SI article

JacketForLife said:
Agreed.
Our OL will be just fine. It might take a few games to get the really silly mistakes flushed out though.
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I have the feeling we will be playing 8 or 10 different OL combinations for the first half of the season until a starting five is determined. Competition being king, the surviving five should be pretty good. Our "fall camp" will probably extend until Halloween for most of the team. We have 24 or 25 positions to be decided upon--barely a handful of starters are set right now.
 
OL will be fine. We upgraded massively at OL coach and had already recruited much bigger OL than we had in early 3O days. There will be an adjustment and I'm sure they'll make some mistakes, but we've been there before.
 
We will steal some wins simply because teams will not be familiar with our scheme and will not know how to play us.

Kinda like in 2008 when we used converted TE's as lineman and still finished with 8 wins.
 
gtfan088 said:
2008 season previews routinely trotted out some variation of "These pro-style players will have to learn an entirely new offense" to justify picking us as a bottom feeder despite us making 11 consecutive bowls at the time. It's not too surprising that we're getting the same lazy takes in reverse.
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This is quite a bit different than that transition which was to take an NFL talent laden team and teach them the triple option. Rather, this transition is trying to get mid-level group of five caliber athletes to play in a system that needs skill position play makers, a decently accurate QB (our QBs could never hit the broad side of a barn under PJ) and an OL that has pass blocking skills. Yes, this transition is much harder than the transition PJ made.
 
TampaBayJacket said:
This is quite a bit different than that transition which was to take an NFL talent laden team and teach them the triple option. Rather, this transition is trying to get mid-level group of five caliber athletes to play in a system that needs skill position play makers, a decently accurate QB (our QBs could never hit the broad side of a barn under PJ) and an OL that has pass blocking skills. Yes, this transition is much harder than the transition PJ made.
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You missed the point. I'm not comparing the talent on the team now to the talent on the team then. All that NFL talent we had then was pretty much dismissed by prognosticators because "oh noes, they have to learn a new offense." That same lazy take is being applied here as a blanket justification for why the team will be bad.

I think we will instantly see an upgrade in coaching on defense and on the OL. Not saying either will be great, but improved. I also don't think the ACC Coastal is the juggernaut some seem to be making it out to be. 6 wins can be had.
 
Flywheel said:
My take as well, though Johnson did inherit the 2007 class and a handful of All-Americans and future draftees.
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you realize he did leave CGC about 7-8 4 stars (two Swillings, Gentry Bonds, Justice Dingle, James Graham, Kaleb Oliver, just off the top of the head, and 3 star commit who later became a 4 in Yates) too? and that's not counting the vastly undervalued Tyriq Carpenter and Juanyeh Thomas.
PJ said it himself in his exit interviews - there are some really good athletes in his last two classes.
 
swampsting said:
you realize he did leave CGC about 7-8 4 stars (two Swillings, Gentry Bonds, Justice Dingle, James Graham, Kaleb Oliver, just off the top of the head, and 3 star commit who later became a 4 in Yates) too? and that's not counting the vastly undervalued Tyriq Carpenter and Juanyeh Thomas.
PJ said it himself in his exit interviews - there are some really good athletes in his last two classes.
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That's all well & good. But the 2007 class had actual All-Americans and actual draftees, not hopefuls.
 
gtfan088 said:
You missed the point. I'm not comparing the talent on the team now to the talent on the team then. All that NFL talent we had then was pretty much dismissed by prognosticators because "oh noes, they have to learn a new offense." That same lazy take is being applied here as a blanket justification for why the team will be bad.

I think we will instantly see an upgrade in coaching on defense and on the OL. Not saying either will be great, but improved. I also don't think the ACC Coastal is the juggernaut some seem to be making it out to be. 6 wins can be had.
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I think you missed my point. My point is it is easier to transition to a different scheme when you have great players, thus PJ's transition was much easier than the transition that is about to happen. I agree with your points about coaching on the defense (which has some talent at a few positions but glaring holes at others) and the OL. I will have to disagree that we will see an OL upgrade, though, simply because body type requirement is different for what we are transitioning to. I know we can look at height/weight but that doesnt tell the entire story. Long arms and athletic tuck are keys to pass pro on the edges. We haven't recruited that need in the past 12 years. I think our guards will be okay as their roles/body types will fit much better. Center I dont have a clue but we never seemed to have a problem with shotgun before when PJ experimented with it.

So I dont think it is a lazy take to say the transition will be difficult. We could go position by position on offense and find difficulties. On defense, it's more of a talent thing than anything else. We will have weaknesses in the front 7 that any scheme will have a tough time hiding. We would have had these same difficulties on D with the old regime, though, so no hot takes here. We just need some bigger, faster bodies in the front 7.
 
Excuses excuses. Last guy was run off. Transition be damned we better go bowling this year. People bitched for a new coaching staff...they got one. ROI should at least maintain what we had and we would have won 8 games this year with the old staff, so at minimum we should go .500
 
grantfield82 said:
Excuses excuses. Last guy was run off. Transition be damned we better go bowling this year. People bitched for a new coaching staff...they got one. ROI should at least maintain what we had and we would have won 8 games this year with the old staff, so at minimum we should go .500
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The last guy chose to quit. And saying we would have won 8 this year is less than meaningless when we should have won 8 last year and couldn’t get it done
 
JacketForLife said:
The excuse about 4 pt stances needs to die. They were almost never in 4pt stances save goal line or tight yardage.

The problem with the pass blocking was physics and lack of knowledge. “80/20” and no technique.
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Lots of other coaches would disagree with you. Whether actually in a 4 point stance or not it’s pretty hard to pass block when you have all your weight shifted forward in your stance.
 
JacketForLife said:
The excuse about 4 pt stances needs to die. They were almost never in 4pt stances save goal line or tight yardage.

The problem with the pass blocking was physics and lack of knowledge. “80/20” and no technique.
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The center was almost exclusively in 4pt stance. The guards and tackles were both, but always had their weight forward. A few years ago we had a guard who would lean back on called pass plays. Other teams picked up on it and pinned their ears back.

The 3O is not a good passing formation. It requires surprise to work.
 
ncjacket said:
The last guy chose to quit. And saying we would have won 8 this year is less than meaningless when we should have won 8 last year and couldn’t get it done
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He won 7 and would have won the 8th in the bowl game had there not been a retirement announcement. Call me on it this year when we win more than 8 games and beat georgia like CPJ’s first year. I’ll remind you they were preseason number 1 that year and had only lost to 12 win Bama and 13 win Florida that year prior to our game.
 
In my limited career of playing football as an offensive guard playing in AAA football in the mid sixties way down in South Georgia I always thought pass protection blocking was easier than run blocking as I only had to keep the guy I was blocking in front of me as opposed to driving him back or to the side. Admittedly pass rushes then were not nearly as sophisticated then as they are now Could be at slightly under 150 pounds drive blocking was not my forte but I could flat out protect my passer.
 
grantfield82 said:
He won 7 and would have won the 8th in the bowl game had there not been a retirement announcement. Call me on it this year when we win more than 8 games and beat georgia like CPJ’s first year. I’ll remind you they were preseason number 1 that year and had only lost to 12 win Bama and 13 win Florida that year prior to our game.
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Nothing against PJ but have we learned nothing from the past? Forget the bowl game, we should have had 2 more wins regular season, Pitt and SFl. We COULD win 9. We COULD lose 7. Either way PJ. Hose to walk away and we are in for a huge transition. Our players may be able to make the adjustments better than most think OR the “experts” may actually know what they are talking about. Either way I want to see improvement over the year and guys flying around
 
gtfan088 said:
It's not too surprising that we're getting the same lazy takes in reverse.
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People who don't have a connection to GT don't really have a reason to pay all that much attention to us, not a knock, just the way it is, a lot of teams if you are trying to come up with a blurb about all 100+ of them.
 
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