Tiger

Yessir! You're always respectful and I appreciate how you lay out your thoughts. Lol the lawyer comment was not a jab I swear, consider it a compliment to your debating skills. WDE!

We can just agree to disagree, man. There have been enough reputable posters on here saying things like Gus has been told certain things by his bosses for me, personally, to buy into it. The way I connect the dots is not the way you connect them and that's just fine. This convo will continue going in circles and we have another 4 months of this so I'm going just to pace myself We just view things differently. You'd make one hell of a lawyer, though lol

Yeah definitely. As far as Gus is concerned, he goes from the mediocre/average/good results to off the charts amazing offensive results when he has one of those running QBs. So I think there's something to the AU fans wanting him to go that route. And he has with Willis/Gatewood. Although, I'm not sure if Bo Nix is any more of a dual threat guy than Stidham is.

Well....what is Gus' record with a DT QB vs a more traditional pocket passing QB? He doesn't need at DT QB, but damn it increases his margin for error by so much because he's susceptible to predictable play calls.

My thing is you can still provide what makes AU special to these kids and also give them all the coaching that our rivals are. Does it have to be as cold-hearted? No, but it's a huge disadvantage for our program to throw a jelly fish in the tank while our opponents are a bunch of sharks, as @keeslersaid. Also if Gus isn't worried about getting fired then he never bend over backwards to make it seem like he's not calling plays or involved in the offense anymore. If he wasn't worried about being fired he wouldn't have made Rhett the scapegoat or told him to leave, he wouldn't have opened up the playbook vs UGA part 1 and the Iron Bowl. Heck, you could argue if he wasn't worried about being fired he wouldn't consider every play a "crunch time moment". If he wasn't worried about being fired he wouldn't play everything so close to the vest, including the offensive game plans post-2014 (1st down up the gut 90% of the time???). Every coach is worried about being fired. To make the assertion that they're not in such a hyper competitive field is reaching IMO. You can be worried about being fired and it have nothing to do with your financial situation. Also, there's no way he would rather have fun than win games. Look at him having freakouts on the sideline. Does that look like a man having fun to you? The guy looks like he has sand in his underwear during games. The only time he looked like he was having fun this year was after beating UGA and Bama because he could finally exhale and say "my job is safe". And also, if we're paying our coach a top 5 or 10 salary those results need be in the top 10 range consistently, it makes no sense to pay for top tier results and say it's ok that we don't reach those results because of "having fun".

Ehhhhhh. I see what you're saying but the bottom line is Gus could be at a 100% success rate at providing a family atmosphere, building good men, making sure everyone is graduating etc but if he doesn't win enough he will lose his job. I'd say Gus has done a great job with all of the things you've mentioned and has improved the overall character of the players in the program since the Chizik days. However none of that will save him if he starts giving us 4 and 5 loss seasons. Now don't get me wrong, none of those things should be ignored or overlooked and they are good qualities that all AU fans/alums can be proud of but we should not forgive not doing all we can within the rules to be the best football program we can be just to fulfill some of these ideals. Gus knows it too. He knows it's good for PR to have all the family/support vibe chugging on all cylinders but he knows even better that if he doesn't win enough he will be fired. So IMO we are doing it wrong if we are intentionally handicapping our football program's ability to win games by excusing not giving our players coaching in aspects that other top programs are. Especially when the 2 schools Gus is judged most against are implementing these methods and beating us in the process (losing record vs both Saban and bowlcut Kirbz).

Why haven't we invested in the same type of mental coaching that our main rivals (with winning records against us) have been implementing? Is this something that has been discussed or thought about?

Nobody is trying to change the past. We are just discussing it lol. How is it different, though? Gus "bashers": 1/10th of complaints are "we need to rotate the RBs because we don't have anyone fresh in crunch time!" Horton: "we need to rotate backs because we need our best RB to be fresh in crunch time" This running a RB into the ground isn't limited to just last year, though. He gave Pettway some insane number of carries during our Sean White/Kam Pettway run even in games where the game was no longer in doubt.

Is it, though? Seems like he's right in line with some of the "bashers" thoughts in regards to the RB rotation.

Edit: for clarity, the fact that Gus allows this to happen is what's dumb. Not the content of your post.

That is great news. If Kam can be a serviceable blocker it will go a long way not only for him but our team.

Yeah, agree 100%. I don't know what else it could be.

Can you elaborate on how we have better options this year? We literally have the same options we had last year minus KJ but add in some freshman who's top experience is high school football. And apparently those options who were available to us last year were not good enough to see the field when the game was still in the balance, according to the staff, so I have a hard time thinking they're feeling like there are better options to put out there than we had last season.

Yup, agreed. His hard nosed, junkyard dog, never quit style was paramount to the team being SEC champions. I loved seeing him fight for rebounds at his size.