(07-24-2015 10:53 AM)T_Won1 Wrote: I know y'all like to blame the last 3 years on Ellis Johnson, but he was only there for a few months. It seems to me that Fedora dropped the ball recruiting for your future? Ellis only had 1 class didn't he?
Recruiting wasn't the problem, attrition was. First off, a good few of Fedora's last class never made it to campus because they either followed him to UNC or bailed to go elsewhere after Johnson was hired.
Then, as Eagleholic & TTT already covered, Johnson caused a lot of guys to say, "F*** this noise," and they either quit and left or stayed and quit anyway. There are stories that at Johnson's first team meeting, he told them what they had accomplished in 2011 wasn't worth anything because they weren't playing the game correctly (i.e., like the SEC circa 1983). A group of seniors even approached the then-AD at mid-season begging for something to be done about the staff's sheer incompetence.
Then, you follow all that up with firing Johnson after one season and hiring another coach. Now most of Johnson's guys don't fit in, either.
Losing players here and there goes with the territory of making a coaching change. Our dumb asses went through 3 different coaches in as many years with each HC being the polar opposite in terms of philosophy of the guy before and with very little stability among the assistants to boot.
Sometimes I wonder if we'd have been better off just letting Johnson ride out another year or 2 of his contract and do his thing with his players--however bad that may have been--instead of making the correction that suddenly and leaving a decimated roster in its wake. 0-12 really didn't allow that to be an option, though.