Don't reckon yall can put together a projected depth chart sometime next week?
KQ- Yeah I always like to do that after camp ends. That will be Saturday. So I can do it next weekend.
Is there a way to search recruits by High School? Thinking of checking out some local games this fall, but would be curious what kids have offers and to where.
RJ- So in the Rivals Search field there is a click down that says “show filters” click that. From there go to HS filters, select the state and HS. Lastly, create any minimum talent level in terms of RR or stars, and from there you will hit search.
https://georgiatech.rivals.com/search
Seems like there has been a flurry of top 100 bball recruits committing over the last 2 weeks or so. Do you think we’ll get our first commit anytime soon?
KQ- I think GT will be on the board soon, they have some OVs coming up the next two weeks that should start to yield some movement. GT only has a couple of scholarships however so it won’t be a huge basketball class either.
Kelly, can you give us a Basketball War Room soon? Let us know how the rotation may be developing; development of Deebo, Smith, any positive surprises.
KQ- Sure, this is a weird time frame for it because the kids are home until school starts on the 23rd so I should have a better idea after that.
On a scale of 1 to 10, give us a grade for the performance of last year's OL. Conversely, based upon what you've seen so far in Fall Camp where do you think the OL stands this year, on a scale of 1 to 10.
KQ- I think last year was okay, it was probably a 4 or 5, knocked a lot for the penalties and hits that Jeff Sims ended up taking. I think they will be much closer to a passing grade just based on everything I’ve heard/saw/whatever in camp.
Which coach presides over the biggest dumpster fire?
1. Herm Edwards
2. Mike Norvell
3. Manny Diaz
KQ- Norvell inherited the worst situation and Herm the least messed up but he has no clue what he is doing so he drove that into the ditch. Manny is just in over his head IMO and is flailing around right now. I don’t think he was close to being ready to be a HC at Temple let alone Miami. Norvell is a good coach and is making some strides to right that thing and I think he will get it turned around to a point at least of being competitive again sooner than later. Edwards needs his assistants to fall on the sword or they’ll just fire him. I can’t imagine there is a huge desire to ride the storm out with him.
RJ- Herm Edwards. Easily.
I see that there has been several commits for future baseball classes, is this typical? Also, do you know if MLB is planning to move their draft back to its previous time? This new timeframe for the draft has to be hurting recruiting.
RJ- Yes, this is definitely typical, especially for a program with an upward trajectory like the one in Atlanta. Baseball recruiting is always usually at least once cycle ahead, as you saw with the recent commits,
MLB has no plans to move the draft to my knowledge. Colleges have done a great job weathering the storm with the transfer portal and everything, but even a top ten pick in this past year’s draft had trouble getting back into school after failing to sign.
Teams are being smarter than ever before with early picks trying to ensure that they sign as many as they possibly can. No more will they take a risk to draft a talented kid with a greedy mindset and high bonus pool #.
Can anything be done to make the audio better at the press conference?
KQ- So it is a two-edged sword, I can try plugging into their audio mixer but then you have no chance in hell of hearing the questions. Where we are located there is a giant AC or fan thing that goes on randomly. Maybe I can try another recorder and see if that goes better.
I am not as critical of Jeff Sims as a bunch of these couch potatoes on here have been. I think we can all agree he had too fumbles, especially the non contact fumbles. But he is an elite athlete and still a freshman With a very high ceiling.
My question is how much of Jeff’s struggles were O-line related? I know our line struggled, which causes a ripple effect of progressions, reads, etc. The end result may be a poor play by the QB, but it sure seemed like to me more than we want to admit were due to line problems?
KQ- The OL was part of it, but some of them were him sitting in the pocket too long either way and not using his legs or bad meshes or QB miscues. So it is a mix of everything. He learned to actually run later in the season instead of just sitting back there so long. I’m not sure if he was coached to hang in the pocket more early in the year and broke himself of that as the season went along. It seemed like James Graham did that same thing in 2019 when I know he was a run-first guy so maybe that is something CDP was trying to coach them out of instinctually and it backfired because of the OL. I think some of the blame also goes to the receivers and them not being able to get separation as well. It is a complex issue, but ultimately Jeff controls more than 50-percent of it. That is the challenge of playing with a frosh QB though. I saw Matt Stafford do the same mistakes at UGA as a true freshman with a good OL and he is a long-time NFL QB so I don’t put too much on it.
Do you agree that part should be a huge improvement. Given more time, better protection, better blitz pick up and recognition, will Sims be a top 4 QB in ACC?
KQ- The mental piece of the game and improved OL play will be huge. A lot of the mistakes also came from the center not calling the right thing pre-snap and that is something Mikey Minihan spoke extensively about in the spring and owned. He is way better at that now and that makes Sims job much easier. They have to help each other there too.
update on Barnes recruitment and what’s going on there ?
RJ- No update at this time. His quotes from the visit he took in June remain relevant. Once some of these other kids start actually announcing their decisions I will dig a little deeper on this one.
The longer he goes not committing to Oklahoma, the better for Choice and GT right now. As you may know, Choice knows just a little bit about that school.
He does have that official offer letter with him, though.
It’s sort of stupid to ask “does winning impact recruiting” so let me try to contextualize the question. Given the “monumental” rebuild, the rebranding of the 404 culture etc…combined with the all the shifts related to NIL, transfer portal, and conference realignment, can you recall any other program where winning 6-7 games has ever been more important? Winning 6 & getting to a bowl IMO (barring any 60 point losses) keeps things trending up. Losing 7 and getting smoked a couple of times brings us back to why ADTS gave him a 7 year contract. Agreed?
KQ- Yeah Collins’ contract will be thrown back in the ADs face IF the season does not go well and GT is not close to bowling and the heat is turned up on Collins. There will be angry boosters, period. At GT or anywhere, you can’t lose for three-straight years at the 3-win level and especially with the way they lost games in year one and two, if that repeats it will be squarely on Collins and Stansbury. My gut feeling is they will turn it on and get in that 5-7 win range and everything will be fine, but people were ready to run Pastner off too despite a similar rebuilding situation though he had some off the court nonsense as well. Patience is a virtue as they like to say.
As to the first part, the one thing people are banging on this staff about is the inability to win. If they can show they can win, they’ll start killing it in recruiting IMO. A lot of people outside of GT are nervous if that happens.
Says that we have offered this kid, but don’t know much about him! Could you see us pushing hard for this guy? VT already has 2 QBs committed. Maybe snag this dude away from them.
RJ- I sent an updated profile request for him and his rating. It was not for a bump up.
