1. I don't think it's irrelevant, far from it. I think it's the most relevant argument (maybe the only relevant point in the event we're discussing). If we're not trying to find the next great DC, then why are we even playing or donating money or even watching? The whole point of competition is to try to win. It seems to me that using your logic, there's also no sense in changing the head coach either since we're not going to find someone proven at this level who will come and coach at GT for what we can pay. Using your standard (Brent Venables, the best DC in the nation right now), we would have to hire Nick Saban in order to justify changing head coaches. Although, I do think your idea of hiring an elite DC with the promise of head coach in waiting is an intriguing one.
2. I don't understand your explanation of your suspicion of FEI. You may THINK we had an average offense this year, but you don't have any proof. You only have what your biased eyes tell you. There needs to be numerical analysis in order to compensate for the inherent biases we ALL have when watching GT football. If the FEI stat says we have an offense ranked in the 30's (which is what I remember someone on this board showing), then it doesn't matter that you THINK we were average, we obviously weren't. We weren't as good as you wanted, but we were better than about 80% of D1 (or whatever you call it now) college teams. Same goes for me, it doesn't matter what I THINK I'm seeing if the numbers don't agree with me. If we can't agree on an objective way to evaluate performance, then productive conversation will be all but impossible. And, you (nor I) will have anything but our own biased opinions to keep us company and to preach to everyone else.
3. Why would you want to get rid of a HC at GT who gives us a chance to have a GREAT offense even at our current level of recruiting? The consistent floor of our offense has been "good enough" to takes us where we want to go IF we can find a way to have an above average defense. And, the ceiling for our offense is the sky itself, the best in the freakin' nation.
4. Again, I don't understand your critique of FEI. Can you explain what you mean by "most efficiency stats are geared toward the norm, not the extremes"? Somehow, you have used that line to justify the conclusion that our passing game was mediocre even in a year when the adjusted efficiency numbers actually said we were at or near the top. Efficiency in passing, btw, would mean yards per attempt (FEI would be adjusting for schedule and other game factors). If we lead the nation in that, then nothing else matters for our passing game. And, not our passing game route tree is not rudimentary, nor our fundamentals weak. We run a run-n-shoot based on 4-verticals (or the threat thereof). This is the same philosophy as some of the greatest passing offenses in history. It is the same philsophy as our run game, designed to make the defender make a decision and then whatever he decides we can make a play off of that. It doesn't always work (neither does any other offensive play), but it often does. It is obvious to me that our passing philosophy is extremely effective to work as well as it does with the personnel we have had. We've had some of the worst arm talent in college football playing under center for us during CPJ's tenure, and we've still been able to do damage in the passing game, we still have wide open receivers and one-on-ones with our best guy making a play. You don't get that with any other offense nearly as often as we get it. JT was decent in the arm-talent department, and Smelter was an upper-quartile college football talent, and we just dominated the competition with those two (nobody else, just two good players was all it took). Same with Nesbitt and D.Thomas. It seems to me we already have one guy committed in this class (J.Graham) and another possibility (M.Barrett) who take us up to that level of talent under center, so we're sitting on something special again.
But, again, the biggest roadblock to any of these points having any benefit in discussion though, is a failure for us to agree on the best way to evaluate performance. If we can't do that, no other points will ultimately matter. Can you propose a better way than FEI for evaluation?
