jakez4ut
Patience... It's what's for dinner
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2005
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i'm not going to pretend to know more about recruiting than most of you that post in this forum regularly, as i normally don't. i peruse every now and then and pay attention loosely to the players bios etc....
those of you that do keep up with the players and read about them etc....i trust that your opinion is well informed and noteworthy.
but on a larger scale, when this class is "graded", won't it be 2 or 3 years from now before we really have a grasp on whether or not it was any good?
i'm not one that's "i would rather have a 2* kid that wanted to be here vs. a 4* that wants to go to the NFL" or anything, but i am very skeptical of the ratings system recruiting. that said, i do understand that the ratings aren't pulled out of thin air.
here's what i see as a result of this class, that is sub par based on what we're used to doing around here:
1. new offensive coaches coming in January. they didn't exaclty have a ton of time to get out and develop relationships with kids that had been courted by GA, BAma, FL, LSU, Auburn etc....in that light, if you're that kid, why would you take a chance on one of the new guys when you've likely been in contact with one of the other schools for well over a year in some cases?
2. Old offensive coaches. they aren't here. those relationships i spoke of got severed when troop and cut departed. some of those kids looked elsewhere because of the unknown factor.
3. Playing time. other than defensive line, we're fairly deep at most every other position. which is the most concerning thing to me about this class, we didn't get the "need" spots i felt we needed based on that, and that's concerning.
4. Momentum. it's widely accepted that we've hit a wall despite how we ended last season. almost that it was an end of an era around here. Bama, GA, FL, LSU and Auburn are all considered to be on the way up or at least maintaining status at or near the top. how do you get momentum? i'll let you know in early September, how's that for a hint? we throttled GA last season, and saw no benefit from that in this class. Why? GA rolled the rest of the season and won a BCS Game. should, would, if, could....we win the SEC title game in December who knows...maybe we trump GA's momentum. but no one remembers that we killed them. it's remembered, rather, as a springboard game for GA. they remember the GA celebrataion during the FL game and the big BCS bowl win.
5. we have to show that we're not 2nd tier. if we really believe we're not, we haven't shown it to anyone else. this kind of goes to momentum as well, but at some point, we have to show that we're going to not just be competitive with FL or GA, but we have to beat them both on a more regular basis and at some point, we're going to have to beat them both in the same season more than once a decade.
this list applies to recruiting, but also some other things....we want to be relevant in October and November, well, September early October dictate that. you want Game day at Neyland for hte Bama game? beat GA and FL and set up a huge TN/Bama game. you want GAmeday at Neyland for hte GA game, beat FL. you want to be mentioned by ESPN game day and be in the highlight reels, beat these teams. it's all part of the same mechanism. over the past 10 years, there's very few schools that simply rely on what they've done in the past. guess who realized that lately? Alabama. you know how they created momentum.......a WOW coaching hire. you know how South CArolina did it.....a WOW coaching hire. you know how ARK did it......a WOW coaching hire.......momentume can be created artificically like these guys did it or it can be done the old fashioned way, like GA did it this past year.
by all rights, it appears we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way as well. and the good news is we control our own destiny in that regard. that's also the bad news.
so, i'm not going to be overly critical of this one class. we've had top 3 classes twice the last 4 years, and we've had mediocre classes twice in the last 4 years.
what's going to be the difference in how year 5 tilts that trend will be directly related to how well we control our own destiny this season and next.
so with that, to all the new vols, welcome aboard. I personally look forward to you guys being part of what turns the corner for us in Knoxville.
Go Vols.:thumbsup:
those of you that do keep up with the players and read about them etc....i trust that your opinion is well informed and noteworthy.
but on a larger scale, when this class is "graded", won't it be 2 or 3 years from now before we really have a grasp on whether or not it was any good?
i'm not one that's "i would rather have a 2* kid that wanted to be here vs. a 4* that wants to go to the NFL" or anything, but i am very skeptical of the ratings system recruiting. that said, i do understand that the ratings aren't pulled out of thin air.
here's what i see as a result of this class, that is sub par based on what we're used to doing around here:
1. new offensive coaches coming in January. they didn't exaclty have a ton of time to get out and develop relationships with kids that had been courted by GA, BAma, FL, LSU, Auburn etc....in that light, if you're that kid, why would you take a chance on one of the new guys when you've likely been in contact with one of the other schools for well over a year in some cases?
2. Old offensive coaches. they aren't here. those relationships i spoke of got severed when troop and cut departed. some of those kids looked elsewhere because of the unknown factor.
3. Playing time. other than defensive line, we're fairly deep at most every other position. which is the most concerning thing to me about this class, we didn't get the "need" spots i felt we needed based on that, and that's concerning.
4. Momentum. it's widely accepted that we've hit a wall despite how we ended last season. almost that it was an end of an era around here. Bama, GA, FL, LSU and Auburn are all considered to be on the way up or at least maintaining status at or near the top. how do you get momentum? i'll let you know in early September, how's that for a hint? we throttled GA last season, and saw no benefit from that in this class. Why? GA rolled the rest of the season and won a BCS Game. should, would, if, could....we win the SEC title game in December who knows...maybe we trump GA's momentum. but no one remembers that we killed them. it's remembered, rather, as a springboard game for GA. they remember the GA celebrataion during the FL game and the big BCS bowl win.
5. we have to show that we're not 2nd tier. if we really believe we're not, we haven't shown it to anyone else. this kind of goes to momentum as well, but at some point, we have to show that we're going to not just be competitive with FL or GA, but we have to beat them both on a more regular basis and at some point, we're going to have to beat them both in the same season more than once a decade.
this list applies to recruiting, but also some other things....we want to be relevant in October and November, well, September early October dictate that. you want Game day at Neyland for hte Bama game? beat GA and FL and set up a huge TN/Bama game. you want GAmeday at Neyland for hte GA game, beat FL. you want to be mentioned by ESPN game day and be in the highlight reels, beat these teams. it's all part of the same mechanism. over the past 10 years, there's very few schools that simply rely on what they've done in the past. guess who realized that lately? Alabama. you know how they created momentum.......a WOW coaching hire. you know how South CArolina did it.....a WOW coaching hire. you know how ARK did it......a WOW coaching hire.......momentume can be created artificically like these guys did it or it can be done the old fashioned way, like GA did it this past year.
by all rights, it appears we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way as well. and the good news is we control our own destiny in that regard. that's also the bad news.
so, i'm not going to be overly critical of this one class. we've had top 3 classes twice the last 4 years, and we've had mediocre classes twice in the last 4 years.
what's going to be the difference in how year 5 tilts that trend will be directly related to how well we control our own destiny this season and next.
so with that, to all the new vols, welcome aboard. I personally look forward to you guys being part of what turns the corner for us in Knoxville.
Go Vols.:thumbsup:
lol:
