Most teams that win dont run anything crazy. They coach technique and proper assignments which is what football mainly comes down to. Key and the staff has been doing that well enough this season to be 5-2.
Most coaches are middle of the road and win because their team just happens to play better that week than their opponent - that's why you can lose to Georgia State and beat Bama just a few games apart. Most of the teams that win a lot still have otherwise mediocre coaches, but can out talent their opponents more often than not.
You seem to look at every negative aspect of the game which for many on here is a product of Key simply not being the coach you wanted. Ofc it's going to look like he isn't as good a coach when he's under a much bigger microscope.
I highlighted many of the positives from the game right up front, I guess you skipped over those. I've also routinely defended this team under Key as better than we played or than others might think. I criticized CPJ plenty too, but I'm sorry but it doesn't take a microscope to see that Key, at least so far, is not on the same level of coaching as CPJ. He's just flat out not. I know plenty on here are excited at the prospect of 6 wins and a bowl game, maybe that's you too. Personally, I expect better, and I always have. 6-7 wins is mediocre.
Those who wanted Johnson gone did the same thing when Tech barely beat teams like Duke or Georgia Southern and definitely did when he lost games. When you don't believe in a coach, it won't matter whether or not that coach wins, only if they win in the way you want.
It has nothing to do with not believing in a coach. I'm not advocating for Key to be fired yet. I criticized Johnson when we played poorly under him too because I know we were capable of doing better. I believe Key is capable of doing better as well, but he's not shown much improvement in that regard yet. People like to point to our "upward trajectory" but that was mainly from TFG setting the bar so low. We are in season 2 and it looks like we will finish about the same as we did last year. Hopefully we suprise somebody in the final 5 games, but our play so far doesnt suggest it. We have not been opportunistic.
I am not going to excuse the mental mistakes, but I'm not going to harp on them as much as those who merely want something to complain about. The settling for field goals bothers me because if Tech goes for it and doesn't make it, people would be criticizing not taking the field goal. As for the outwitting part, it just reflects back on what I said earlier. It's the way YOU want Tech to win and if it's not done that way it won't be good enough.
It sure seems like you are okay ignoring them and don't want to talk about them, just focus on the positive. I know another guy who wanted to just focus on the positive - TFG.
We have settled for kicking field goals multiple times when we didn't have to. Going into the half against Cuse, we had absolutely abysmal clock management, barely even got into field goal range and then missed it. We could have scored a TD there and made the difference in the game being a W, instead we end up losing by 3 points. Against UNC we had time to take a shot at the endzone before half, and we settled again for a field goal without even trying. We settled for a field goal when we had gotten to the 6 last week. How do you preach toughness and physicality and yet settle so often?
The staff out coached Duke last week. Saying that they didn't is just an excuse to make the coach staff look bad. By that, no game that Tech won in the past where there was a talent advantage for Tech was done due to better coaching, just inferior rosters on the other team's part.
When a team has inferior talent and gets outcoached, they don't usually have a lead going into the 4th quarter, and you beat them by more than 10.