Rehashing the Fuente years (decisions/actions and recruiting)

So I know people have talked about a lot of this before, but hopefully I can provide a different take. Some of this was in the recruiting thread, and maybe this will be a better place to discuss some of this than the recruiting threads. And sorry for the long read - hope it's worth it.

I realize some people are more positive on Fuente and some people think he's got us heading in a bad direction for the future of the program. Most of the criticisms of Fuente have revolved around two things, on-field performance and recruiting. What I want to do is look at the on field performance but also look at what off-field decisions he's made and actions he's taken - focusing primarily on last year's performance.

Setting the stage, in each year, 2014 and 2015, Tech was 5-6 going into their final game against LOLUVA, winning by 4 and 3 points respectively against them when they were 5-7 and 4-8. Meaning we NEEDED to win against a crappy team in order to keep our bowl streak alive.

Coming in, he brought in Jerod Evans, proceeded to win the conference, won 10 games, and scored 35 points on eventual national champ Clemson (who shut out Ohio State in the first game of the playoffs). The next year, we went 9-4. I can only imagine what we might have done had Evans stayed (because Evans>Jackson). 2018 was horrible - we went 6-7. We were the youngest team in the ACC, and if I recall correctly, one of the youngest in all of the P5.

Then, last year - the start wasn't good. We lost to BC and Duke, Duke by 35 points. First decision. He takes out RW and HH starts the next week. That's on offense. In a game like Duke where you only score 10 points and the opponent (who isn't good) scores 45. Part of the problem is defense. Fuente said before he took over that he would not mess around with Bud Foster's defense. And guess what, in the ODU loss, the other one people are most vocal about, the defense gave up 49 points. Granted, we were much younger in the ODU loss, but we still gave up 49. What's the solution? What could Fuente have done? Should he have taken over the defense from Foster? Should he have canned Foster? Could you imagine that announcement? As bad as those losses were, I doubt there would have been anybody who wouldn't have called for Fuente's head (pro Fuente or otherwise) had he canned Bud. And as much as I loved Bud and his defenses, seeing him on the sideline these past couple years, he just wasn't the same fiery guy he'd been in years past. Going back to Fuente's change of QB - did Beamer ever replace a starter when there wasn't an injury? The only thing that I think was close was the shared QB duties of Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor.

Then we had a good run, we scored 42 against Miami (no other team scored more than 30), wins against RI and UNC, then a 1 point loss to 11-2 Notre Dame (convince me otherwise that we would have won had HH not been injured), then Wake, whose only opponent that held them to less than our 17 was Clemson who only allowed 3, then GT and Pitt, a couple of shutouts. Even though GT wasn't good, neither Clemson or Georgia held them scoreless (granted that may have been against 2nd stringers, but did our starters play the whole game on D?). Then the first painful game at the end of the season. We freakin lost to UVA. Our recent kryptonite - the mobile QB. Then another loss to Kentucky - another mobile QB.

So, in the offseason, one of the issues we'd faced - lack of RB production, Fuente lets Burden go. Foster retires and nominates JHam to be his successor. Of the problems that we had last year (and the past few years) on defense really seemed to be mobile QBs. And then, Wiles is let go and we bring in a guy from the freaking NFL with Fuente ties, who proceeds to recruit bigger guys on the D-line.

So for each of the problems (on-field) that we had last year, it seems like Fuente (or his staff or both) made decisions to fix the problems. That brings us to recruiting. Yes, recruiting has not gone well. We all hoped for DD, we wanted Tyleik. We're looking for the 4 and 5 star guys. Amusingly, one of the hires I was most "meh" about, Smith, to date has the highest rated recruit - Harvey. A lot of guys have said that winning games bring recruits. Looking at this past year, I gotta say we would have won BC with HH starting. I still don't know what happened at Duke (with the defense), but HH starting that game would have balanced things out, and I think had our defense at the end of the year played Duke (and had HH), I think we could have won that as well. We talked about Notre Dame - still gotta convince me we wouldn't have won if HH had played. That leaves us UVA and UK - and we hired an NFL D-line coach who will hopefully help with containing mobile QBs. That feels to me a lot like taking the steps needed to win more games, that would bring the better recruits.

As far as this year goes with recruits - DD flipping on us sucks, but I think most people would agree that his parting shot left a bad taste in a lot of our mouths. But people have said that Bullock looks like he was made for our offense. People said that Estime is more refined now but Christian looks like he could have a higher ceiling, and for a brand new RB coach, doesn't feel bad to me. O-line, people seem to give credit to Vice in being able to pick them, regardless of rankings, so feels okay there. WRs, Curry looks like a good pick-up, Jones looks pretty good, and we brought in Hodge in the portal (more on that later). TE - ???. LB's I know we wanted Poole, but that felt like it would be a tough one against NC State, especially with his cousin being there, but we got Etute, who people seemed to think highly of. CBs? Feels like Smith did well with Harvey (who I thought I'd seen was rated as 4 star at one point???), and two others, and pulling in Taylor in the portal. Safeties we look okay at, especially longer term if Stroman projects like his brother. The big head scratcher for me is D-line. I said somewhere else that if 18 year old recruits were purely rational, the should be 4 and 5 star guys lining up to play for a guy who was just coaching in the NFL (and was a good coach) and a guy who just recently played in the league.

Lastly, I know people have said that the portal isn't a long term solution to recruiting. And I 100% agree with that. But, as I pointed out, it seems like Fuente has taken steps towards correcting the issues we had on the field this past year, so if that translates to more wins in the future, and that's what will help with recruiting, it feels like we're going in the right direction, so fixing near term problems of players leaving early or not having the production we want (Farley and RBs for example) seems like a good short term solution.

Those are my thoughts. And I honestly feel good about the steps Fuente has taken. Yes, like I said, the recruiting misses are very frustrating, but feel like we're heading in a direction to win more games and then hopefully not have those misses. What do you guys think about decisions he's made? Any other good ones? Bad ones I'm forgetting about?

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