(06-24-2020 08:19 AM)JCGSU Wrote: (06-11-2020 04:22 PM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote: 6-6 would be a second straight year of regression for Lunsford. I think a lot of fans would start to turn on him after that. Some have already turned on his staff. He needs 7-8 wins to not go into 2021 on the hot seat.
8 wins min and better not be completely embarrassed by a Liberty type team in a bowl game for me. This year is make or break for Lunsford for me. I am still behind him with the Ruse hire as of now. If we struggle and he does not make changes quick at OC or DC he is not fit to be an FBS HC. I just think if it goes bad he is more likely to ride it into the ground and not willing to fire anyone. His narrative of "this is a turnaround" was a reach. It was only a year and half removed from Fritz and Summers did OK in recruiting and did not tank. This was not a BVG deal where the whole program was blown up from top down. I am seeing 7 wins at best where we would be favored based off last year. We either have to upset someone to get eight and not have any upsets. He even said 7 wins is not good enough to remain HC, so I am not holding him to a standard he knows is not acceptable at GS. It should not be acceptable going into any season not having real aspirations of winning the conference but that is where he has us.
As far as the predictions I think they are dead on except I would not count App out until we see what this new staff is capable of. I dont think UL blows App out even if they do win the CCG.
There's no reason to make a change at DC. That unit overall has made improvements year to year. The issues on defense are easy to point out and do not require improvement across the board on that side of the ball like it does on offense. Our big issues last year were defending deep middle due to lack of experience at safety and not handling tempo offenses that well. We're obviously going to see issues in the secondary this year due to turnover from Vildor and Brinson but hopefully we'll see improvements from the front 7 to take that pressure off of them. If we get better at handling tempo as well then the defense is going to be exactly what we expect of it.
Also, in pretty much all of our losses last year (minus LSU) the defense had us within one score late in the game and the offense let us down. Not to mention the defense gets zero help at the beginning of games from the offense since we apparently have an aversion to scoring early (two straight years of zero scores on the first drive of games.....that's 26 games).
The defense has done a great job.
However we have numerous issues on offense that have yet to really improve, and yes I would expect to see some changes on the offense, even at OC, if we see a lot more of the same this year as obviously it's not working.
And yes, it was a turnaround. Summers recruited some stars, but recruited really poorly to our needs. He also ran off or misused talented guys that were on the roster. Not to mention the two years of development that was basically tanked due to the poor work done by the staff Summers had...as well as pretty much a whole year of wasted S&C from a guy that had no business being hired in the first place. Summers beyond tanked. At least BVG only screwed up one recruiting class and actually had a somewhat functional staff who had a cohesive plan even if it wasn't exactly suited for us.....and he got out of town as quick as possible.
I know all you care about is recruit rankings and all that, and you're going to reply back with "Lunsford sucks at recruiting cause of our ranking in each year's class" and all these cliches that you always respond with. You always disregard the work of the coaching staff and instead give way more lattitude to recruit rankings.....and 2016 proved the fallacy of recruit rankings above all. With a competent coaching staff the roster in 2016 had the potential to go undefeated and instead was driven straight into the ground.
We definitely have a lot of improvements that need to happen on offense. If this year is more of the same then I expect major changes, cause it's not working. There are some specific areas of defense we need to focus on this year while maintaining the areas we were good at last year. Defense is on the edge of being really really good overall.
RE: Athon Sun Belt Projections