunities to get us over .500 in winnable games(UVA last year, BG, BC) and we have come out with a complete goose egg every time. After the Miami game, I said, regardless of the if’s ands and buts, beating ranked teams on the road have become a trend for GT under Key. Well, that goes both ways. Regardless of the ifs ands and buts, laying a goose egg in a game with a prime opportunity to turn the cover has also become a trend. Something has to change…or the coach will.

The defense is killing me. The truth is we’re going to have to fight like heck to get every win we get until CK gets some playmakers in here on defense. Just gotta keep fighting baby because the other teams are also trying to win.