@CuseJacket I put other, and I'd like to expound on that for a bit. Probably TLDR for some.
Like others on this board was a big fan of CPJ and option football. While I have been a GT fan all my life, thanks to a die hard grandfather who refused to let my dad pollute my mind with uga football on Saturdays when I was growing up. Although I am a sidewalk fan, I am a devoted fan. Prior to CPJ, I had attended a handful of games. Starting in 2008, I began to attend more frequently, as the excitement the program had built infected me. In 2012, I became a full fledged Season ticket holder and started donating to the GTAA. (Note, my STs do not require an A-T donation. I donate anyways)
When CPJ retired, I was disappointed, but as I said, I was a fan prior to CPJ, and I will remain a fan following him. Unlike other CPJ fans, I was not a proponent for hiring Monken or Bohannen. I felt, and still feel, that the drop off from CPJ and any other coaches on his tree is steep, and CPJ struggled at times with the recruiting restrictions that are inherent with running his offense. Moving away from the offense seemed logical to me, but it meant coming to terms with the fact that we would likely enter a wilderness of 3-5 years of losing football.
Enter Collins. My initial impression of him was that he reminded me too much of Butch Jones. Fair or not, the man gives off serious used car salesman vibes. Everything about his first few months here screamed style over substance. Then came the seemingly unending digs at his predecessor in interviews. You can argue that he didn't intend them as insults, but considering how laser focused he is on "brand" and saying the right things, I find that hard to believe. In the end, however, I tend towards pragmatism. CGC is our coach, whether I like him or not, and his success is my success as a fan. Initial recruiting wins were promising, and the first full recruiting class in '20 gave me solid hope for the future. While the sideline schtick and money down crap wear thin, if it leads to recruiting in the top 25, I can endure.
Over the last two years I have been a consistent voice in giving him and his coordinators time to assemble their team. I appreciate that transitioning away from the CPJ system to his was going to be much harder than many thought. Unlike most new hires, he didn't inherit a team with traditional players on offense. We were loaded with OL who weren't the right size and didn't have the right skillset, and our ABs and QBs were nowhere near what we needed to run his offense. We can argue semantics about "football is football," but the reality is that we didn't have the right players in our system to run the offense. Getting them in is going to take time. The transfer portal helps some, but in our biggest area of need, OL, it doesn't help enough. I contend that we are leaning heavily on it right now so that he can build class separation on OL instead of having to spend all of his slots in 1-2 years on OL and start over every 3-4 years. While this gets us some proven OL individuals, the reality is that OL is an evolving organism. It takes a while for a line to gel and learn to work with each other. Simply plugging in a more talented OG or OT doesn't necessarily make the OL better. We are going to continue to see struggles here for at least another year or two. We are seeing definite progress, but it's going to take more time to get it to where it needs to be.
QB is the next project, and Sims could be the answer. He needs a lot of work though, and we need to continue to develop him and Yates while seeking to replace both, as every other program is doing with their QBs. If the OL gets fixed in a year or two, and we can develop Sims/Yates, we stand a real good chance of having a successful season in the next year or two. our Rbs are probably the deepest in the nation, and WRs are talented but young and raw. We need time, and some degree of patience from the fan base, for all of this to develop.
Defense is another story altogether. CGC is billed as a three time Broyles award nominee on defense, and yet GT is regressing here. I expected 2019 to be bad simply because of how bad our offense was going to be, leaving the D on the field to get gassed. The continued regression in 2020 is harder to understand. The secondary, which is supposedly a CGC strongpoint, is a major weakness for us in spite of considerable talent on the field. I am not a defensive mastermind, so I will leave it for others to diagnose, but the impression right now is that our defense is vastly underperforming considering talent and the pedigree of the HC, as well as the fact that, unlike the offense, it did not require a major transition.
With all this being said, in spite of all the antics and lack of success, I still believe that CGC can redeem this. As I stated earlier on this board, I saw enough in the last game to give me hope that CDP as OC can work here. My confidence in the DC is somewhat lessened though, especially since the 22 formation seemed to stump them.
So, what would it take for me? A combination of things:
1. Progress on the field. I need to see a QB that can run an offense and hit short open passes reliably, not just take off and get 15-20 yards as a RB.
2. Wins against KSU and Duke this year. After NIU, I don't know that I can reasonably expect our team to beat anyone else on our schedule.
3. A change in tone. I don't need CGC to all of a sudden become the curmudgeon that CPJ was, but I would like to see less "elite" and more "real" in his press conferences.
4. An upset win that has to do with our progress, not the other teams regression.
5. Continued recruiting success, not just transfers.
6. Reconfiguring of staff to upgrade assistants.
Any three of those 6 will give me hope. I have lost a lot of faith in CGC as a coach, but not all faith.
