I am of this era, and I can't really bad mouth these teams or their coaches, but I what I am thinking more and more through the lense of time is that; yes we were VERY talented, and no, it wasn't really Coach P. Coach P was a mediocre recruiter who recruited good sized kids and found some diamonds in our region (you're right, NJ has been discovered). We were not the fastest team out there (Miami was) but we were fast enough and creative enough, and talented enough. In reality you can see wins and talent start to decline as soon as he was fully distanced from Mac's teams. P took over in what 1991? He and we had sustained success and with that he was able to bring in fans, and talent (we keep saying that's what we need now, you can see what it does for you just by looking at this). McNabb was on campus in 1994/1995 as a RS Frosh. Harrison was here a year earlier, Darius and T Jones were on campus in 1993 I think as well. I don't think he was ever able to replicate that early recruiting success and I think that was residual of the success that SU had under Mac, that P sustained with Mac's recruits. Also consider the optics then and the image of SU. In the early 90's the idea of the black QB was still an unjustifiably contentious one. SU seemed to embrace the idea that a good QB is a good QB and race was not an issue. What else would you expect from the alma mater of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis? We went from Don McPherson to Marvin Graves to Kevin Mason, and yes I think that may have had an influence on Donovan McNabb. He landed some great players as time went on, but I think the drop off was apparent by 2000. He could not sustain the success and that effected recruiting (and vice versa). I don't think P was bad, but I don't think I can give him full credit for his first successes. Babers will be self made.
