I hope Volnation understands a few things.
1) We still have 8 games to improve. Although a lot of those games look tough (Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama), I have faith in our team to get tougher and more united as the season goes on.
2) Last Saturday was the staffs 4th games! Dooley left our coaches with no quarterback, no secondary, no team unity, no depth, and no culture of winning. These things take more than days to fix, takes seasons.
Here are some informations you can look to get relief:
Look at these coaches' first year records.
Urban Meyer (Florida) 9-3
Nick Saban (Alabama) 7-6
Will Muschamp 7-6
James Franklin 6-7
Urban Meyer had a 9-3 season, the best among the ones listed, but what people don't know is CUM inherited a talented Florida roster that had a 7-5 record the previous year. So CUM improved the team by +2 wins.
Nick Saban's first year team went 6-7 the year before, thus improving the record by +1 win.
Will Muschamp inherited a very talented roster from CUM that went 8-5 the year before, and worsened the record by -1 win.
James Franklin is well known for inheriting a 2-10 team and improving them to a 6-7 team, +4 wins. However, his wins came from Elon (5-6), Ole Miss (2-10), Army (3-9), Kentucky (5-7), Wake Forrest (6-7), and Conneticut (5-7). His most impressive win of that season was against Wake Forrest.
I really wanted to do a detailed analysis of the coaches' situation when they inherited the team (including recruiting, NCAA sanctions, player analysis, number of All-Americans, etc), but I am in law school and don't have the time (I really shouldn't be doing this right now, I have 100 pages to read before tomorrow!). I decided to take the simpler approach and look at the Win-Loss ratio of three previous years before the coaches inherited their teams.
CUM 23-15
Saban 22-15
WM 34-7
JF 11-26
These coaches all showed a drastic improvement their second season:
WM 11-2
CUM 13-1
JF 9-4
NS 12-2
So where does Coach Butch Jones's roster stand?
Our team went 5-7 last year, and 16-21 the past three years. It is pretty clear that our roster is closer to the one James Franklin inherited than to Nick Saban's or Urban Meyers'.
Coaching record of CBJ shows a similar pattern:
At Cincinnati, he was 4-8 first season, and 10-3 second season.
SO WHERE AM I TRYING TO GET WITH THIS?
1. Will Muschamp is terrible coach according this basic analysis.
2. We need to be patient. It will be irrational to expect the similar results NS and CUM had their second season, just look at the roster!
3. CBJ is killing the recruiting trail and is working endlessly to get us back to the top, so lets give him a chance and wait for another season, if not two and not get frustrated over losing to two ranked teams!