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Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?

JayCane20 said:
Everyone with 10+ wins escaped at least 2 games. Most needed coaching blunders or calls to win them. Can’t find an example to the contrary in the P4

That’s just how it works. Winning is hard
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In years past, we wouldn’t have had a chance to come back like we did against VT and Cal. We’d have folded like a wet rag.
 
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I'm conflicted. 10 wins looks pretty **** good on paper and it's nice to get there again. We were less than 10 points from 12-0 but also less than 10 points from 8-4. For the most part the defense was *** this season, so while the record improved it somehow feels like we went backward, especially if we don't get another top shelf QB (among other positions) for next season
 
mcnaire2004 said:
I'm not really convinced we are better now than 2021. That's a common trope among the fan base but honestly a few fourth downs and a field goal is what kept that team from 10 wins.

Also, in retrospect Al Golden and Art Kehoe may have had better offensive lines.

I know I'm grasping at straws here but what exactly is Mario good for? I mean I guess on paper he's recruiting well. But if most of those players don't play that good then what's the point?

When Mario is fired and the next couch comes in talking about how the cupboard is bare and wins six games his first year; All of you people will be rewriting history to say that Mario couldn't do this or that well and that's why there's nothing here.

Do you know who came into the program and didn't complain? CMR. He got here and you the previous staff did a good job with recruiting. Then again that 2016 defense looked good. He was a BS call in the ND game away from 10 wins.
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I'm not going to turn this into a Mark Richt thread, but come on. Richt came here in 2016 and inherited about 20 NFL guys, a ton of them on defense. Golden did a good job recruiting some talented kids, he just had a group of dumbasses trying to coach them.

Let's keep this on track though. If you don't think we're better today than we are in 2021, then I don't know what to tell you. We didn't even belong in the same city with Alabama in 2021, we also got blown out by Michigan State and lost to three teams who didn't finish above .500. Let's be real here.
 
All we had to do is beat GT or Syr and all of this is moot. That's it. Yeah winning is hard blah blah blah.
# 1 offense in the country, there should be enough with the rest of the team to get that done.

Somewhere, something is off. Maybe we need an on campus stadium?
 
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OrangeBowlMagic said:
I'm not going to turn this into a Mark Richt thread, but come on. Richt came here in 2016 and inherited about 20 NFL guys, a ton of them on defense. Golden did a good job recruiting some talented kids, he just had a group of dumbasses trying to coach them.
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Wasn't the whole argument for hiring Mario was he is a good recruiter even though he may not be a good coach?


OrangeBowlMagic said:
Let's keep this on track though. If you don't think we're better today than we are in 2021, then I don't know what to tell you. We didn't even belong in the same city with Alabama in 2021,
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There was a whole lot less parity in college football at that point. They still had Nick-the cheater-Saban as their head coach. That's kind of a reach, your statement.

Also once again we were only a missed field goal and a few fourth downs from winning 10 games.

Didn't Mario prove that we didn't belong in the same city as MTSU?
OrangeBowlMagic said:
we also got blown out by Michigan State
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We were up in that game and there is no point in that game where we didn't look FYZICAL enough. That game was a let down but everyone who watched that game including you know that we should have won. That was a team let down just like all the team let downs we've had over the last 3 years.

OrangeBowlMagic said:
and lost to three teams who didn't finish above .500. Let's be real here.
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Who have we beaten this year? We needed the greatest comeback in the history of our program to beat a team that only has two conference wins.
 
I have never seen a fanbase apologize for wins as much as ours does. Even in 2017, half of you still apologize for that season like we won those games by mistake and still wont give any credit to that team or staff for STILL TO THIS DAY leading us to our ONLY ACC title game appearance in 20 years in this league. Unreal.

That said, heres what we arent going to do. We arent going to play the "Well technically we are a 7-5 team because IF we didnt have Cam and IF we didnt get lucky bounces and IF the dog didnt jump over the moon we wouldnt have won those games." Stop with that crap already. We can be upset that we didnt make the ACC title game like we wanted without bowing our heads and apologizing to ESPN and Joel Klatt and Paul Finnebaum and all those other media people who were waiting for us to lose and call us frauds. F that. We are 10-2 because we are 10-2. Are we happy? No. But its progress and its something to build on.

My bad OP. Loved your post but just had to get that off my chest because im jumping in this thread and already seeing the "Technically we are a 6 win team this year" crowd coming into yet ANOTHER thread.
 
It’s an improvement-Our record says who we are as you stated-

Year 4 -No Cam and the defense needs to be totally revamped-Plus we need a QB-

8 home games -Much tougher schedule

Recruiting classes are great-Have to win games period-

Next year will be telling for Mario imo -Will there be more improvements or will he **** the bed?
 
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dorsey1 said:
It’s an improvement-Our record says who we are as you stated-

Year 4 -No Cam and the defense needs to be totally revamped-Plus we need a QB-

8 home games -Much tougher schedule

Recruiting classes are great-Have to win games period-

Next year will be telling for Mario imo -Will there be more improvements or will he **** the bed?
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I argue against the Defense needing to be fully revamped. You need better coaching that’s it. Front 7 has returning talent. We for sure need to hit on some starters in the secondary in the portal. But with better coaching or more cohesive coaching, whatever the problem is, the defense will be better next year.
 
Good post OP. I get the argument of looking at it glass half full no doubt. I’m not saying people are wrong in their arguments. I just think leaning into all the negative does nothing as a fan base and given our last 2 decades, they have no right to not be grateful for 10 wins.
 
To me it’s glass half empty because we won’t ever in the next 30 years have a full unit that will be what we had this year with this offense. It won’t happen and it’s more likely to regress to the mean than return to what this was. Mario and Guidry not able to make ANY adjustments cost them dearly.

Also the entire point of the Mario experiment was to take a recruiting demon and give him the resources at home to become a recruiting juggernaut of an operation and this seems to be failing across the board right now. After they had major success.
 
mc ain't a god, but some of yall are quick to assign failure but won't recognize his wins ... miss me with close games we should have lost dialogue, we didn't because he recruited a helluva qb ... the same qb others had a shot at, but didn't have the discipline to stay on despite some bumps in the road
 
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Hufftwoseven said:
I argue against the Defense needing to be fully revamped. You need better coaching that’s it. Front 7 has returning talent. We for sure need to hit on some starters in the secondary in the portal. But with better coaching or more cohesive coaching, whatever the problem is, the defense will be better next year.
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It will need total retooling if Guidry doesn’t come back-
Will have no experience at key positions-

There will be a lot of what if’s with new players coming in through the portal or players like Scott, Jones -They have no experience.
 
This was the perfect storm and we choked it away

This was the softest schedule we will encounter with the best player and best QB in college football

We had the best receiving corps in the country this year. The most explosive offense

We will never have the best QB again the way we recruit the position out of high school with these 3 star QBs and our history the past 20 years
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
I think the truth, in almost all aspects of life, usually lies somewhere in the middle. But I do think there are very valid discussion points if you wanted to go full, 100% sunshine pumper or full, 100% mope. So, as we close the regular season in 2024, and year 3 of Mario's regime, where do you stand in terms of this season, and the direction of the program? I tried to lay out some bullet points as far as what I feel would be optimism and pessimism around the program. So what do you think? Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?

Because I try to be an optimistic person in life (being miserable and negative all the time is legitimately bad for your health, by the way), let's start there:

- We finished the season 10-2. Bottom line, many people say you are what your record says you are, so we are 10-2. Mario won 5 games in Year 1, 7 games in Year 2, and 10 games in Year 3. That is CLEAR and obvious progression.

- We absolutely smashed UiF and FSU this year. We had lost to FSU 3 years in a row, one of those years losing 45-3. We beat the 2 of them by a combined score of 77-31, and 14 of those points surrendered with in total garbage time with kids pulled from the stands playing. We have to feel good about being clearly ahead of both of those programs currently, and yes I'm aware of what UiF is doing currently. I don't care. Being in that stadium on 8/31 in the middle of the bull gator section was genuinely one of the best days of my life, and I'll remember it forever.

- The old Bobby Bowden adage when he was building a program was "First you lose big, then you lose small, then you win small, then you win big". In 2022, we lost big. In 2023, we lost small. In 2024, we won small, sort of. 10 wins overall, but pulled some out by the skin of our *** (Cal, VT). Can we parlay this into winning big in 2025?

- We had the #1 offense in America by MANY metrics. One of the mope points about Mario was that he was a QB killer. He "meddled" in the offense (ridiculous, but I digress). He was a caveman. All of those narratives were crushed this season. Cam Ward will be in NYC in 12 days for a Heisman presentation. Our offense was high-flying, big play, anything but "Bro-style". We should be able to convince a very good quarterback to come here, both in HS recruiting and in the portal.

- We have recruited the best back to back classes in program history, or at least close to it, at worst. The close of 2025 is still up in the air, but Mario's 2023 and 2024 classes were EXCELLENT, and we should have a solid backbone of good players going forward.

- Mario's gameday coaching was, to me, very much improved this year. I know the FG decision on Saturday was ridiculed, and likely deservedly so, but I thought he was MUCH more aggressive than ever before. He went for it on 4th and 1 multiple times deep in our own territory, something he'd have NEVER done in his Oregon tenure, no matter what. There were very few completely egregious time management errors like there have been in the past. We still use timeouts at times when we shouldn't, but I didn't think his overall gameday performances were as deplorable as years past. He's never going to be great here, we just need him to not cost us games, and I didn't think he did. Again, for me personally, I like my coaches to be aggressive. If you die with the pedal down, I can live with that. Just don't be clueless or scared. I didn't think he was this year, which was a very welcomed change. He's clearly learning/adapting.

- I thought the overall coaching on offense was very good. Think back to years past, and then this year. We had very few botched snaps, illegal formations, broken plays with guys going the wrong way, confusion, general unpreparedness. Was it 2022 when we had the 2 guys smash into each other in the backfield and they tackles themselves for about a 10 yard loss? That **** is embarrassing. I thought the operation was much more efficient. The kicking game was flawless. Very few pre-snap penalties on offense. We were heavily penalized overall, but I thought most of them were at least aggressive and not braindead (except for how we ended the Syracuse game, with 2 lobotomy patients getting an unsportsmanlike and offsides).

- At the end of the day, the team is significantly better today than it was when he got here. Not good enough, but it's absolutely improved. When we stop improving, I think it's time for panic. We went from 5 to 7 to 10 wins. That's improvement. Now where do we go from here?

I can list a few more things, but I think this is a good overarching, macro start. Let's move on to things that I think we can point to if we want to have pessimism and look at the glass as half-empty

- We still didn't win the ACC, something we've never done in 20 years, and we didn't even make the championship game. Again.

- We lost 2 more games as double-digit favorites, and Mario has now done that 5 times in his career here, more than any other program in America. We are 4-9 in November/December since 2022. This has been a Mario bug-a-boo for a while, losing games as a big favorite, and he did it twice again this year, to GT and Syracuse. Both were one-score games on the road, but the point remains.

- The defense was....holy christ I can't even describe it accurately. The worst we have had here in a LONG time, and is beyond any comprehension. This was a capital F failure, in permanent ink. It starts with Mario...being this devoid of talent, especially in the back 7, in Year 3 is completely unacceptable. But, in line with the same discussion we've had here for YEARS now, yes the talent is not great, but it's certainly better than "worst in the conference", which is absolutely a discussion. So, Mario and his staff failed the talent acquisition piece. And then Guidry and his staff took the talent they do have and completely diarrhea'd in the bed with it. If we just have an average defense, this is likely a 12-0 team. Just average. If you pair the ~50th best defense in America with the #1 offense, you have a really good team. Our defense is markedly worse, and it's going to cause us to waste the best offense we've ever had. Guidry will clearly be fired, and deservedly so. I can't really justify anyone on that side of the ball keeping their jobs, but of course he's not going to fire every single defensive coach. But being THAT bad is absolutely a fireable offense, and Guidry will be packing his bags soon, along with at least 1-2 other coaches on defense.

- Special teams sucked ***, again. Borregales is a pure stud, but we have nobody to return kicks, nobody to return punts, and we can't cover a kickoff to save our lives. Totally unacceptable at a school like this with what should be a roster full of elite athletes. Hire a full-time special teams coach, yesterday.

- More on the defense, and as I lauded the offensive coaching above, I need to blast the defensive preparation. We looked like we didn't even practice on defense in the beginning of games. Way too often we heard "they did something they hadn't shown before". Bull****. How bout we show something we haven't ever shown? Why are we always the one on our heels to start games? Plus the communication in games was beyond dog ****, every single week. Multiple plays every single game where nobody has any idea what they're doing, and the offense has our kid's brains in a blender. Unacceptable.

- We continue to be a punching bag for other teams to do things they've never done in their history. GT has been playing football since the 1800s. They had the 2nd longest drive they've ever had in their history against us. Syracuse has never come from 21 points behind to win a game in their history. They did it to us.

- We went "all-in" on this season, with a multi-million dollar quarterback and a ~$20M roster, and still couldn't win the ACC. We expect to still be a big player in the NIL game, and I trust Mario and his staff to recruit, but this was Year 3, with your nuts on the table from a financial standpoint. And we still didn't get it done.

Overall, to me, all summer I said 10-2 or bust. I started to move really towards 11-1 once the roster finalized and I looked deeply at the schedule. But I had a few goals:

1. Win 10+ games.....check
2. Beat the gator and fsu.....check
3. Win the ACC......nope
4. Make the playoff......likely nope

So, all in all, when I step back and really digest this thing, I'm going to be somewhat torn, I think. I'm happy with the progress. I had a TON of fun the past 3 months. But, we wasted another opportunity, and I'm not entirely sure where we go from here. With recruiting the way it's been, we should have a really talented team next year, and we're going to be aggressive in the portal. But we're going to be hiring a new DC, and that will likely cost us some defensive recruits for this class.

What did I miss? Let me know what you guys think that are making you feel somewhat optimistic and/or pessimistic both about this season, and the future.
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You’re same four goals for the season were my same four goals as well. And while it hurts not to make it to the ACC title game, I do believe based on the things I’m seeing on ESPN, that we are going to back into the playoffs. So that’s three out of four goals We both had that were met this year if that happens. I can’t be mad about that, it was a great season and hopefully we back into the playoffs and see what happens.
 
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CANESCANES said:
This was the perfect storm and we choked it away

This was the softest schedule we will encounter with the best player and best QB in college football

We had the best receiving corps in the country this year. The most explosive offense

We will never have the best QB again the way we recruit the position out of high school with these 3 star QBs and our history the past 20 years
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I always laugh when people say things in absolutes like "we will never".

98% of this board had never heard of Cam Ward a year ago today. Then we got the best QB in program history. So it's amusing when people say we'll never get a player like "insert player here" when we literally have that player today.
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
I always laugh when people say things in absolutes like "we will never".

98% of this board had never heard of Cam Ward a year ago today. Then we got the best QB in program history. So it's amusing when people say we'll never get a player like "insert player here" when we literally have that player today.
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Keyword your missing is Out of the high school ranks

We paid a lot of money to land Cam Ward, he was the highest paid player out of the portal
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
You literally said "we will never have the best QB again" when we literally currently have the best QB. Take a lap.
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We will never have the best QB again the way we recruit the position out of high school with these 3 star QBs and our history the past 20 years

I’m specifically talking about the high school ranks

Of course we can pony up $2 million and pay John Mateer and he could be the best QB in college next year

So you go swim your lap
 
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