I can’t understand why so many of you can’t get past last year? Yes, we ranked terribly at the end, but how did we get there? Setting aside a new staff and new system, our best defensive player died before the season. He was the only player on pre-season ACC lists and filled our weakest position group. Losing him, not only hurt on the mental side, but football wise we had no one to come close to filling his shoes. Then we lost our next best lineman (Lee) in game 3. And we were down to our 3rd string QB by game 4. To put that on Collins is just comical and to worry about our ranking is meaningless. The conspiracy side of me thinks Collins had no worries about losing those games because it made his recruiting pitch easier to sell playing time. To me there is no difference going 6-6 or 3-8. Neither are where I want GT football to be. Heck, we went 3-8 in 2015 yet beat a top team. And we all know we were decimated by injuries that year. Looking into the future, Collins is putting the pieces together with players that other top 20 teams wanted. We are still a few recruiting cycles away from digging out of the talent hole, but he’s doing it one player at a time.
Last year, we had probably had around 4 starters who would start on other top 20 teams (Brown, Mason, Juanyeh, and Tariq). This year we’ll have many more - Mason, Gibbs, Brown, Knight, Juanyeh, Tariq, Thomas, and Swilling. By 2022, we’ll be able to physically match up and have better talent than many of our Coastal rivals. That‘ where Collins is taking us. The days of getting out talented by the VT’s, Duke‘s, UVA’s, Pitt, BC, etc. are over. Now, will we catch Clemson and UGA talent wise? It all depends on if the admin allows us and opens up classroom options. Just give Collins a technical sports management major and watch him spin the crap out of that. We all know he can sell ice to eskimos!