My favorite preseason article every year. Always interesting to hear unfiltered outside views.
"The most interesting team in this conference going into 2020."
"Why are they continuing to bleed guys into the portal? Where is the offensive identity?"
"What are they going to look like without Bud Foster, and how is that going to affect them with their fan base?"
"This is a hell of a year coming up for Justin (Fuente)."
"We're really interested in that defense's identity without Foster. That's maybe the toughest job to take in the FBS, Virginia Tech defensive coordinator after Bud Foster."
"There's a lot of respect for Justin, but they seemed really dysfunctional on the field last year. The front and back ends were out of sync; there seemed to be some issues off the field."
"The front seven is just OK. There isn't a war daddy anywhere on the defensive line."
"There's been a step back in recruiting defensive players over the last five or six years, and it's really starting to show. This isn't the fast, long team that could create problems."
"Why are they losing so many skill position guys on offense? Their slot and their X receiver went into the portal. How many offseasons now have we seen them lose offensive guys to transfer?"
"They need a big year. This should still be one of the best jobs in the league and one of the most talented teams. Right now it's neither."
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/acc-coaches-talk-anonymously-a...
[Mod Edit: Add Virginia Tech section.]
Comments
Here's the quotes on VT.
That last comment...ouch.
Boy these are some office/locker room poster material here.
It's always fun to read this.
And it always makes me think they're overpraising the crappy teams and trying to neg the promising ones.
Always Be Recruiting.
Also, this is my favorite too.
Pretty evident that the coaches hate Narduzzi too.
On Miami:
This might be the most on the nose comment in the whole column.
You can tell Bud is extremely respected. Some of the other comments feel almost like they were based on 2018 instead of 2019 but point remains, time to put up a quality product.
ACC coaches seem to be all in on hating Narduzzi and Dave Doeren
Seems like they think Diaz is a clown too, which is good to hear
Sort of, but when you look back on 2019 it was like 3 diff mini seasons:
Part 1 Games 1-4 -> looked like we were heading for another 2018.
Part 2 Games 5-11 -> The offensive resurgence under Hooker, the return of the LPD Defense. Beating Miami and UNC, beating WF and almost ND on the road, back to back shutouts.
Part 3 Games 12-13 -> Really rough showings for the defense, somewhat inexplicably after the previous four games. Offense looked incapable of consistency, no drop back passing game, and incapable of playing from behind.
Depending on what games left the biggest impressions on them, these quotes seem to align pretty well with last season.
That's actually not a bad way to look at the season.
High-light of the article was reading the hate toward Narduzzi.
Low-light of the article was reading the general WTFness around our program. Gives me a big sad.
That's some neg recruiting right there.
We need to punch some of these teams in the mouth.
You're absolutely right but the thing that got to me was that I've said most of those comments about us to myself too.
Yea...you get pissed off reading the comments and then realize that they're 100% correct.
This is fine dot gif.
About 90% of the non-Clemson quotes are outright negative or sort-of left-handed compliments.
I'm guessing it's not a completely representative sampling of the quotes nor is it accidental. It gets harder every year to take this annual ritual without a huge grain of salt.
I feel like most/all(?) the quotes on UNC were positive. I only read through each once. Also, I found it weird that it was all nice for Clemson this year. There are almost always some negative ones about them in these things.
Yeah, no outright negative ones. But a few were of the "so far", "needs improvement" variety.
Well they are not wrong sadly
These seem to be getting worse every year. It looks to me like total negative recruiting, except 2 of them which indicate it's a big year for us. Beamer & Bud commanded a ton of respect, as was deserved, among the conference coaches so the other coaches always made comments along the lines of "VT may have a weakness here or there, but you always better show up or that Hokie Defense will shut you down...". Now, not so much. It's kinda sad. I miss having a Defense that scared opposing teams and had national respect. I hope VT can get back to fielding top 10 defenses. And it seems that it will take several years of VT winning a lot of games for us to gain some respect among the conference coaches too.
Also, I pegged Dabo for the following quote about VT:
"The front seven is just OK. But there isn't a war daddy anywhere on the defensive line."
Here is Dabo's opening statement before last year's ACC game:
Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney Opening statement:
"First of all, just really proud of our team and our staff. This has been an incredible, incredible year. This is a football team coming off a National Championship last year and obviously a lot of good players that moved on, and to see what this team has accomplished, the leadership, just their daily commitment, it's been special. Super proud of them to be where we are and headed back to Charlotte for the ACC Championship Game.
Congratulations to Virginia and Bronco [Mendenhall] and what they've done. What a remarkable job he's done with that program, and something I definitely saw coming a couple years ago. As a coach, there's just certain things that you see and you have instincts on, and [I'm] just not surprised at all that we're playing Virginia. I just think they're just going to continue to build a great program up there.
Really excited about that, and also want to congratulate all the All-ACC players from across the league and also certainly, especially our guys. I think that just came out this morning, [Assistant Athletic Director for Football Communications] Ross [Taylor] told me. We had a lot of guys on there, so really happy for those guys. Not real sure how [James] Skalski didn't make it. He'd have been one of my top votes for sure, but I don't think he even made honorable mention. But if I'm correct, I don't think Isaiah Simmons made honorable mention last year, and he's probably up for defensive player of the year overall. Didn't even make honorable mention last year, so that just goes to show you how smart ... and he was pretty good last year too, but didn't make honorable mention in the league. But you know, that's just kind of how it goes. I'll give a personal shout-out to Skalski because I think he is a war daddy and has had as good a year as any linebacker we've had, and other guys as well.
Bingo - "war daddy" gives it away
I always imagined these were quotes from grad assistants or strength coaches, and they didn't/couldn't go all the way up to the head coaches.
I figured it could be him. "War daddy" is too person specific of a phrase to where it should be easy to find out who that quote was from
I was always convinced I could pick out a Jimbo quote back in the day. Like this classic on Clemson:
Jimbo was correct, Clemson stole our signals in 2011 as I recall
It wasn't so much as stealing signals as they figured out whether it was a run or pass play by the way certain OLine positions lined up.
However they were doing it, it sure gave them an edge I wish they hadn't had.
IDK, stealing signals feels a bit more shady. If they could tell by how we're lined up, that's on our coaching staff.
Yeah, well, look who was coaching OLine in 2011.
I see no lies here.
LOL "I see no lies here" way to support the program guys! Not saying they are not issues, but if you take this as a lock stock and barrel opinion of the program and don't see it for the negative recruiting tactic that it is, then I don't know what to tell you. This reads like Dre Bly's text messages.
Here are my guesses on each quote:
"The most interesting team in this conference going into 2020." David Cutcliffe
"Why are they continuing to bleed guys into the portal? Where is the offensive identity?" Mack Brown
"What are they going to look like without Bud Foster, and how is that going to affect them with their fan base?" Geoff Collins
"This is a hell of a year coming up for Justin (Fuente)." Patt Narduzzi
"We're really interested in that defense's identity without Foster. That's maybe the toughest job to take in the FBS, Virginia Tech defensive coordinator after Bud Foster." Bronco Mendenhall
"There's a lot of respect for Justin, but they seemed really dysfunctional on the field last year. The front and back ends were out of sync; there seemed to be some issues off the field." Mike Norvell
"The front seven is just OK. There isn't a war daddy anywhere on the defensive line." Dabo Swinney
"There's been a step back in recruiting defensive players over the last five or six years, and it's really starting to show. This isn't the fast, long team that could create problems." Dave Doeren
"Why are they losing so many skill position guys on offense? Their slot and their X receiver went into the portal. How many offseasons now have we seen them lose offensive guys to transfer?" Manny Diaz
"They need a big year. This should still be one of the best jobs in the league and one of the most talented teams. Right now it's neither." Dave Clawson
The guy who writes these articles said he gets the quotes from Assitant coaches.
He got the saltiness right.
Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
The quote you give to Mack I'd give to Narduzzi and the one you give to Collins sounds like Mack
"This is a hell of a year coming up for Justin (Fuente)." - my guess is that this one is Mack Brown. He calls other coaches by their first names most of the time.
"The front seven is just OK. There isn't a war daddy anywhere on the defensive line." - Yep, the most accurate quote on there. Nailed it.
I would disagree with this being applied to the front seven in regards to the fact that Ashby was 5x ACC LB of the week last season. If War Daddy requires you to be a top NFL prospect then yeah I agree, but if it is a reference to statistical and on field impact on the college level, it's hard to say he isn't one. I lean to the latter considering that there is another quote posted above by Dabo Swinney referring to James Skalski as a "war daddy" and he is very similar to Ashby in that he is not an elite NFL talent and he is a Mike LB who is a liability in coverage, but places his gaps well and is often protected from being exposed by the Venable's scheme, which is known for protecting it's ILB's from being victimized (though obviously it doesn't always work like in Pitt 2016).
As for the overall statement though I don't think he is wrong. Crawford was solid last season, Norell and Kendricks flashed some talent as well, but at the moment there is certainly not a terrifying, disruptive talent in our front 4 in particular. Hopefully that changes this season.
I read it as this coach believes there's no one on the DL that needs to be double teamed.
Which I agree is a fair statement. I just wanted to point out the seemingly inconsistent definition of "War Daddy," in the context he has used it other times (if it is in fact Dabo or one of his assistants).
Fair, and you are higher on Ashby than I am- always around the ball, solid tackler- but he can be blocked and consumed inside easily. And frankly, he makes a lot of tackles in our scheme because he has to- after our 260 pound DT's are often on roller skates.
I doubt the accuracy of this article. Where is the VT quote of "It's the only school in the Power 5 where a (non grad) transfer knows he has to sit out a year" attributed to Mack Brown/Manny Diaz.
Where are the comments about Notre Dame in the article? You know since they are a full part of the ACC (for) now... *ducks*