Expectations for the 2021 season

[Heisman's Ghost]

The preseason magazines always predict what happened last year. Those guys know less about Tech than the average GTSwarm poster.

True. Most of them think Tech will win 5 or 6 games and possibly go to a bowl. I am holding to my 4 win forecast.

 

[augustabuzz]

True. Most of them think Tech will win 5 or 6 games and possibly go to a bowl. I am holding to my 4 win forecast.

That would make you right in either case. Well played, but conservative.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

That would make you right in either case. Well played, but conservative.

But you do have the occasional outlier. College Football News has us as winning "4.5" games whatever that means. I have not seen any forecast that has us replicating the 3 wins of the last two seasons nor have I seen a forecast with us winning more than 6. IIWII

 

[forensicbuzz]

I agree with you that we can beat NIU, KS and Duke, the others? I am not at all convinced that we are better than BC, Virginia Tech, and UVA. All three of them are rated higher than we are in the preseason magazines and prognostications (not that any of them mean all that much) but losing Hooker is big as far as Virginia Tech is concerned along with the ongoing Fuentes saga. That team just might decide to mail it in before they play us. You never saw that with Bud and Frank.

We're better than everyone on our schedule, and that's why we're going to go 15-0 and bring home another trophy. The rest of the world just doesn't know it yet.

 

[Sheboygan]

It is clear we are getting better rated recruits. This staff needs to begin showing better results in the win column. I don't mean a bowl game this year, although that would be nice. 5-6 in the win column would be a welcome step forward with the schedule we're facing. Yesterday was a happy day for Tech fans. We need more.

This has been my feeling for a while, too. THIS YEAR WE NEED 5-6 WINS !

 

[orientalnc]

Don’t disagree with your comment about needing wins.

The question to me is, all other things being equal, when should better recruiting lead to more wins? Collins’ first full class hasn’t begun their second fall semester yet. We have a couple birds who have hatched - Gibbs and Sims. But I’m not expecting redshirt freshmen equivalent to beat junior/senior laden teams consistently. My expectations are another year of seasoning for more baby birds to really start ripping through the 2 deep.

In that light, having KJ Miles on board is fantastic. Even with every opportunity for him to see the field his first year, I expect it’ll take til minimally 2023, more realistically 2024, for a DT to push through barring a 5* type.

If the wins don't improve this year I believe the media will start to build a narrative that says, "here we are in Collins' 4th year and still he's stuck on three wins." It takes a ton of will power and confidence to not feel the pressure when that happens. That is why I feel the staff needs some wins. That clump of teams in the middle of the ACC pack has be the target for this year's break through.

That said, I agree with you. I want us to build something solid and it will take time.

 

[jojatk]

If the wins don't improve this year I believe the media will start to build a narrative that says, "here we are in Collins' 4th year and still he's stuck on three wins." It takes a ton of will power and confidence to not feel the pressure when that happens. That is why I feel the staff needs some wins. That clump of teams in the middle of the ACC pack has be the target for this year's break through.

That said, I agree with you. I want us to build something solid and it will take time.

You could very well be right about the media. On the one hand I think the media, in general, felt like GT was going to need a major retooling (I am purposely not using the word rebuild since I know that triggers a lot of folks) to change over from our previous offense to something more conventional and that that was a multi-year process and likely thought it was a longer process than many GT fans do/did. But on the other hand even during that process you have to show signs that even without the full changeover to players with the traits (and here I'm purposely not using the words talent or ability) our coaches want/need that there's reason for optimism that it really is just a matter of time before things click.

 

[YellowJacket55]

It is clear we are getting better rated recruits. This staff needs to begin showing better results in the win column. I don't mean a bowl game this year, although that would be nice. 5-6 in the win column would be a welcome step forward with the schedule we're facing. Yesterday was a happy day for Tech fans. We need more.

Remember what makes most good college teams is talented upperclassmen starters. The 2020 class is Collin’s first recruiting class and they won’t be upperclassmen until the season after this one. I think the get old stay old approach should give us some perspective as to why it’s a 7 year contract.

 

[orientalnc]

When it comes to football, I think I am more like an average fan. I never played beyond middle school, so I listen to other people (thankfully, we have a bunch of posters who really know the game well). So, my attempts at interjecting an opinion on a football thread should not be taken seriously. They are just SWAGs from left field most of the time.

 

[jojatk]

When it comes to football, I think I am more like an average fan. I never played beyond middle school, so I listen to other people (thankfully, we have a bunch of posters who really know the game well). So, my attempts at interjecting an opinion on a football thread should not be taken seriously. They are just SWAGs from left field most of the time.

I thought your post was pretty thoughtful.

 

[UpperNorth]

When it comes to football, I think I am more like an average fan. I never played beyond middle school, so I listen to other people (thankfully, we have a bunch of posters who really know the game well). So, my attempts at interjecting an opinion on a football thread should not be taken seriously. They are just SWAGs from left field most of the time.

Nothing wrong with your opinion. Speaking solely from the perception of recruits, we’ve probably been missing on some even higher caliber guys that love our staff and culture but want to see results first. Hard to blame a kid. On the flip side the staff has sold a vision of building something great from the ground up and landed guys with options to go places with better records/more established. Most of these guys need 2 or 3 years to develop. Even some of the young transfers need more time. Recruiting bar will notch up more and more as we win and develop guys. Right now one thing our staff can’t say is ‘we’re winning.’ Building it takes time. Hope we surprise some ppl this year, upperclass transfers have me hopeful.

To keep it on topic, if the staff can keep it rolling and the 2nd half of our class can replicate the 1st half, we’ll be looking at the most talented class we’ve had in, well, a while.

 

[billga99]

I clearly think the goal of a better win total was a big reason for the volume of transfers we brought in this year. Obviously some were not starters at big name schools. But most provide experience that you just can't get with incoming freshmen. Hopefully over time as we get more recruiting classes, we build more from freshmen classes and less from the transfer wire. Though with NIL starting, it is a little hard to predict transfers moving forward.

 

[alagold]

We are getting some decent raw material. Now it up to staff to make it all work.Better than what is shown in results from last 2 yrs.

 

[UgaBlows]

2 of the 6 are along the lines (Gibson OL, Miles DT).

Hopefully GT fans are starting to believe that GT's "hurdles" aren't as bad as some believe. We'll never recruit on Bama and Clemson's level, but it doesn't mean GT can't find enough elite 4+ star recruits to have a very good program and play in big bowl games.

BTW, for comparison sake, our vaunted 2007 class only had 6 four star recruits according to 247, and 8 four star recruits according to Rivals. I don't think this staff has fully reached their recruiting potential yet. Wait till we start winning games and guys like Gibson, Ivey, etc. are getting drafted. Also, let's see how NIL plays out for GT and Atlanta. Recruiting could REALLY take off if things go the right way for GT.

Exactly man! Winning and putting guys in the League will give Collins the ammo he needs to take our recruiting to a level we have never seen at GT. He is the guy who can sell all of that plus GT education and the ATL

 

[jacketup]

This year's talent/experience with 2019's schedule would win 7 .

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

We need back to back good seasons to send a few messages.

 

[MWBATL]

We need back to back good seasons to send a few messages.

It'll be difficult to accomplish all that next year....

 

[Deleted member 2897]

We only played 10 games last year. with 0 cupcakes. I feel certain we were a 5-win team last year in a normal 12 game season. We’ll find out this year. Most of the teams we play this year were under or barely 0.500 teams. They don’t scare me at all. We started basically a high school player at OT, QB, and RB. We’re going on the right direction.

 

[slugboy]

This year’s schedule is projected as the third hardest in NCAA football.

 

[WreckinGT]

This year’s schedule is projected as the third hardest in NCAA football.

It's a brutally tough schedule for getting to 9+ wins. It's not really that tough of a schedule for getting to 6 wins.