You are absolutely correct... Ga Southern is really the template to show how the choice of coach can make the transition away from the triple option offense either seamless or brutal...
Huh? Fritz was a hire made because he was the head coach with some success that ran a system as close to the triple option as there was. To stay within the coaching tree running exactly what they ran would have required hiring an assistant with no HC experience, which they didn't want in their first year of FBS. The transition was seemless because it wasn't much of a transition at all, which was the point of the hire. When they did try to transition, it was horrible. So yeah, if your goal is to not really transition away from the triple option, then it will be seamless.
Anyways to the topic at hand....
When we had Johnson, we had the best play-caller/OC for the option (at least for a long time that was the case). So when we made a coaching hire the decision was either to more or less double down with what we had and go after Monken/Fritz, hoping that he could roughly keep the offense the level that it was and improve defense, through either coaching or recruiting, or we could abandon the option, as we ran it, and go in a different direction. Fritz's age almost certainly was a non starter as regardless of which direction we went we didn't want to almost be guaranteed to have to find a new coach within 5 years.
When it comes to Monken I'm not sure if he would have come here anyways. He was in a good situation at Army, and he would not be walking into a good situation at GT. In any case, going with Monken would have just been seen similar to extending Johnson. There's no real reason to believe Monken would improve recruiting significantly, and hiring an offensive minded head coach with the intent to improve defense doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, we would have been better this year (how much is for a different discussion), but what would the long term goal be? If we just wanted the best chance to maintain a 6-8 wins a year then Monken was probably the best choice. But I didn't, and still don't, see the argument for him elevating us beyond that.
So we went with a guy who checked the boxes we put priorities on. He has a great defensive pedigree so should be able to help solve that issue. He had a a reputation of being a good recruiter, had ties to the south east, and first hand experience of recruiting. He could have brought in an OC to run the option, but there are a couple of problems. The first is you don't make a HC hire and then dictate what they do. If running something other than the option was a non starter, then you don't hire Collins. The second is that if you bring in an option OC that likely means an entirely different offensive staff which would probably be against the theme of recruiting that this staff was put together on. Third, and this is the one I'm sure some will disagree with, if you stick with the option, you're sticking with the negativity that comes associated with it in regards to recruiting which doesn't make sense with the Collins' hire. In short, you don't hire Collins if you plan on staying with the option.
So once the decision to go with Collins was made, and the current staff with that, this year was more or less inevitable. There have been things that have compounded issues, like injuries and the usage of the first few games to decide on an actual starting QB, but overall this year was going to be ugly no matter what. How ugly it isn't doesn't really make much of a difference. Going 3-9 vs 2-10 doesn't matter in the long run.
The other concern is the week over week improvement. The problem is not all issues are able to be addressed during the year. IMO OL, WR, DL, and LB have issues of just not having the pieces needed to succeed in those areas. There are individual players who have shown flashes of potential in those areas but the overall lack of personnel hides individual growth (for example I think our bad tackle play has hidden our G-C-G improving, not that they are anything to write home about yet). IN other areas such as QB and DBs it's hard to get a read on weekly improvement when so much around them hurts. IMO Graham made great strides against UVA in his footwork and vision but took steps back against VT. However, against VT it felt mostly like he never really had a chance and the one big bad play he had (the pick 6) was a freshman desperately trying to make something happen in a game quickly getting out of hand. That mistake was terrible, but understandable. I don't think he played as bad as he did against Pitt, but it was more a case of Foster having the right idea to take advantage of the many holes we have on offense.
Going forward, 4 years is the absolute minimum barring off the field things. The coaching change was made on the basis of improving recruiting so it only makes sense that you actually give enough time for recruiting to make an impact. Year 4 would be when his first real class would be jrs/redshirt sophs, and the srs/rjrs would be guys completely coached by the new staff which means you have an OL that isn't overly influenced by a different system. The QB that year should be a 3 year starter (whoever wins the job next year I would imagine), and skill positions should be past transitioned (the quickest to transition imo). Defensively much of the same applies. It's enough time to be able to fix the front 7 issues and get both talent, and experience that is needed. Even then, it would probably be year 5 or 6 before a change is made barring just really bad results on the field.
For OC/DC I can't see a change being made before next off season. The issues we're dealing with are so far beyond the OCs ability to address them in one year that it just doesn't make sense unless something usual happens (like Gus getting fired and just wanting to try to stick it to UGA by coming here as OC).
