The Vote of Confidence is in...

[Lotta Booze]

It wasn't that long ago **checks notes....11 years ago** ok, a while ago, but Virginia Tech started out 2010 losing to a G5 team and an FCS team and then went on an win streak through the ACCCG. There is potential to turn things around. I do not expect a run like that and I don't have near the faith in our coaching staff as I would in Beamer/Foster but....there's still time to turn things around.

I hope players are pissed. Pissed about losing. Pissed about being on ESPN for a bad loss. The love the guys have for the coaching staff seems to be genuine, if they want them to keep their jobs hopefully they can go on a tear and show what they're made of. And hopefully the coaches can put them in a better position to succeed.

 

[smokey_wasp]

Bad losses happen to any program eventually. I agree that the Citadel loss was horrendous, but it was in year one. Of the three, the Syracuse is the easiest to forgive, but it was ugly as well. NIU shouldn't have happened either, but it did.

I was, and still am, a huge CPJ fan, but he lost to MTSU and several bad Duke teams, and found ways to lose games against mediocre Pitt teams and others as well. Yet I was much more willing to forgive them. Why?

It's because he earned my trust as a coach. CGC hasn't earned that here yet, and though a good bit of that is his fault, some is not. We have burdened him with some unfair expectations that he should be able to transition this with no bad losses and minimal pain and suffering. That was never going to happen and several of us on here have been trying to say this for two plus years now, only to be labeled as enablers. It's going to take time. Before this season I said we were at best a likely 4 win team this year. Now we are at best a likely 3 win team. But our real test comes next year. At that point CGC will have a good bit of upperclassmen in his program and the depth should be much improved. If he is unable to win 6 games next year he is most likely gone by the uga game.

Good post and level headed analysis, as always. I do think the expectations for CGC have been unfair and he didn't do anything to dispel them. I think his unwillingness to ever say a negative word about anybody works against him there. I can imagine if we hired Leach, for example, he would have come in here and straight up said everybody stinks, so bear with me. Didn't he basically do that when he was hired at MS State?

I always say things start to count this year, though, so we can't have many more like the last one. He is basically 0-1 in my book but the 1 is a doozy because of the rest of the schedule. He is making life hard on himself.

 

[Adadu]

I still don't buy these comments from TStan. They are football players. They aren't total scrubs if they were recruited for the option (maybe outside the o line, but still. Go eat man.). This should not be taking as long as it is especially with the recruits and transfers we are bringing in.

 

[bobongo]

I think his unwillingness to ever say a negative word about anybody works against him there. I can imagine if we hired Leach, for example, he would have come in here and straight up said everybody stinks, so bear with me.

These are the extremes, but there's a vast middle ground. I wish Geoff would just tell the truth, good or bad. Otherwise, he loses credibility.
He shouldn't be running anyone down, but he gushing while losing is a bad combination.

 

[smokey_wasp]

These are the extremes, but there's a vast middle ground. I wish Geoff would just tell the truth, good or bad. Otherwise, he loses credibility.
He shouldn't be running anyone down, but he gushing while losing is a bad combination.

Yeah. He doesn't strike me as a moderation kind of guy.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

These are the extremes, but there's a vast middle ground. I wish Geoff would just tell the truth, good or bad. Otherwise, he loses credibility.
He shouldn't be running anyone down, but he gushing while losing is a bad combination.

This, IMO, has been his biggest failing. I understand that some of the hyperbole is aimed towards creating a family culture that has indeed helped our recruiting. There comes a point, however, when you use a word or phrase so much that it cheapens it. You can do a world of good with praise, but too much praise for too little to deserve it cheapens it. I think we've reached that point with CGC.

 

[bobongo]

Yeah. He doesn't strike me as a moderation kind of guy.

The Georgia state motto is "Wisdom, Justice, Moderation". Geoff should take two of those to heart.

 

[WreckinGT]

Bad losses happen to any program eventually. I agree that the Citadel loss was horrendous, but it was in year one. Of the three, the Syracuse is the easiest to forgive, but it was ugly as well. NIU shouldn't have happened either, but it did.

I was, and still am, a huge CPJ fan, but he lost to MTSU and several bad Duke teams, and found ways to lose games against mediocre Pitt teams and others as well. Yet I was much more willing to forgive them. Why?

It's because he earned my trust as a coach. CGC hasn't earned that here yet, and though a good bit of that is his fault, some is not. We have burdened him with some unfair expectations that he should be able to transition this with no bad losses and minimal pain and suffering. That was never going to happen and several of us on here have been trying to say this for two plus years now, only to be labeled as enablers. It's going to take time. Before this season I said we were at best a likely 4 win team this year. Now we are at best a likely 3 win team. But our real test comes next year. At that point CGC will have a good bit of upperclassmen in his program and the depth should be much improved. If he is unable to win 6 games next year he is most likely gone by the uga game.

Are you confident that we will win 6 games next year?

 

[LargeFO]

Scale is tipping further and further to Butch Jones Jr.

 

[stech81]

If the 3O is the reason we are bad after 2 + years , then tell me what this has to do the the defense not see 2 tight ends the DB's not knowing what to do and the defense looking on the sidelines wait on the play. It's elementary the reason is poor coaching.

 

[Adadu]

If the 3O is the reason we are bad after 2 + years , then tell me what this has to do the the defense not see 2 tight ends the DB's not knowing what to do and the defense looking on the sidelines wait on the play. It's elementary the reason is poor coaching.

The players even should have been able to see that they were just getting outsized with 22. This adjustment should have been made after seeing it only a few times on the field, not a whole damn quarter or longer.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

You express what I hope for.

Here is what concerns me. I WAS NOT SURPRISED when the 1989 season turned around. Seriously. The only thing that baffled me was why we stumbled initially out of the gate. That and why fans were so impatient.

The reason I felt that way at the time was that even in 1988 I could see that this team was being well coached. And I could easily name you 5 things the coaching staff was already doing well by then.

I still would like to be wrong about this season and wrong about how poorly the coaching of this team has appeared to me.

I was around during the Ross years and his initial struggles was all on the players. They did not like him or his methods and made no bones about it. But Bobby Ross like Charley Pell at Florida was not going to put up with losing or a don't care attitude. He changed the culture and got his players in to run his style of ball. Charley Pell completely changed the culture at Florida. Florida was much derided by UGA fans and others for being talented but way underachieving. Doug Dickey had ten players on his last team that went to the NFL yet managed to win only one game. It took a couple of years but Charley was one of Bear Bryant's boys and he was not having any of that. He even changed the costume on the mascot of Albert the Alligator from some comical, half serious, gator look alike into a snarling gator. Getting better players is the easy part...turning them into winners by changing the mind set is another deal.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I didn't take it as "blaming" CPJ or his system, but rather an admission that transitioning from that system was going to take time. I said years ago that when CPJ left, should we transition from the option, it would take 5-7 years before we would be a competent team again. With the advent of new transfer portal rules, that timeframe should now be 4-5 years. We need to be realistic about what it takes to transition.

1. A completely different type of QB than what we had on the roster. Of the QBs CGC inherited, the only one with another P5 offer to play QB was Graham, and that was from Kentucky. He was a highly recruited ATH that was projected to play WR at this level. Our other QBs were ATH that were good #o QB candidates, but did not possess the skill set for this new offense. (Note: Yates, who committed to CPJ prior to the coaching change was a Rivals 4* DT QB, but was a true freshman for CGCs first year)

2. Completely different OL. Our OL was recruited for a completely different style of play. They were the completely wrong body types to run the new kinds of blocking schemes.

3. WRs/TEs were insufficient. We had no TEs and the WRs we recruited were not all suited to play in this offense. Some, (Camp), excelled anyways, but we needed to revamp the position.

4. RBs had too many on the team. There was no real home for most of our ABs in the new offense.

5. Building depth in all of these positions takes years in order to keep class separation so we don't end up back at square one in a few years.

To address these issues, we've leaned heavily on the transfer portal. While the transfer portal is a crutch, it is not a magical healing pill for depth and talent on a team. For the most part, the transfer portal is filled with people not good enough to start on their previous team. It's merely a way to get bodies on the team for depth and keep class separation. In two years you won't (hopefully) see nearly the amount of transfers coming in as we do now. The biggest issue with depth is on the OL. Of all the areas where you need years of working together, OL is it. We don't have that yet. It's looking a LOT better than it did in 2019, but it needs another year or two to mature into the OL we need to maintain going forward. Some of our issues against NIU were due to the OL being gassed at times from lack of depth.

QB is still developing for us as well. Sims is a promising young QB, but he is still young. He came out flat Saturday and got hurt before the coaches could get him settled down. I have confidence he will improve drastically this season, and now we have the bonus of having a proven backup behind him in Yates.

The next argument we hear is that CGC should have run the offense to suit the players he had. I understand the idea behind that, but I disagree. The absolute best thing he could have done was to begin running his new offense. CDP ran a limited playbook for two years. We saw real progress from year one to year two. Sure, the win total stayed the same, but we looked a whole lot better on the field last year. Had we run an modified option to suit our players, we might have won 4-5 games each year, but we'd be no closer to improving with our new offense. I will not fault CGC for his decision there, and neither should you.

It's easy to find fault in a team that has 6 wins over the course of 2+ seasons. It's even easier if you allow emotion to overrule intellect. There is a LOT I am concerned about with CGC. It's fair to begin to hold him accountable for some of these things, but we also need to be reasonable and understand exactly what it takes to transition.

There. You guys have forced me to defend CGC once again. Don't get me wrong, I have real doubts about his ability to succeed here long term, or even short term, but I can't so far fault the route he's chosen to take and I can agree that the obstacles he faces are far steeper than any other coach hired in the last few years. One of those obstacles shouldn't be a fan base that refuses to use logic and reason though. This season is far from over, and it's entirely possible we can salvage a season that will make all of us feel a lot better. Step one is this weekend. We WILL win that game.

After three years a transition should have been completed at least to the point of defensive backs knowing where they are supposed to be lined up and not arguing with each other.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Are you confident that we will win 6 games next year?

No, I am not. I think it is just as likely we will be looking for a new coach next December. I was merely pointing out that 2022 will be the year where there is likely to be a consequence for him and what the minimum criteria is likely to be.

 

[cthenrys]

This, IMO, has been his biggest failing. I understand that some of the hyperbole is aimed towards creating a family culture that has indeed helped our recruiting. There comes a point, however, when you use a word or phrase so much that it cheapens it. You can do a world of good with praise, but too much praise for too little to deserve it cheapens it. I think we've reached that point with CGC.

I mean by any measure didn’t he reach that point about half way through year 1 ? Elite, high level, better. every. single. day. It became cartoonish quickly and now it just sounds ironic as we are none of the above.

It really became nothing but noise very quickly. At that time the admonishment was that that verbiage was for recruits and not for fans. I honestly don’t think he knows how to talk any other way.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

If the 3O is the reason we are bad after 2 + years , then tell me what this has to do the the defense not see 2 tight ends the DB's not knowing what to do and the defense looking on the sidelines wait on the play. It's elementary the reason is poor coaching.

The players even should have been able to see that they were just getting outsized with 22. This adjustment should have been made after seeing it only a few times on the field, not a whole damn quarter or longer.

After three years a transition should have been completed at least to the point of defensive backs knowing where they are supposed to be lined up and not arguing with each other.

My posts on the transition have been exclusive to the offensive side. I am both less concerned and yet more concerned with the defense this year.

I am less concerned with the defense in the last game because, even though we had moments of confusion, we only allowed 21 points. We should be able to win any game where we hold the opposing team to 21 points. Other than those two drives in the first half, we shut them down until the final drive. It's excruciating to lose a game like that, but what is even more excruciating is not having an offense that can run clock at the end of a game with a lead.

I am more concerned because the confusion in the secondary shouldn't be happening in year three, especially given the HC was a DC and a DB coach.

Ultimately, though, I have much greater confidence in CGC fixing the D than the O.

 

[4shotB]

I am more concerned because the confusion in the secondary shouldn't be happening in year three, especially given the HC was a DC and a DB coach.

Augusta, first I want to think you for the quality of your posts. You seem to keep a level and objective head and it is interesting to read well written and thought out posts in the middle of so many pithy and snarky one or two sentence comments posted ad nauseam.

With that being said, we all thought GOL, given his background as a successful DC, could step in and fix the D problems which were the Achilles heel of his regime and, as he alluded to, was the cause of Lil Joe not winning the Heisman Trophy as a senior. From that experience, perhaps the head coach has too much on his plate to be much help. I know some will argue that it should be done but history shows that neither GOL or PJ were able to stop the leaks. Tenuta did, which may suggest that the HC may be too busy to assist and that it requires coordinators who could or can do it on their own. I know CPJ was on the record about wanting a guy who we could just delegate the D to and not be as involved.

 

[InsideLB]

IMO Stansbury has been pretty consistent in his messaging. He gave Collins a long term contract because they both felt it was going to take time to transition from the spread option to a more conventional offense. He made that very overt at the time. Now he is again saying the transition is taking time. And IMO he is not blaming CPJ. Just recognizing the reality that we heard from announcers on game day during the CPJ era:

"If this offense is so tough to stop why don't more teams run it?"

Color commentator: "Because you have to commit to it completely". (translation: you ain't going to be running anything else very well for awhile).

I have issues with aspects of Collins coaching (time management, repeating errors, placekicking issues, serial positivity to the extent that the truth isn't being told, finding ways to lose games in which we statistically dominate, etc.). However I did very much expect the O to struggle for awhile. Also our D was terrible when Collins took over, particularly on the front seven. That takes awhile to fix too.

Not at all saying I'm happy with how things are going or that I don't have a problem with what I am seeing. Gameday / situational coaching is lacking. Coming out flat is a problem. Kids believing they are good because of what you are saying in public all the time is a problem. I do like that penalties are way down so far. I wouldn't be surprised to see Collins succeed here. But I also wouldn't be surprised if he tanks.

 

[Sheboygan]

I feel a little better after hearing the coordinators talk. However, if the comparison is to the Bobby Ross teams, I don't recall that team having so many issues with fundamentals. I do not remember feeling like the teams in the late 80s were treating a live game as though it was a scrimmage. During the Citadel game, I felt as though GT was practicing instead of playing. Even when losing, it appeared to me that GT was trying to test out new plays instead of continuing to run plays that were working. In the NIU game, the substitutions and the speed of getting the play call in were the worst I have seen in a football game. I have seen terrible high school football teams, but I don't remember ever seeing a high school team have that much trouble with those issues. Several posters have asked if the team had even practiced substitutions and play calling against a play clock. During the game, I wondered the same thing.!!

My biggest concerns are not that the QBs missed some TD throws, that the OL had some miscues on blocking, nor that the secondary gave up some big plays on confusion. My biggest concern about coaching is that the team went thru Spring practice and fall camp, yet we don't even have a system in place to rotate defensive players effectively, a system to get the play call in on defense fast enough, nor at least on one occasion a system to get the offensive play call in fast enough. If the team had been efficient at fundamentals, but lost because players made some mistakes, I would still be upset but I wouldn't have this much concern about the program in general.

We have seen this since the beginning of the CGC tenure. I got to wondering what the HE!! they were even doing in practice. They have looked completely lost for so many games. Inexcusable penalties, nonsensical playcalling, BAD special teams ( except Harvin III ), ineffective schemes, poor eye discipline, incompetent clock and game management. All of this , and the either lack of awareness or tone deafness about the current state of the program has convinced me that CGC will have to have a top 5 recruiting class to compensate for the poor coaching to even field a winning team , much less be a conference contender. I am pretty well fed up at this point.

 

[LargeFO]

We have seen this since the beginning of the CGC tenure. I got to wondering what the HE!! they were even doing in practice. They have looked completely lost for so many games. Inexcusable penalties, nonsensical playcalling, BAD special teams ( except Harvin III ), ineffective schemes, poor eye discipline, incompetent clock and game management. All of this , and the either lack of awareness or tone deafness about the current state of the program has convinced me that CGC will have to have a top 5 recruiting class to compensate for the poor coaching to even field a winning team , much less be a conference contender. I am pretty well fed up at this point.

Perhaps taking too many social media vids for clicks.