We have talent issues. That doesn't mean we have absolutely no talent. It means we don't have enough of it. We have talent issues at WR. Our #1 WR is a former 2* who has a career 12 receptions. And that's our projected number one WR? We will need how many starting WRs? 3? Not having depth is also an issue of talent. That applies to our OL where even if you assume that the starters have the talent to do what will be asked of them, which itself is not a given or proven fact, what of the back ups? Again, that's a talent issue. Call it an issue with proven talent if it makes you feel better.
Also, the fact the new offense will be more familiar to most highschool players doesn't make it more familiar to the players on the team who have been in the old system multiple years. That's a long term benefit of switching from the option, not one that covers for the lack of experience we will be suffering this year.
It's about the quantity of questions. Most teams don't have legit questions at 75% of their positions.
So best case scenario is we are dealing with equal talent and a substantive experience disadvantage against the vast majority of our opponents. Okay.
Here are how we did in recruiting rankings (247) in the classes that will be contributing to this year's team, relative to ACC opponents with the acc opponents we were ahead of in ().
2015 - 8th (Pitt, UVA, WFU, Duke, Cuse, BC)
2016 - 11th (Cuse, UVA, BC)
2017 - 9th (NCSU, Cuse, UVA, BC, WFU)
2018 - 10th (UVA, Duke, WFU, BC)
2019 - 9th (NCSU, Cuse, UVA, BC, WFU)
Half those teams we don't play this year (I bolded the ones we do). So of our 8 ACC opponents we have out recruited UVA 5 times, NCSU and Duke twice each, and Pitt once. So half our ACC opponents have out recruited us every year, and 7 out of 8 have more times than not. Of our OOC UGA has us walloped, and we have outrecruited, USF, Temple, and Citadel most years. In total 5/12 teams (42%) have out recruited us every year. 8/12 (67%) have out recruited us more years than not. It used to be people would argue these weren't important because we ran a different system and fit in said system combined with better coaching would make up for it. It did to mixed results. However, now we are on the flip side of that where our recruits were recruited to fit into a different system. I don't see where you are pulling the 80% from.
So in terms of how we will do. I expect we'll win 3 of the 4 games against the teams I've mentioned us being better than, my prediction would be losing on the road to UVA at the tail end of a pretty brutal stretch. I expect us also to get 1 win against the rest, the best chance being against Pitt at home coming off a bye. The biggest issue is that 3 of our easiest game, maybe our 3 easiest, are early in the year where the lack of experience will play an even larger role. IMO because of that we only really have one game, Citadel, that I look at as saying we should absolutely win.
Could we win, 7 or 8? Sure. We could also win only 1.