I think the boards would agree that an 11-3 season is fun but they would never tolerate the 3-9 season, look at the vitrol for a 2 win (so far) coach playing with another person's players.
Not that it matters all that much since the real issue to discuss is how long Collins should coach... However, I disagree that Johnson was damn close to a consistent 10-12 game winner. In his 11 year tenure, 2-11 win seasons (I like that!), 2-9 game seasons (close to your range, good seasons for sure), 1-8 game season (not stellar but not bad), 3-7 game seasons (eh, kinda break even plus), and throw in 6 and 5 and 3 game seasons. So 4 seasons were in your range, 1 was close and the rest were not close. That doesn't make someone close to consistently 10-11 program. You can't say, if only this had not happened in that game etc, because we are not doing that for Collins. Given above, you had to be pretty disappointed that over half of the season were at or worse than the 7-6 season you mentioned you don't care much about.
Again, I go back to the fact that we are judging a coach on a handful of games like we are FSU or the like (which we are no longer) with someone else's players. We have "used" tight ends doing their best, we have a smaller than average line (I only included the size of the SEC/Clemson OL as an indicator to why their QB and running game has success). We can all complain about what we don't like about Collins and it is natural. I think he deserves a chance to get a few years of his players in to see what he can do. If he sucks it for several years, then we bite the bullet on his contract and try to find the next up and comer.