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Caneman2

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Shannon and Golden both trended upward in their first 3 years.

Richt on the other hand has actually trended down as he’s had more of his own players and less of Golden’s players. I’d argue that 2017 was worse than 2016 if you look at our actual performances. Even if you want to debate that point, this year is definitely a downgrade to Richt’s first 2 years.

This is a negative sign that our last 2 corches didn’t show through 3 years.
 
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The 2016 team at the end of the year was definitely better than the 2017 team at the end of the year.

I would agree with that. Our yards per play defensively in conference was poor in 2016 until we reached the Virginia game. Then those final four games were a marked improvement, and combined with top notch play offensively. We were basically winning every game by 2 yards net per play.

High water mark for the program under Richt was the Virginia Tech game 2017, which we won by almost 3.5 yards per play. Nobody really noticed or cared about the sharp drop to 137 passing yards against Notre Dame the following week but if you look back at it statistically -- as I did a few weeks ago -- that was the beginning of the drop offensively. There have been 10 ACC games beginning with that Notre Dame game and only once did we manage 6+ yards per play...this year hosting North Carolina.
 
If you're talking about 2009 Shannon and 2013 Golden, those years were just as much a facade as last season was. Opponents with key injuries or historically bad squads and a little bit of luck sprinkled in here and there. The only difference being last year we had a blowout win against a legit top 10 team but honestly, I'm not even sure we win that game if its in South Bend. Once the mirror cracked and egos got tested, it all fell apart like the house of cards it was. Rich just peaked earlier than the other clowns.
 
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Shannon and Golden both trended upward in their first 3 years.

Richt on the other hand has actually trended down as he’s had more of his own players and less of Golden’s players. I’d argue that 2017 was worse than 2016 if you look at our actual performances. Even if you want to debate that point, this year is definitely a downgrade to Richt’s first 2 years.

This is a negative sign that our last 2 corches didn’t show through 3 years.

We literally hid our deficiencies on offense behind the turnover chain. Great motivating ploy and it worked for a while, but then teams figured out our offense was &hit and they prepared for us.

If you want to be considered an elite team nowadays, you've got to put points on the board which means you need a strong OL and an elite QB. You can make do with average RBs and WRs, because a good OL and a good QB make the skill position guys look a whole lot better. And our two biggest failures under Richt have been the lack of development of a good QB and a good OL - the critical requirements for a good offense.

Richt's third biggest failure would be his inability to build a dynamic playbook that accentuates his offensive talent. &hit playbook aside, he could still be effective running a vanilla, conservative offense if he had invested properly in a good QB and OL.

And now at the end of Year 3, we are seeing the repurcussions of this.
 
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