I give the benefit of the doubt until it's not warranted. With Babers, he's had success in his first two HC stints and he knows the players he needs for both his offense and defense to be successful. So that's why I am not challenging any of the personnel decisions he is making in regards to this current recruiting class because I believe what he is doing in retaining only the kids he feels make sense in regards to his systems is the right move. Plus I have no baseline for his staff recruiting at a P5 school so I look at the videos and see if I see what they're seeing. And I do for the most part so far.
Shafer had a really strong, on paper, 2014 class but I think people started to sour after the top 3 or 4 players in that class didn't qualify or ended up getting recruited over. His classes were strong in the middle but his reaches are starting to look like kids that don't belong anywhere near a P5 roster and the top end of his classes were either completely missing (2013) or were big disappointments (2014 - Edouard, KJ Williams, Long, Enoicy; 2015 - Blair) where the 4 star kids didn't amount to much. And the 2015 class, at least what he had in place prior to being removed, looks now like more reaches than anything else. So looking back on it now, yes, the criticism that started with his 2015 class and carried into the 2016 class now seems warranted.
