I will have to check the average recruit ranking. I usually use 247sports as they do a composite ranking from all recruiting websites, but unfortunately they do not have those numbers for Techs 2010 class.
I truly believe you are undervaluing the idea that the higher tier players available didn't want to play for Tech based on Johnson's scheme. Getting a guy like CGC in the building at that time would've only done so much. When he goes to a 4 star WR house and outlines that he'll be run blocking 90% of the time and might catch 10-12 passes during the year, how well do you think that would go? High school players at that level want to know how the program is going to benefit them i.e. how they will be prepared for the next level. Johnson's scheme didn't do that consistently.
I will agree that this off season moves were made to address weaknesses, but the same was true for Johnson. How many DC came and went under Johnson, particularly guys that had success coaching previously. Ted Roof came to Tech after coaching the Nittany Lions to a top 25 rank defense and same with Nate Woody.
Yea, Rivals has more consistent data further back then 247 since they used to be scout, and I'm not sure how much value is added to the composite by including ESPN's rankings.
I completely get that there are players who didn't want to play in the scheme and that there is a negative impact to recruiting because of that. I just don't think that impact is as great as you or some others like to believe, or that it couldn't be minimized much more than it was.
When he goes to that WR's house, he can point to Demaryius Thomas, Stephen Hill, Kevin Cone, Darren Waller, etc who all played in the offense and made the league. He can point to things like this article where ESPN called GT the best WR factory for the NFL in 2017. I'd say that sounds pretty damn appealing to a recruit, but maybe you don't think so.
Georgia Tech has been named the NFL's Best Wide Receiver Factory by ESPN.
www.ajc.com
As far as Johnson's D coordinators - the first one was fired for being not good, which I think we can agree on. As I recall Johnson wanted to hire Ellis Johnson but was told no you get Al Groh. Al Groh was fired and he was told here now you get Ted Roof, who was also not his pick. When Tech and Ted "mutually" parted ways, he got Woody who has shown himself to be a pretty good D coordinator, but only had him for a year and even Woody suggested it would take a year and a half or so to get the defense to gel and be firing on all cylinders like he hoped. Had Johnson stayed one more year I think the D would have taken a step up in 2019 under Woody. Not surprisingly, the scheme changes between all of these coordinators didn't help smooth out anything since we constantly had guys fit for the previous D.