Agreed...I've personally never liked a coach more than I like HCDB. I want him to work out. If he gets it done I think the upper end recruiting would follow suit and we could get into the division champ mix. I don't think it's far fetched, but he has to string together a couple of bowl seasons and it really has to start this season.
Agree and that's why 2019 was so painful. We had so much momentum going into that season. And then last season was basically the worst possible result coming off a season where we lost our momentum.
We're not going to be a regular 8-10 win program recruiting on the level of Wake Forest. We'll be a program on the level of Wake Forest recruiting like Wake Forest. And by this I mean if your classes are going to be heavy on developmental prospects, you still need to fill out the 2 deep, and odds are in the event of injury you'll be relegated to plugging in guys that aren't quite ready, especially on the lines, and it's really hard to win games in a conference like the ACC relying on guys that haven't had time to develop. That's why recruiting a mix of ready to play recruits and developmental recruits is so important. And with the portal now, we really have no excuse to not have a good mix of both in every class. In this last class, I consider Jason Simmons and Garret Shrader to be in that category of ready to play recruits.
This year is critical. We have to see 7-9 wins and a bowl game. And then we have to see the same thing next year. If we start seeing 3-4 top 200-250 type recruits in our classes, then we'll know the momentum has shifted in the right direction. We were headed in that direction in the 2019 class where we had big recruiting wins later in the cycle with Nunn, Kpoga and Mikel Jones, and those guys all turned out to be early 2 deep guys based on their talent and physical readiness and their talent was pretty obvious when we saw them play.
Sleepers and developmental prospects are important for the program, but those should be the guys that you redshirt and plug in on specials, or redshirt for the lines, and if they develop beyond that it's house money - but you shouldn't have to rely on those guys being on your 2 deep after a year in the program or earlier.