That isn't a fair comparison. Baylor was arguably the worst P5 team when Briles took over. We aren't even the worst ACC team when Babers took over. The year prior to Briles taking over Baylor was 117th in the Sagarin, while SU was 80th last year. There isn't a talent gap with UConn, Wake, BC, NC State.
And Briles wasn't playing the type of out of conference schedule Syracuse does, he was scheduling the worst of the worst out of conference.
You name four teams on your schedule that you don't have a talent gap with. So, you chalk up those as 4-0? Does Syracuse have definitively much BETTER talent than those programs, that you should count them all as wins?
No coach beats every team they have similar talent then. You have to win most of your games in which you hold a decided talent advantage, and and the best coaches win the highest percent of those. Then you hope you can win a little more than your share of the games against roughly similar talent. Guys like Saban, Meyer, Fisher, etc may face 1-2 teams a year with similar talent.
The very best coaches in the game win the vast majority of the time by having better talent. Most of the time that's straight recruiting...in some instances you can credit better than average development at places like Michigan State and Kansas State.
I just think some of you guys think that a coach can do more than he can do. You've got one game on your schedule, Colgate, where you can cruise to a win. You are going into 11 of your 12 games with about the same or significantly less talent. Babers could be an excellent coach and not be able to pull four wins out of those games.
People just don't want to see it, but having the likes of USF and UConn on your schedule when you've already got ND is just foolhardy, but at this point I'm not going to change anyone's mind, even though EVERY SINGLE TEAM that has gone from a losing culture to a winning culture has done it on the back of tissue soft OOC scheduling.
But that aside, expectations that ANY coach is going to win more than a few games out of a slate of even and disadvantaged matchups is crazy. Nick Saban couldn't be counted on to do that.
Until you've got better players than at least half your schedule, 3-6 wins is going to be a reasonable outcome for any coach.