We're going to be stuck in perpetual "missed opportunity land" unless certain things permanently change. Players will always make mistakes. You will always be able to point to a fumble, missed tackle or bad read. Players just need to be placed in as many opportunities as possible to succeed. Ultimately, that's a coach's entire job - from in-game to off the field. The FSU game wasn't actually an egregious example of poor maximization of talent, but GT and Nebraska were. If we had **** the bed, as we did, against Louisville, won the rest of our games and then choked, as we did, against FSU, I'd have more hope. We'd also be competing for the ACC Coastal.
The bottom line with this team is that it will go down as a extremely talented team (wait till a couple years to see how many NFL players we were playing who *already* had college experience) that was operating on a razor thin margin of error.
Experienced college players on the 2014 squad who will likely play in the NFL:
Duke Johnson
Stacy Coley
Phillip Dorsett
Clive Walford
Ereck Flowers
Jon Feliciano
Herb Waters
Tyriq Mccord
(Anthony Chickillo?)
Denzel Perryman
(Jermaine Grace is a Soph., but may classify as inexperienced)
Artie Burns
Ladarius Gunter
Tracy Howard
Deon Bush
(Antonio Crawford, maybe)
(Corn Elder may not classify because of inexperience)
I'm probably missing some. That's a ****load of talent. I give Golden credit for collecting it. I'm disappointed we're, at best, an 8-4 team. We didn't even suffer significant, team-crippling injuries for extended periods of time, so that can't be an excuse.
On the point of sufficient talent and where we are going forward, I think that somewhat surprisingly, it's the talent that we're losing on offense and the guys that are supposed to fill that void that, at least in the short term, will be the biggest issue and may prevent us from "trending" in the right direction. There are obviously guys that will step up, just like a guy like Dorsett stepped up after losing Hurns, but I think that next year our offense has a ton of question marks.
I think the people that are saying that Yearby, Gus, Gray? and the freshmen RBs that are coming in will definitely replace Duke are significantly undervaluing Duke. He may not be quite as talented as Edge or McGahee, but as solid as Yearby has been, there is absolutely a big dropoff. Dorsett has the ability to take the top off a defense unlike anyone else, including Coley, and he also was a very tough player and reliable blocker on the outside. Waters disappeared as the season went on, Lewis isn't nearly as quick as he was, and Berrios is a good slot guy but didn't flash game changing skills. Rashawn Scott has been hurt or suspended seemingly his whole career and who knows what we have in Langham or Brady.
Walford has developed into a beast, and what makes us think that Dobard is definitely going to be able to replace him? We're likely losing the starting left side of our OL and our starting C. McDermott may be a JAG, but who is going to replace him? Gall has been hurt and is unproven. We return S. McDermott, Gadbois, Darling, Linder and Isidora (a very solid OL), but what depth do we have? Are we going to have to rely again on true freshmen on our OL to provide depth in year 5?
I think that with the guys we had this year that are graduating or will leave early, there was simply no reason to be an 8-4 team. The whole "young team" narrative was really inaccurate, because other than our QB and the right side of our OL, we were a team with experienced guys starting at almost every position. In college football, you're obviously going to lose some players every year, but this is a year where we're losing some pretty significant players without knowing who will be replacing them next year. As good as Kaaya is, I guess I just don't see us as a team that is ready to make that next step, at least not with this coaching staff and the mentality/strategy they bring.
