Most benign/harmless reasoning I can think of is:
- Mario made the decision to move on a while back as Cribby has been saying;
- For whatever reason he felt it was necessary to wait for NFL Black Monday and/or the CFP to finish prior to deciding on a new OC (the most benign version of this would be him having a fairly strong hunch about specific potential targets);
- Mario doesn't see a huge difference between recruiting with Gattis as a lame duck OC as opposed to recruiting without the spot filled at all (this would involve making sure kids know Gattis won't be back, but not necessarily being able to tell them who the OC will be); and
- Because he doesn't see a difference between these two things, he tells Gattis to do his best to find a landing spot before NFL/CFP timing forces his hand.
That being said, everything above means we have had to deal with Josh Gattis being our OC for the past few months when shouldn't have even been allowed back on campus after the FSU game.