Yeah, I am really not getting the unfounded optimism for this team if CPJ had stayed or we hired a Monken type. OL was already a problem, and we know what that does to any scheme. BBacks were solid, but you have to have a whole lot of blind faith in (probably) Oliver who ran a very, very limited version of the offense when he played last year and couldn't clearly beat out TQM for the job. This was bound to be a down year simply based on returning production, maybe not this far down, but CPJ would have had to work something even more miraculous than he did last year to go to a bowl. And make no mistake, getting last year's team to a bowl may have been one of the better coaching jobs of his career.
But that's where we were talent-wise, having to pull rabbits out of a hat to get to a lower tier bowl, and that is the whole point of the direction TStan chose to take us in.