How did our coaching staff do this season?

[Ibeeballin]

IMO, Corey Peoples getting a C- is pretty insane

 

[awbuzz]

Most of the coaches getting A/B for a 7-6 season….. That is laughable

Likely with the prior coach this team would likely only had 2 or 3 wins, so consider that...

 

[Yaller Jacket]

I think the coaching grades ate about right. I might give Key an A just for his changing of the attitude of the team

A third vote for working on aside assortment of short yardage plays. I saw one during the bowl season we ought to include. The QB took the snap from the shotgun and took a quick couple of steps toward the center of the line. The entire defense came to meet him. He then took a step back and threw the ball to a wide open receiver.

 

[MtnWasp]

Are we grading the coaches or the units as a whole?

I think I would grade-out the TE's better than the OP. They were not utilized extensively in the passing game but when they were, they produced. Avery Boyd could have been a down field weapon. I think we could and should have gone to them more, but that is not their fault.

I agree that the WR room does not earn a great grade overall, although I think that Rutherford was generally excellent and the unit was limited by a QB with a bum wing. Still, the unit was sloppy. Singleton was explosive and that explosiveness kept the safeties back for the run attack, but he was SLOPPY in his routes and showed in his two years only limited ball skills. I'll be interested to watch if he refines his route running and ball skills at his next gig. If he looks polished, that would be quite an indictment of our WR position coach.

 

[WreckinGT]

Likely with the prior coach this team would likely only had 2 or 3 wins, so consider that...

I think most would consider that an F were it to happen. That doesn't make a 7 win season an A.

 

[awbuzz]

Was Bill belichick an A graded coach, or was it because of the players such as Tom Brady that helped make it happen. Look at his last few years in New England.

A coaching staff could be an A or a B grade, but depending upon what they have to work with, a team may only get four, fives, six wins.

A team's record is not the sole definition of how good of a job a coaching staff did.

 

[stinger78]

Was Bill belichick an a graded coach, was it because of the players such as Tom Brady that helped make it happen. Happen. Look at his last few years in New England.

A coaching staff could be an A or a B grade, but depending upon what they have to work with, a team may only get four, fives, six wins.

A team's record is not the sole definition of how good of a job a coaching staff did.

Look at Jim Grobe, widely considered one of the best coaches of his time. Yet, his W/L record at WFU was mostly marginal.

 

[cpf2001]

Brent Key: In addition to clock management I would grade Key down a notch on not playing/developing key backup players, particularly QB and Oand D lineman enough in the appropriate situations.

I generally disagree on the QB rotation. Pyron got over-used (in the wrong role, IMO) to the point of reportedly playing hurt going into the ND game. And thanks to the early season defense we didn't have a lot of huge leads for him to come into in the first several weeks.

And so playing Philo more in earlier games would've been potentially-dicey redshirt-wise and there weren't a ton of super-obvious 3rd-string-QB situations other than the VMI one he was in.

 

[WreckinGT]

Was Bill belichick an a graded coach, was it because of the players such as Tom Brady that helped make it happen. Happen. Look at his last few years in New England.

A coaching staff could be an A or a B grade, but depending upon what they have to work with, a team may only get four, fives, six wins.

A team's record is not the sole definition of how good of a job a coaching staff did.

Coaches are responsible for what they have to work with. Especially in the era of the transfer portal. If we didn't have good enough players or enough depth to be better than 7-6 then that factors into the coaches grade as well. At the end of the day, wins and losses are all that really matter.

 

[ThatGuy]

IMO, Corey Peoples getting a C- is pretty insane

Say more. Would love to hear your thoughts.

 

[GTBatGirl96]

Feels like this year's 7-6 is different from last year's 7-6. Last year, it felt like we made 7-6 by the skin of our teeth (Miami), AND we had to rely on the bowl game to get our 7th win. But this year, if we stay healthy all year and/or have at least one more call go our way in a few games, we'd make 9-4 with a harder schedule.

 

[Ibeeballin]

Say more. Would love to hear your thoughts.

DBs were in position & aligned all season with very few coverage bust.

 

[Root4GT]

DBs were in position & aligned all season with very few coverage bust.

Yup. After that individual talent / skill is necessary for improvement!

 

[jojatk]

I don't feel like I know enough about the game to give grades to specific coaches. But I also think there are those out there who don't take into account the inequalities out there. I look at the current state of college football a bit like a NASCAR race (the analogy can in some ways be extended to a full NASCAR season but that's another discussion entirely). In a NASCAR race you have a bunch of independent teams all competing on the same track at the same time. The object of every race is, of course, to win. Car H has a budget of $20M. There are roughly 20ish teams that have high enough budgets, like Car H, that finishing in the top 10 is expected. Car L has a budget of $5M. Not only do they have a very low budget but Car L's owner bought the team from the prior owner and that prior owner spent even less on the car and employees and the shop and this race is only the second race after the purchase was completed so there hasn't been a lot of time to overhaul the team even with the new, slightly higher budget. Can Car L win? Of course it's possible and happens every so often when the conditions are just right and everything comes together they sure can. If Car H wins the race it is expected and finishing outside the top 10 is close to failure. If Car L finishes in the top 10 they've most likely both executed at an extraordinarily high level compared the resources they have and gotten some luck to go their way. If Car H finishes in 9th and Car L finishes in 10th it is possible, though short-sighted, to look at it and say Car H deserves a higher grade than Car L. But that's incredibly simplistic and shallow analysis of the situation. Car H's owner has spent four times what Car L's owner has on the car, the driver and mechanics, the shop, and all the resources it takes to go racing. Car L finishing in the top 10 can be seen as a grade of "A" for them. Car H could conceivably be looked at as a grade of "F" given they had every advantage but could only muster a 9th place finish. Maybe in the next race after Car L's owner has been able to make some more changes then finishing 10th will be a reasonable expectation and then doing so won't be an "A" for them anymore.

It's not a perfect analogy and I am not intending it to be. Hopefully enough of you will get the point that, IMHO, we haven't completed the rebuild and so the grades should be based on appropriate expectations versus ONLY being about Wins and Losses. Yes, Wins and Losses are part of the grade. But when you're not competing on a level playing field they can't be the only thing. Lane Kiffin is a buffoon for puffing up his chest about beating Duke. Ole Miss failed in their assignment. They spent gobs of money to get to the playoffs. Anything less was failure. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Is 7-6 an outright A for GT this year? IMHO no because we had opportunities to win a game or two more. But I'd most certainly give the team and coaches overall a darn good grade.

 

[4shotB]

I don't feel like I know enough about the game to give grades to specific coaches. But I also think there are those out there who don't take into account the inequalities out there. I look at the current state of college football a bit like a NASCAR race (the analogy can in some ways be extended to a full NASCAR season but that's another discussion entirely). In a NASCAR race you have a bunch of independent teams all competing on the same track at the same time. The object of every race is, of course, to win. Car H has a budget of $20M. There are roughly 20ish teams that have high enough budgets, like Car H, that finishing in the top 10 is expected. Car L has a budget of $5M. Not only do they have a very low budget but Car L's owner bought the team from the prior owner and that prior owner spent even less on the car and employees and the shop and this race is only the second race after the purchase was completed so there hasn't been a lot of time to overhaul the team even with the new, slightly higher budget. Can Car L win? Of course it's possible and happens every so often when the conditions are just right and everything comes together they sure can. If Car H wins the race it is expected and finishing outside the top 10 is close to failure. If Car L finishes in the top 10 they've most likely both executed at an extraordinarily high level compared the resources they have and gotten some luck to go their way. If Car H finishes in 9th and Car L finishes in 10th it is possible, though short-sighted, to look at it and say Car H deserves a higher grade than Car L. But that's incredibly simplistic and shallow analysis of the situation. Car H's owner has spent four times what Car L's owner has on the car, the driver and mechanics, the shop, and all the resources it takes to go racing. Car L finishing in the top 10 can be seen as a grade of "A" for them. Car H could conceivably be looked at as a grade of "F" given they had every advantage but could only muster a 9th place finish. Maybe in the next race after Car L's owner has been able to make some more changes then finishing 10th will be a reasonable expectation and then doing so won't be an "A" for them anymore.

It's not a perfect analogy and I am not intending it to be. Hopefully enough of you will get the point that, IMHO, we haven't completed the rebuild and so the grades should be based on appropriate expectations versus ONLY being about Wins and Losses. Yes, Wins and Losses are part of the grade. But when you're not competing on a level playing field they can't be the only thing. Lane Kiffin is a buffoon for puffing up his chest about beating Duke. Ole Miss failed in their assignment. They spent gobs of money to get to the playoffs. Anything less was failure. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Is 7-6 an outright A for GT this year? IMHO no because we had opportunities to win a game or two more. But I'd most certainly give the team and coaches overall a darn good grade.

good analogy. I am not a huge baseball fan but one statistic they have is WAR (wins above replacement). This basically measures (as i understand it) a guy's value to his teamover a typical player and allows for a better comparison of players. For example, a pitcher that is maybe 15 - 11 with a 3.4 era on a team that wins 70 games may have an actual higher WAR than a guy who is 18 - 10 with a 3.3 era on a 100 win team. Looking at just raw stats like W-L and ERA isn't an apples to apples comparison while comparing WAR is a more equitable way to evaluate players. Similarly, judhing a FB coach simply by looking at a W-L shows an almost complete lack of understanding of the game. It's like saying company A is better than company B bc of higher profits without looking at ROCE or other metrics.

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

I disagree with those lofty grades. With a bit better coaching job, we could have won the Syracuse, Louisville, Vanderbilt and Virginia Tech games. We also had a shot at Georgia that our play calling cost us and we could have been more competitive against Notre Dame. Great coaches make a big difference in the outcome of games. Our staff is still learning and will get better. That is the good news. The bad news is we probably have a few more years to get where we need to in this area.

Go Jackets!

 

[Root4GT]

I disagree with those lofty grades. With a bit better coaching job, we could have won the Syracuse, Louisville, Vanderbilt and Virginia Tech games. We also had a shot at Georgia that our play calling cost us and we could have been more competitive against Notre Dame. Great coaches make a big difference in the outcome of games. Our staff is still learning and will get better. That is the good news. The bad news is we probably have a few more years to get where we need to in this area.

Go Jackets!

We easily could have lost to FSU, NCST, UNC and Miami as well. We did not lose to a bad team, our worst loss was to VT and that was with a banged up QB2 and QB3's first real action.

Good coaching is to not to lose to teams that was clearly less talented. We did not do that in 2024.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

I won't weigh in here with my ratings - they would only create friction.

But, please, when you are rating the coaches, NEVER, ever use the previous HC and his group as the comparison (use someone from another team (or other previous GT team) that you believe is an "A", and rate ours based on that) - there are Pop Warner league HC's that are better than TFG

 

[Richland County]

On the bolded part, it doesn't necessarily improve. Raheem Morris has a lot of HC experience and he absolutely sucks *** on clock management

He also suck at hiring coordinators.

 

[slugboy]

I’m not sure how much it was Simpson and how much was Pope, but the defensive line improved a lot this year, especially the interior DL.

In particular, Van den Berg became a difference maker in the last half of the season.