In my view, Manny was the worst of our post-Coker coaches. The cultural rot we'd experienced over the past two decades hit rock bottom, and his recruiting was abysmal. We had a lot of cancers in that locker room.
I do think that everyone, Mario included, underestimated how bad the state of our program was and how long the rebuild would take. Factor in two bad coordinator hires, injuries (especially at QB), and a broken locker room, and you get the 2022 season.
Nobody could've anticipated how bad TVD would be (albeit he was playing through some bad injuries). Because of his play we lost the NCST game, almost lost to UVA, and he's the second biggest reason why we lost to GT (that loss is on Mario's massive mistake; but we're not even in that position if TVD has even an average game). He's also the reason we had to start a true freshman against Clemson and FSU. We probably beat a Top 5 FSU with an average QB. All in all, with an average QB, we're a 9-3 team last year. The hope is that with an elite QB like Cam Ward we can be a 10-11 win team.