Why do we expect to beat the "big 4?"

[danny daniel]

My comments are aimed at the top talent teams we play including the 4 in this thread. I believe there are 4 outcomes when we play these teams:
1. We play poorly, ineffective game plan, lack focus and effort, and are overwhelmed without a chance to win (Bowls against LSU and IOWA, BYU/BYU, and several UGA games). We are frustrated and embarrassed. No HOPE.

2. We play inconsistently, making some good plays and even more bad plays. Unable to take advantage of opportunities to win, or unable to execute our base or to pass or to stop their horse. We see some positives but there are more negatives. We are frustrated and disappointed. (VT 2013, Clemson, Miami ) Some HOPE but mostly disgust.

3. We play with great effort and focus. We make some big plays. We have a chance to win. Our preparation and game plan is sound. We hit a pass or two. We force the opposition to play up to their capability, but we cannot cope with a couple of their star players. (Several Ga games and FSU 2012). We are disappointed at losing but are proud of our players, GT, and our coaches. We have HOPE.

4. We are prepared and play with great effort and focus. We never let up. Things bounce our way. We execute when needed and make a key stop or two. We hang on and earn a big upset. (ga 2008, Clemson 2011, ND Bowl game). We are overjoyed with excitement, pride, and HOPE. This is why our FB team works so hard. This is payday!

We will not realisticly (with our level of historical recruitment) win more than 50% of these games but we should HOPE and even demand a big majority of outcomes 3+ 4 above. I believe GT with CPJ can do that!

 

[vamosjackets]

Another thought to ponder is: what is the true talent differential between the #10 and #77 ranked teams? Is that the difference between 89% and 81% or the difference between 89% and 71%?

As noted by others, I think the disparity lies in the depth, not the front-line talent. Factories have a 1A team and a 1B team, where we have a 1st Team and a 2nd- Team.

I think it lies in the front-line talent too. Thus CPJ saying we have a deeper team than when he arrived, but our 1-8 talent is lower. Think about the other team having 5 Jonathan Dwyers, 5 Morgan Burnett's, 4 Derrick Morgans, etcetera.

 

[IronJacket7]

1. I don't put stock into the rankings. Sure there are a few players every year that you can say wow that guy is going to be special...but for as many 5*'s turn out great there are likely more that turn out to be bust.

2. I don't expect to beat them every year...but we should at least get a win against them every few years.

3. We are in Atlanta, Georgia....the hotbed for recruiting. We have to find ways to get these guys..I know we have hurdles and have to recruit at a higher academic rate than most but there are still plenty of kids with very good talent that we can land that would make big differences here.

4. I don't think we should just accept these programs being better than us..figure out ways around it.

5. Georgia Tech is a great school...it really is. We have to get a better perception going and turn our negatives into positives.

These to me are where we need to focus as an institution.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

As noted by others, I think the disparity lies in the depth, not the front-line talent. Factories have a 1A team and a 1B team, where we have a 1st Team and a 2nd- Team.

Depth is a very interesting topic. I think it has a huge impact in game outcomes, especially in close games and in games late in the year. Hmmm... when do we play the mutts???

Here's one example, the mutts lose their all everything qb and we're overjoyed all during the build up to the game. Then look what his backup does. His backup was all everything coming out of high school just like all their other players that litter their roster. Imagine if our star player goes down right prior to the game... whole different story.

 

[Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau]

We should give up playing football then and go to D-2...

Exactly right. On XM radio today it won't even be our decision. When the power programs wrest control of the process from the NCAA, the rules will be such that Georgia Tech will be unable to compete--even in the crippled manner we do now. We will be second division, double A. No question

 

[Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau]

Look at it this way. If I was a Uga fan, I'd be pissed if we had to go to overtime to beat a team that we out talented on the order of 7.

Syracuse, a team we beat 56 to zip has, in fact, comparable talent, yet it means nothing beating them, much less beating them like a rented mule. (*Correction, according to the services, they have slightly better overall talent than we do: #72 vs #77)

Faulty math-ranking 7 times higher has no correlation to 7 times inferior talent.

 

[Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau]

My comments are aimed at the top talent teams we play including the 4 in this thread. I believe there are 4 outcomes when we play these teams:
1. We play poorly, ineffective game plan, lack focus and effort, and are overwhelmed without a chance to win (Bowls against LSU and IOWA, BYU/BYU, and several UGA games). We are frustrated and embarrassed. No HOPE.

2. We play inconsistently, making some good plays and even more bad plays. Unable to take advantage of opportunities to win, or unable to execute our base or to pass or to stop their horse. We see some positives but there are more negatives. We are frustrated and disappointed. (VT 2013, Clemson, Miami ) Some HOPE but mostly disgust.

3. We play with great effort and focus. We make some big plays. We have a chance to win. Our preparation and game plan is sound. We hit a pass or two. We force the opposition to play up to their capability, but we cannot cope with a couple of their star players. (Several Ga games and FSU 2012). We are disappointed at losing but are proud of our players, GT, and our coaches. We have HOPE.

4. We are prepared and play with great effort and focus. We never let up. Things bounce our way. We execute when needed and make a key stop or two. We hang on and earn a big upset. (ga 2008, Clemson 2011, ND Bowl game). We are overjoyed with excitement, pride, and HOPE. This is why our FB team works so hard. This is payday!

We will not realisticly (with our level of historical recruitment) win more than 50% of these games but we should HOPE and even demand a big majority of outcomes 3+ 4 above. I believe GT with CPJ can do that!

That there are opinions such as this out in the fanbase is indicative of our overall, long term problem. As someone somewhere said in explaining the T-night attendance "Tech fans are just wired differently." We would never storm the field after beating a #5 division rival!!

 

[thwgjacket]

Or any factory for that matter? Our expectations are way out of wack here folks. I get want to win, heck, I want to win those games, too, but expecting and wanting are two completely different things. How in the world does anybody with any inkling of common sense or logic expect to beat teams that have not just marginally better talent than we do across the board, but in most cases, exponentially more talent.

Take Uga for example. They wrack up top 10 after top 10 classes and yet, guys on here proudly proclaim they're not happy unless we beat them. Then they go on to spout off the string of defeats. Well what do you expect? This is not a game of chance where the odds eventually even out. This isn't like flipping a coin where there's a 50/50 chance it lands on one side or the other. Those guys are a semi-pro football f-a-c-t-o-r-y. Same story for most of the other teams the "no excuses" crowd holds up as a measuring stick for our success. The fact that we've been so competitive in these contests where talent differential suggests we should be blown off the face of the earth, says something positive about our program, imo.

These same fans also dismiss wins against teams with comparable talent like it's a meaningless given.

I get having high expectations as a point of pride, I do. I just don't get the logic behind them.

Average recruiting ranking over the last 5 years (composite of all the services http://cfbmatrix.com/pre-nsd-the-ultimate-reference-guide-feb-6th/):

Uga: 10 (over the last 10 years they're #2)
Clemson: 15
VT: 22
Miami: 26

GT: 77

You do the math.

I'm confused. I'm looking at your link while sitting in a law class so I'm skipping back and forth and may have read it wrong but he has our 4 year average at 44. The 77 is composite for our 2013 class where we only took 14 guys. Your post makes it seem like our 5 year average is 77 when that is only one year. A year where we got Custis and Devine. Our actual rank over 4 years is 44 which seems much closer and when you look at how sites take quantity of recruits as a big part of the overall class rank you could argue that we are even closer per player than 44 indicates.

***The article you linked is also over a year old and the guy used 247 composite rankings instead of actual 247 independent rankings.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I'm confused. I'm looking at your link while sitting in a law class so I'm skipping back and forth and may have read it wrong but he has our 4 year average at 44. The 77 is composite for our 2013 class where we only took 14 guys. Your post makes it seem like our 5 year average is 77 when that is only one year. A year where we got Custis and Devine. Our actual rank over 4 years is 44 which seems much closer and when you look at how sites take quantity of recruits as a big part of the overall class rank you could argue that we are even closer per player than 44 indicates.

***The article you linked is also over a year old and the guy used 247 composite rankings instead of actual 247 independent rankings.

Oh wow, my bad. I was looking at the wrong column. I guess it's not as big a differential as I first thought. I thought that 77 seemed odd. Still, all the 'big 4' teams have more talent throughout their roster, the closest being VT at 29 which is 14 spots better than us. Uga at 9 is ridiculous.

 

[forensicbuzz]

I think it lies in the front-line talent too. Thus CPJ saying we have a deeper team than when he arrived, but our 1-8 talent is lower. Think about the other team having 5 Jonathan Dwyers, 5 Morgan Burnett's, 4 Derrick Morgans, etcetera.

I think it's more like the other teams have 1 JD, 1 MB, 2 DM, 2 DT, etc. every year we play them, then the back up is like these guys as freshmen. Those guys would have started on any team in the nation. We had as good as it gets with these guys, there just wasn't the same level of player in the cupboard when they left.

No doubt we're not as good on the front line position-by-position, but the talent discrepancy isn't as great on the 1st Team.

 

[thwgjacket]

Oh wow, my bad. I was looking at the wrong column. I guess it's not as big a differential as I first thought. I thought that 77 seemed odd. Still, all the 'big 4' teams have more talent throughout their roster, the closest being VT at 29 which is 14 spots better than us. Uga at 9 is ridiculous.

So at the very least some of these "talent level is so wide" posts should be toned down I would think. Like I said you have to look at quantity as well. We are not a school that is going to take a class with 27 players. If you look at average star per player for last years class on Rivals you will see that we were actually higher than Oklahoma State whose class ranked #27. It's just that they took 27 players and we took 21. If you look at other sites our star average probably goes up. Rivals only gave one of our recruits a 4-star ranking where I know ESPN gave 4 of our guys 4 star rankings. But like I said, your link is over a year old and does not take the 2014 class into account.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/school/_/id/59/class/2014

 

[vamosjackets]

I should have added a third point in my previous post that I also have hope that our players' skills will make the difference as well as our coaches look to put our play makers in the best position to make plays. Guys like Attaochu or Jemea or Vad (Justin/Byerly this year) or even Laskey or Robbie or the OL ... you think, we can play a good ballgame and in the end when its close, one of these guys can make a play to make the difference.

 

[thwgjacket]

If you take the average stars per player over the same time period that your link used then we are at 41. If you exclude 2013, which in my mind was an "outlier", then we are at 36. If we can stay between 36 and 41 for average stars per player on Rivals then we should be close enough talent wise to beat the big four fairly regularly. For some odd reason Rivals seems to be pretty hard on our recruits. A lot of the other sites tend to give more stars to our players. We also tend to have a lot of guys who are ranked as high three stars on the Rivals scale but that is not indicated in the star average.

**If we can hold on to Jaylend Ratliffe then that would be 2 ESPN 300 recruits that Rivals has ranked as 3-stars for us in consecutive years. The other being Myles Autry. That has to be somewhat rare.

 

[Mack]

Or any factory for that matter? Our expectations are way out of wack here folks. I get want to win, heck, I want to win those games, too, but expecting and wanting are two completely different things. How in the world does anybody with any inkling of common sense or logic expect to beat teams that have not just marginally better talent than we do across the board, but in most cases, exponentially more talent.

Take Uga for example. They wrack up top 10 after top 10 classes and yet, guys on here proudly proclaim they're not happy unless we beat them. Then they go on to spout off the string of defeats. Well what do you expect? This is not a game of chance where the odds eventually even out. This isn't like flipping a coin where there's a 50/50 chance it lands on one side or the other. Those guys are a semi-pro football f-a-c-t-o-r-y. Same story for most of the other teams the "no excuses" crowd holds up as a measuring stick for our success. The fact that we've been so competitive in these contests where talent differential suggests we should be blown off the face of the earth, says something positive about our program, imo.

These same fans also dismiss wins against teams with comparable talent like it's a meaningless given.

I get having high expectations as a point of pride, I do. I just don't get the logic behind them.

Average recruiting ranking over the last 5 years (composite of all the services http://cfbmatrix.com/pre-nsd-the-ultimate-reference-guide-feb-6th/):

Uga: 10 (over the last 10 years they're #2)
Clemson: 15
VT: 22
Miami: 26

GT: 77

You do the math.

If this is the case and you have stated a good point then.............I guess it is time to call in the dogs and piss on the fire.I have said its time to look at who we play and what conference we play in but to some its madness and to others it-makes sense. If we are going to compete we need to be on same or close to the same level as the schools you mentioned.Tired of not being able to compete year after year and hey...........I have been a fan for over sixty years but as PJ says "it is what it is"

 

[Mack]

I just finished reading the book "Dodd's Luck". Great book but very depressing for me at the end about us getting out of the SEC. The stated reason was that other SEC schools were recruiting lots of players and then cutting them by the end of the season. But Dodd also said this:
"The state universities have all the big advantages. Hell, they can get any boy in the state to their school. The mothers went there, the sisters went there, the girls went there. ....." and "If we had stayed in the conference, hell, all the SEC teams would've been beating us , except Vanderbilt and Tulane. So it wasn't getting out of the SEC that hurt us. It was the quality of football." He knew he couldn't compete in the recruiting wars and he was a football God.

We haven't been able to compete against the good teams consistently since the 50's because we can't recruit like them. Dodd knew the tide had turned. Baswed on recent recruiting and team play, I think we are 80%+ likely to lose to UGAg and Clemson this year. Miami maybe only 65% likely since they lost their QB. VT we should beat this year (should have won last year) since they haven't been recruiting well the last 5 years (Scout 36, 34, 26, 36, 39 from 2014 to 2010).

i
I agree yet there is also a deal between Dodd and the Bear to get back in the SEC............now that worries me for in one instance we cant hack it but then we want to get back in and of course many schools do not want us back.Quite frankly I liked playing as a independent.We usually played about four good SEC teams and some name schools and folks forget we didnt have a bad record year by year as independent...Just my two cents.

 

[GT Man]

How did you run out of beer so soon it is only 2 P.M?

I thought the option was the great talent neutralizer? Is it not? Why are we using it then?

Straw man argument. Nobody called it a talent neutralizer.

 

[GT Man]

I just like to get drunk and watch some football...

...

 

[Boomergump]

Some related thoughts:

1. There is joy in competition. Just the very nature of competition means sometimes you lose.
2. I really don't like the expression "expect to win". I would rather every player (and coach for that matter) go into every game EXPECTING to have to give everything they have and play to the very best of their abilities while supporting each other, just to have the chance to win.
3. Winning isn't easy. That is why it is so special when you do.
4. Certainly I would like to have a better record against those teams than we do, but I don't EXPECT to beat anybody, not a single team (see MTSU).
5. Just using language like expecting things just shows how entitled our culture has become, even as fans.
6. Our discussion around this kind of topic should revolve around the process and what we need to do play better consistently and beat these kind of teams more often. Just looking at the outcomes is useless.

 

[cyptomcat]

I expect to beat them at least around one out of three. We haven't done that last few years, but we came close a number of times...

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Some related thoughts:

1. There is joy in competition. Just the very nature of competition means sometimes you lose.
2. I really don't like the expression "expect to win". I would rather every player (and coach for that matter) go into every game EXPECTING to have to give everything they have and play to the very best of their abilities while supporting each other, just to have the chance to win.
3. Winning isn't easy. That is why it is so special when you do.
4. Certainly I would like to have a better record against those teams than we do, but I don't EXPECT to beat anybody, not a single team (see MTSU).
5. Just using language like expecting things just shows how entitled our culture has become, even as fans.
6. Our discussion around this kind of topic should revolve around the process and what we need to do play better consistently and beat these kind of teams more often. Just looking at the outcomes is useless.

Very zen. Not Western ethos though.

I keep telling myself the above with Beesball and it has helped me increase my enjoyment of their run this year.