CPJ interview - Nov 11

[swampsting]

Our travel roster has 6 seniors and 14 walk ons. I’m not sure how that could possibly translate to a “big year.” Yeah - we would’ve beat temple and the citadel. But all of our acc opponents are teams we’ve lost to multiple times in the last 4-5 years.

we also beat some of them multiple times too.
and we haven't lost to all of them multiple times in the last 4-5 years. just ask Va Tech. and what was our record against UNC and UVa in that stretch? Miami? Yeah. Clemson? Well, us and a whole bunch of others. Pitt? Sure.

 

[ibeattetris]

I don't know about a big year.
But if PJ had turned the O over to Graham, with these backs ... coulda been real fun.
And our D the second half of last year, save for the Georgia game, was getting better and better.

The fact that JG seems to hit the long routes better than the short routes would have been a boon to the flex. Marshall and Oliver for all their excellent traits as runners, they weren't a true passing threat the majority of the time. Just knowing JG might drop one over the corners head might have been enough to keep safeties more hesitant to play up. We'll never know though so who cares

It's honestly too hard to say how things would have gone this year, because we don't know how the injury situation would have played out on offense (would we have so many injuries on OL if players were playing the system they knew better?), and we don't know how the defense would perform (I think we'd have been better than last year but I doubt we'd be as good as this year).

 

[swampsting]

USF was bad in ‘18 and beat us

they did get to 7-0 before their wheels fell off last year, no?

and last I checked, they were 4-4 this year. and as I said to my buddy as the game ended this year, "they're (bleepin) terrible."

 

[swampsting]

Well, being that TQM had graduated and we would be running behind TO, who never had a problem moving the offense, I wouldn't chalk it as a loss.

Pitt this year is BAD. We barely lost to a BAD team even with our new offense struggling to make the transition this year.

Pitt, the offensive juggernaut averaging 20 points a game (ok, 20.9 last I checked). which in this day and age of offense in the ncaa is ...
bad.

 

[smathis30]

Injury situation aside the differences in the schedules in last year and this year are absolutely insane.
Last year we played more bottom 10 ranked rush defenses (4) than what 2019 has in bottom 50 (3) (2018 played 8 bottom 50 Btw, and didn’t even get bowl eligibility through those 8 games)
Last year we played fewer top 50 rush defenses (3) than what we play this year in top 15 rush defenses (3) with Clemson sitting just outside for a 4th at 16. We play 7 top 50 this year
If both teams alternated playing the worst rush defense in order from lowest ranked to best, last years team would have Played 9 games before the 2019 team played their 4th game.
Coastal is still not great but it was better in the areas we didn’t want it to be, which was stopping the run.

 

[ibeattetris]

Last year we played more bottom 10 ranked rush defenses

It is hard to look at these stats because GT makes opposing defenses rush defense worse (and make their passing defense look better).

I am not trying to downplay how hard our defensive schedule has been this year. Prior to UVA it was the 3rd ranked SOS for opposing defenses, so we should certainly have expected total offense stats to struggle. The problem is we are still extraordinarily bad on offense this year, even taking SOS into account.

 

[swampsting]

one more tangent on that 2014 team...

one thing that really gets overlooked is that three of our fastest players - snoddy, smelter and zenon - played very little or not at all in the last three games, which were a win over the mutts, a helluva game against FSU and a Miami tail cutting of Missy State and a good handful of guys who are now in the NFL.

 

[Vespidae]

Lived in Bama myself since 1988 and my mom and dad were both born and raised in Bama - I agree with you about previous administrations. And, as I said, there are still alums that pay players in isolated situations.

BUT, I disagree with you that sa(t)an has to cheat, and I believe he is in total control of the program, so I would be extremely surprised if he allows any overt cheating since he can get the players (based on NFL readiness he provides) without having to cheat. At Auburn, even under Malzaun, they are still fighting an uphill battle, and Louder and his ilk cannot be controlled.

I wasn’t inferring anything about Saban. Slums often do things coaches don’t know about. Folks I know describe Nick as a class act.

 

[Animal02]

A couple of more detailed notes from last night at Macon Touchdown Club:

1. NCAA investigation that led to vacating ACC Championship was started under claim that a student had his cell phone paid by someone. Student was able to produce records of his mother paying all his cell phone bills. So when that lead dried up, instead of saying "glad we got that cleared up" - the NCAA went on to perform a fishing expedition by interviewing EVERY player one-on-one, where they found the jacket and hat gift. The rest is history....

2. While at Navy, CPJ was contacted by Nebraska the weekend before the Army/Navy game. They asked him to interview for the head coach job on Monday in ATL. He told them out of respect to Navy and its players, he wouldn't be free until after the game. An hour after the call Osborn himself called and said they couldn't wait and were gonna move on. GT called the next day and said they'd wait a week to interview. The rest is history...

3. He confirmed what we all know at this point, payers are getting paid already by the big teams. Said a top notch D-lineman is gonna run $200k! He feels the only way paying players doesn't get out of hand is if every college player gets paid the same amount. Otherwise, recruiting visits will just become discussions about what sponsors each school will be able to line up to pay the player. He thinks theres a good chance of another realignment over paying players. Said big programs will split off and smaller low budget schools would be left out, thus hurting schools like Mercer who schedule paid games against bigger schools to fund their athletics.

4. At the time CPJ retired, Duke had (has?) 6x the recruiting staff of GT. just damn!

5. He had lunch with a prominent SEC coach recently who complained about two other SEC schools who were "cheating". Someone yelled out "hows Saban doing" and he said it wasn't him. I'm thinking it was Gus, cheaters were probably Alabama and UGA I'd guess.

6. Lastly, he said he was contacted by numerous P5 schools for head coaching jobs while at GT but declined. Said it'd take a very special situation to draw him back in and that Susan is happy doing what they're doing now and being able to see his daughter perform out west.

Thanks.....confirms several things I suspected. But it will not stop the haters from repeating the same lies.

 

[herb]

He confirmed what we all know at this point, payers are getting paid already by the big teams. Said a top notch D-lineman is gonna run $200k!

The price for a d-lineman must have stagnated. This was the price in 2002 for Albert Means too. Those lineman haven’t been keeping up with inflation

 

[smathis30]

It is hard to look at these stats because GT makes opposing defenses rush defense worse (and make their passing defense look better).

I am not trying to downplay how hard our defensive schedule has been this year. Prior to UVA it was the 3rd ranked SOS for opposing defenses, so we should certainly have expected total offense stats to struggle. The problem is we are still extraordinarily bad on offense this year, even taking SOS into account.

Football doesn’t happen in a vacuum you can take out the Gt game and USF drops from bottom 5 to bottom 20. Still not great. CPJ has a 72% record against bottom 30 rush defenses and a 34% against top 25, and I have an extremely hard time finding how this years offense, with the graduations and whatnot from last years offense, switches from 72% win probability games to 34% without an effect on record.

 

[RickStromFan]

I don't know about a big year.
But if PJ had turned the O over to Graham, with these backs ... coulda been real fun.
And our D the second half of last year, save for the Georgia game, was getting better and better.

problem is, he wouldn't have turned the O over to Graham. It was almost certainly gonna be another year of the TO with TO running 25 QB Keepers/game and continuing to ignore what we now know are a pretty capable group of WRs. Or it'd be like the Vad pistol experiment, where PJ trots out Graham and then pulls the whole offense off after a bad game or so.

LJ probably would've gotten a shot before Graham. Heck, who knows if Graham bothers to work thru his academic issues if PJ returns? Seeing that he was #3, he might've just transferred.

 

[GTpdm]

I wasn’t inferring anything about Saban. Slums often do things coaches don’t know about. Folks I know describe Nick as a class act.

I’m sure you probably meant “alums”...but sometimes, spellcheck errors manage to inject a little extra “truth” to what we type...

 

[jgtengineer]

problem is, he wouldn't have turned the O over to Graham. It was almost certainly gonna be another year of the TO with TO running 25 QB Keepers/game and continuing to ignore what we now know are a pretty capable group of WRs. Or it'd be like the Vad pistol experiment, where PJ trots out Graham and then pulls the whole offense off after a bad game or so.

LJ probably would've gotten a shot before Graham. Heck, who knows if Graham bothers to work thru his academic issues if PJ returns? Seeing that he was #3, he might've just transferred.

We ran that pistol variant for 2 years. Go back and watch some games rom 2012 Tevin is in it quite a bit. in 2013 we actually saw a flex system wher ethe triple option was more of a trick play. We did not run inside veer much at all. The reason we abandoned the diamond formation was just like the wishbone lbs had more time to determine what the runninback was doing, moving to block, running a route or getting the ball. It became less effective.

 

[jgtengineer]

Pitt, the offensive juggernaut averaging 20 points a game (ok, 20.9 last I checked). which in this day and age of offense in the ncaa is ...
bad.

only needed 20 against our anemic offense

 

[jackets55]

Injury situation aside the differences in the schedules in last year and this year are absolutely insane.
Last year we played more bottom 10 ranked rush defenses (4/3) than what 2019 has in bottom 50 (3/1) (2018 played 8/7 bottom 50 Btw, and didn’t even get bowl eligibility through those 8 games)
Last year we played fewer top 50 rush defenses (3/4) than what we play this year in top 15 rush defenses (3/2) with Clemson sitting just outside for a 4th/3rd at 16/23. We play 7 top 50 this year
If both teams alternated playing the worst rush defense in order from lowest ranked to best, last years team would have Played 9 games before the 2019 team played their 4th game.
Coastal is still not great but it was better in the areas we didn’t want it to be, which was stopping the run.

Can I ask where you are getting your stats from as they don't match up with the NCAA website? I spent an hour this morning fact checking as I thought the numbers weren't correct. I have indicated where there is a difference in red. One other point, since our games had a skewing factor on who we played as far as rush defense, I removed our stats from last years totals for each team and all but two (Duke and UGA) got proportionally better.

 

[smathis30]

Can I ask where you are getting your stats from as they don't match up with the NCAA website? I spent an hour this morning fact checking as I thought the numbers weren't correct. I have indicated where there is a difference in red. One other point, since our games had a skewing factor on who we played as far as rush defense, I removed our stats from last years totals for each team and all but two (Duke and UGA) got proportionally better.

https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/opponent-rushing-yards-per-game?date=2019-01-08

 

[smathis30]

Can I ask where you are getting your stats from as they don't match up with the NCAA website? I spent an hour this morning fact checking as I thought the numbers weren't correct. I have indicated where there is a difference in red. One other point, since our games had a skewing factor on who we played as far as rush defense, I removed our stats from last years totals for each team and all but two (Duke and UGA) got proportionally better.

Did you remove every other triple option teams results form every defenses ranking too?

 

[smathis30]

Can I ask where you are getting your stats from as they don't match up with the NCAA website? I spent an hour this morning fact checking as I thought the numbers weren't correct. I have indicated where there is a difference in red. One other point, since our games had a skewing factor on who we played as far as rush defense, I removed our stats from last years totals for each team and all but two (Duke and UGA) got proportionally better.

I also included the one FCS game in the bottom ten FWIW otherwise you’re looking at 11 teams instead of 12

 

[smokey_wasp]

only needed 20 against our anemic offense

Erm...you do realize they only needed 20 points to beat us last year, as well, right? I hate that I am participating in keeping this stuff going, but some of these takes are just so bad.