Look up Bill Lewis's coaching history at his two previous stops before GT: Wyoming and East Carolina. Lewis never had a winning season before his one amazing year where he coached ECU to 11-1. In fact, there was a decade between Wyoming and ECU...which tells me Lewis spent a LOT of time rehabbing his career after his failures at Wyoming.
en.wikipedia.org
Looking back, it's shocking GT even considered him as a candidate much less HIRED him!
Contrast that to Jamey Chadwell who has a coaching record at multiple schools. At each school he won BIG after about 1-2 years of a rebuilding. Those guys are high floor, high ceiling type coaches. CPJ had similar questions before we hired him: Would his offense translate to this level? With his track record, why didn't a bigger school hire him earlier? Can he recruit at this level?
We all know the answer to the first two questions. The third question depends on your POV. Did he hit rankings home runs? No, but he did recruit well enough for his system that after the vaunted 2007 class left, we still went to 2 ACCCGs, won an OB, and only had 2 losing seasons out of 11.
Chadwell is getting CPJ a decade younger, more willing to evolve, and media friendly. His scheme is more recruiting friendly as his offense has put players in the NFL, and puts up big passing numbers.
He's a "schematic advantage" type coach...the type of coach GT needs because we are never going to consistently recruit at an appreciable level we can out talent everyone. That's just not happening at GT...I've been a fan for 30+ years. Can we consistently recruit better than we have? ABSOLUTELY. We've had some really good recruiting classes during that time, but never sustained recruiting success. Our success came from our coaches and ability to develop talent, and find talent. That is GT's recipe for success.