CPJ had to go not because of the offense but the defense. It’s kind of crazy that most discussions about his tenure here devolve into arguments about his offense, but even if there was nothing wrong with the offense, the terrible defenses we had under him made his head coaching untenable. And I doubt any other head coach has had as many defensive coordinators as CPJ did in a 10 year span, with all sorts of pedigrees, and none of them were successful under him (even if most were successful as Defensive coaches in other schools).
For the first few years his offense was so good that we could paper over the defensive issues (first because he truly had some of the best offensive players Tech had ever seen, inherited from Gailey and then because he had good players playing really well together with great leadership).
However, even once we got the personnel issues sorted out, the offense wasn’t gonna do well going forward because of rule changes. 2 rule changes meant that the offense had to decline. Changes in blocking on the perimeter meant that our WRs could not block out corners to open up lanes the way they could at the beginning of CPJ’s tenure at Tech. In addition to that, changes in downfield blocking rules meant that the advantage cut blocks gave us (allowing the Olinemen to go downfield and clear out secondary defenders) was basically eliminated making his strategy of lighter and nimbler Olinemen unviable. And it meant that what used to be 20-80 yard runs were reduced to 10-15 yard runs at best, increasing the number of plays to score furthering the impact of turnovers, negative plays and penalties.
