I think we're all looking at the big picture. Some people just see it differently than you do. Again, I don't see it as being relevant that a coach won with a previous coach's players, except in the sense that it's an indictment on the previous coach. Would Gailey have won an ACC championship with his players? He had several chances and never could. PJ managed to win one with the players Gailey couldn't win with.
Sometimes reasonable people can look at the same set of information and come to different conclusions. While you may see the fact that Auburn's coaches have been successful with the prior coach's players as evidence that they shouldn't have made coaching changes, others will see that as proof that the previous coach wasn't getting the job done and/or fresh blood was needed to rejuvenate the team (and yes, oftentimes the same coach who provides that spark finds himself in a similar situation to his predecessor at some point down the line).
I don't know that a new coach will improve our program, but I'm becoming increasingly more convinced that a change is more likely to get us out of this rut than CPJ is.