Just to correct you a bit, I didn't move the goal posts at all. I wasn't expecting them to win 10 games in my initial post. I was pointing out that most on this board are looking at a minimum level of 10 wins as a successful season (I should have been clearer in my initial post).
Also, this is a bad/avg team as you state, however, I think that has more to do with not playing up to expectations due to bad coaching and lack of discipline. Just going off of recruiting rankings and how well they have done in the transfer portal, this should be a top 25 team.
Which brings me to a question, if you think talent-wise they are a bad/avg team, do you think Manny should be brought back as he is basically performing as well as can be expected?
Honestly you raise a good question and I will admit that I don't have the answer. I don't know why our high 3* and 4* look about the same as the other teams mid 3* on the field, but I do think HS rankings alone are a imperfect way to measure likelihood of success. The thing about getting three 4* is that you hope that at least one will be a good player not that all 3 will be contributors.
As for Manny Diaz, he is not performing as he should, he's is not a P5 level HC, he is awful on game day, Miami commits the same mistakes week after week, he's slow to make changes on personnel and fell for the style no substance trap since day one at the job. I've never been a huge fan of his, the OB game against Winsc raised a flag about his defense and I was done with it after the pinstripe bowl.
I will admit, part of me was hoping against hope he could win out, get to the ACCCG and show improvement as a coach, but after saturday I'm done, he is who he is. The reason I was still willing to give him the rest of the season to prove me wrong is that the names I believe we will look at don't inspire me. But most of all I'm done with him as HC because of the recruiting, after watching UGA this year I want the guy that can achieve top 5 classes every season, obviously we will start around 8-12 but I want the upside for top 5.
Some of the mistakes seems to be more players driven than coaching driven. Wiggins and Pope were coached by the same guys that coach Smith, Rambo and Restrepo. We had a bunch of offsides penalties saturday, how can you not line up correctly? See the ball and then get in position. The tackling problem is bizarre and has been plaguing this defense for a couple of seasons, this year is just much worse, so I think it's 50/50. But when you see the scheme putting a player in position and the player completely whiffing that gotta be on the players too, they need to put in the work if they want to be great.
Other problems are completely on coach/scheme. Diaz' defense never setting an edge is on him, the LB/CB/DE recruiting is on him, LB rotation is on him, we never touching a WR on the LOS is on coaching too.