I swore I was going to give this some serious thought at the end of the year and, lo and behold, this thread has caught me before I was ready. The day after a devastating loss to our rival, who has had their way with us for the last decade or more, is not the best time. However, I'll give it a go.
My feelings at the moment are that CPJ should stay, but his contract should not be extended, and if it is, a pay raise would not be in order. After our third loss in a row in game 6 of the season, I was leaning towards letting him go, primarily because it was looking like a clown show (with all of the mistakes) where the kids had actually quit on him. Once you lose the kids, it is over. Something has to change under those circumstances, either you go, or many of the kids do. However, since that time, I think the kids have played very hard and seem bought in. I have been a huge fan of the offensive scheme and have also gained confidence in Roof to lead the defense, but I needed to be sure the kids were too.
I don't think there is a single team in the land that would look forward to a match up with GT. We are a very tough opponent, even when the roster isn't where we would all like it to be. In a purely schematic sense, if you take the recruiting effects and so forth out of the equation, I believe this is the best offense currently in CFB, bar none. If you move the pieces on the chess board around, there is simply no way to account for the manpower shortage created by good timely reads in the option game. When you combine that with 4 receivers on every play, it is nuclear. However, you can't just look at the offense in a vacuum like that, because the negative effects
on recruiting have yet to be proven as folly. Until they are, there will always be that argument. Some are already convinced that recruiting will never be good as long as we run this system. I am not in that camp, but I also recognize that we really haven't put the myth to bed yet either. Personally, I think class rankings are a joke, so I don't use them to determine whether or not we are recruiting well. I believe you need 3 years to know for each class. I will say this: there have been too many swings and misses in CPJ's first 3 classes. On the surface it looks like things are much better in the last couple, but we really don't know yet. Guys like Devine and Custis waiting in the wings give me hope.
CPJ is leading the best academic era of GT football IMHO and that carries a lot of weight with me. I am a product of the GT total person concept (Homer Rice) and I buy into that thought process lock, stock, and barrel. We are doing it the right way and I can't tell you much I support it. We need to win more, but we are close.
At present, I am of the opinion that Vad has turned a corner. I thought it might have been so after the Clemson game, but with the thing out of reach so early it was hard to make any sweeping judgments. He played in the UGAg game the way I had hoped he would a little earlier in the season. JT is coming on as well. Good QB play that is designed for this offense will be an elixir. Right about this time in Lil' Joe's career the light was starting to come on. He lit it up in the bowl game. I expect VAd to do the same.
