Transfer Portal: Who's Coming and Going (2022 Roster)

JacketFan137

Banned
Messages
2,536
Louder for the people in the back!
people telling on themselves as toxic fans.

“WEVE LOST SO MUCH TALENT WE ARE GONNA SUCK!”

*experienced player comes in for a position of need*

“JUST WHAT WE NEED ANOTHER CB!”

it’s pretty clear some people will never be happy. should find a new hobby if you’re just gonna do an eeyore impression for any news
 

yeti92

Helluva Engineer
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2,577
experienced player
That is highly subjective. He's been in college 5 years yes, but only has 24 total tackles in those 5 years and only managed to start in 3 games as a senior. No interceptions, no forced or recovered fumbles. I hope he blows up here and becomes an All-American 1st round draft pick, but I'm not going to bet on that.

Nobody would have a problem with more DBs if we were taking guys who were regular starters or heavy contributors at their prior school - we've seen those guys work out positively for us. Guys like McDuffie I expect to compete for playing time. People are complaining because most of the portal guys we seem to take, particularly at DB, are "depth" guys, not guys we expect to immediately compete for a starting job and see significant playing time time which is what we really need.
 

JacketFan137

Banned
Messages
2,536
That is highly subjective. He's been in college 5 years yes, but only has 24 total tackles in those 5 years and only managed to start in 3 games as a senior. No interceptions, no forced or recovered fumbles. I hope he blows up here and becomes an All-American 1st round draft pick, but I'm not going to bet on that.

Nobody would have a problem with more DBs if we were taking guys who were regular starters or heavy contributors at their prior school - we've seen those guys work out positively for us. Guys like McDuffie I expect to compete for playing time. People are complaining because most of the portal guys we seem to take, particularly at DB, are "depth" guys, not guys we expect to immediately compete for a starting job and see significant playing time time which is what we really need.
5 years of college S&C, starting on special teams, and in general coming to an area of need is important. doesn’t matter how you slice it. we vacated a lot of spots on the secondary, we need SOMETHING there. chances of a guy who’s been in college this long contributing is much higher than a freshman/sophomore.
 

jojatk

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1,349
That is highly subjective. He's been in college 5 years yes, but only has 24 total tackles in those 5 years and only managed to start in 3 games as a senior. No interceptions, no forced or recovered fumbles. I hope he blows up here and becomes an All-American 1st round draft pick, but I'm not going to bet on that.

Nobody would have a problem with more DBs if we were taking guys who were regular starters or heavy contributors at their prior school - we've seen those guys work out positively for us. Guys like McDuffie I expect to compete for playing time. People are complaining because most of the portal guys we seem to take, particularly at DB, are "depth" guys, not guys we expect to immediately compete for a starting job and see significant playing time time which is what we really need.
A few thoughts:
  1. The kid was a special teams ace last year. Guess how bad we were at punt return coverage last year? 104th in the nation. I'll take a guy like that who can help us on special teams. I think that's worth a scholarship. According to his UMD bio and an article I read on the UMD website talking about post-season awards he was named the Terps special teams player of the year.
  2. We had three interceptions all of last year. Two of them were by Charlie Thomas. Know how many teams were worse than us in the INT category? Three. But one of them had about the same average INTs per game. So really only 2. I'm not turning away guys our coaches think might be able to help us get better. And while we CAN get worse in the defensive backfield (I never challenge "worse"), relatively speaking to the rest of FBS we can only go 2 spots lower. But to be honest I kind of feel like the kid is coming in to help us mostly with special teams, though I could be wrong.
  3. How many of those 1 INTs by DBs were actually by CBs? Easy to guess this one... none. Juanyeh had the only INT by a DB last year.
  4. How many of our returning corners had as many or more pass breakups last year as Kenny Bennett, the kid from Maryland? FYI he had 3 pass breakups last year. Don't bother looking it up, I'll tell you. Only Myles Sims who had 4. The rest of our returning CBs, combined, had 1 pass breakup.
My point is not that Kenny Bennett is going to light the world on fire. I'm not even suggesting he's going to be a huge improvement or that we should expect great things from him. He may only provide depth and potentially a BADLY NEEDED boost in the special teams coverage units. But if you think guys like this can't help us then you really aren't paying attention to how bad we were in the defensive backfield and special teams last year. Believe me when I say there's no blind faith in me for our coaches at this point. I'm looking at what he did for the Terps and, as I said, on special teams we can really use the help of a player like him.

And yes, I recognize that I'm grasping at straws ;)
 

MonroeJacket

GT Athlete
Messages
759
Nobody would have a problem with more DBs if we were taking guys who were regular starters or heavy contributors at their prior school
Well, guys who were regular starters at their previous school aren’t coming here for the most part. They’re just not. The players you (and I) desire, for the most part A) Have no reason to leave. B) If they’re regular starters and old enough, and really good enough, they might take their shot at the league, if they’re a graduate transfer. C) If they fit the qualifications above and still decide to transfer, they’re following the money to a factory or a winning program. Now, if we’re 9-3 the past three seasons as opposed to the opposite, we’re in the conversation.
 

MonroeJacket

GT Athlete
Messages
759
Well, guys who were regular starters at their previous school aren’t coming here for the most part. They’re just not. The players you (and I) desire, for the most part A) Have no reason to leave. B) If they’re regular starters and old enough, and really good enough, they might take their shot at the league, if they’re a graduate transfer. C) If they fit the qualifications above and still decide to transfer, they’re following the money to a factory or a winning program. Now, if we’re 9-3 the past three seasons as opposed to the opposite, we’re in the conversation.
I’d like to add…AND they’d have to work harder in the classroom. What’s the sayin? Over worked and underpaid? 95% of these boys don’t care about academics. Regardless if they say they do or not. Deep down, they don’t. Every red blooded male who has any thread of competition in him thinks he’s bound for the league, and they wanna hang with the girls in their gifted Camaros, and spend their NIL money at the college bars in the process and feel like kings. Tech offers NONE of that unfortunately.
 

orientalnc

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Well, guys who were regular starters at their previous school aren’t coming here for the most part. They’re just not. The players you (and I) desire, for the most part A) Have no reason to leave. B) If they’re regular starters and old enough, and really good enough, they might take their shot at the league, if they’re a graduate transfer. C) If they fit the qualifications above and still decide to transfer, they’re following the money to a factory or a winning program. Now, if we’re 9-3 the past three seasons as opposed to the opposite, we’re in the conversation.
I’d like to add…AND they’d have to work harder in the classroom. What’s the sayin? Over worked and underpaid? 95% of these boys don’t care about academics. Regardless if they say they do or not. Deep down, they don’t. Every red blooded male who has any thread of competition in him thinks he’s bound for the league, and they wanna hang with the girls in their gifted Camaros, and spend their NIL money at the college bars in the process and feel like kings. Tech offers NONE of that unfortunatelty.
I sounds as if this entire exercise is hopeless. The transfers we got this year (15, I think that is correct) aren't very good and the high schoool kids aren't either. Plus, we have terrible coaches and fans that don't (or won't) support the program. And impossible classes.

I have a serious questions. If all this is true, how have the women's programs at GT been able to recruit and keep such outstanding athletes? These women are no less interested in winning and the classes at Tech are just as hard for them.
 

GTBandit22

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1,169
Everyone complaining about DBs.
We were bad there last year, and lost 3/4 of the starters to graduation, and our starting nickel to transfer. We have what I see as a FS playing CB opposite Zamari.
We need DB help.
 

slugboy

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Staff member
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10,742
Last year, we were 30th in the Team Talent Composite Index (https://collegefootballdata.com/exporter/talent?year=2021). That’s about where we’ve been throughout all of Collins’ tenure, and it’s a good stat for him.

If you just looked at that stat, you’d think we were a fringe top-25 team the last three years.

2022 numbers aren’t in yet, but I think after transfers finish up, it’ll be about the same.

Those numbers don’t tell the entire story. Since Collins started, we’ve had offensive and defensive linemen transfers. At first, I thought they were to fill in until we got a pipeline of high school recruits older and stronger and trained on our defensive scheme. Then, it looked like they’d be a quick fix until we had our recruiting and development in place. Now, it looks like a way of life.

We’re doing a lot of the same thing all over the field now, including at running back.

So, if the supposed talent level is the same, why should we expect a different year this season?

The main unknown is how the coaching staff will do. The defensive coaching staff is mostly turned over, and the offensive staff is heavily turned over. Were they the X-factor? If so, did we bring in the right coaches and replace the right coaches? We’ll find out.

Has player continuity been our problem? We keep bringing in transfers. Sometimes they start and are really impressive, sometimes they’re OK, and sometimes we rarely see them on the field. Often, they’re gone after a year or two. But, the transfer portal is the “new normal”, and we’re going to see more of this. Right now, I wouldn’t count on the kind of player continuity we saw in the 1990’s.

When I look at pro teams, I’ll compare a New England with Detroit under Matt Millen. Millen drafted a lot of skill players. Belichick always drafts at least one OL a year fairly high in the draft. Millen got his QB beaten up pretty bad for years. Likewise, we haven’t built a core functioning front 7 on defense or OL on offense. Our talent index looks better than it really is because we haven’t developed that part of our game.

If we fix our weaknesses in one year, it’ll be a miracle.

However, I wouldn’t worry too much about the portal. We’re doing fine. We’re not winning the portal — Alabama, USC, Ole Miss and others are doing that — but we’re holding our own. Yes, we lost some great players through the portal, but we’ve brought in a lot of good players too, and on average we’re slightly ahead. That’s not enough to make us win — for us, the difference is in other areas.
 

4shotB

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I have a serious questions. If all this is true, how have the women's programs at GT been able to recruit and keep such outstanding athletes? These women are no less interested in winning and the classes at Tech are just as hard for them.

I'll take a stab at answering that based on my experiences as a HS teacher. First, girls mature earlier than guys. Secondly, there are not millions and millions of dollars available to professional women's athletes for the most part so while I have taught several girls who have gone to receive athletic scholarships (at the full gamut of schools), I think deep down they have always understood that they needed other (academic) skills on top of basketball, golf, soccer, softball, etc. That paradigm might be changing now with the NIL but that has been my experience to date anyways.
 
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