IOW, you hand-picked a few points at opposite ends of the bell curve. Congratulations.
So you think if not for UK's coaches, no one would have heard of or thought highly of Derrick Locke, Rafael Little, Jacob Tamme, Keenan Burton, Cory Peter, Myron Pryor, Wesley Woodyard, Danny Trevathan, Avery Williamson, & Trevard Lindley? Me, I think they were all driven enough that they'd been successful under the large majority of FCS coaches; i.e., they weren't primarily made by who coached them. Ask their coaches.
That's quite a lot of 'diamond in the rough players' that mostly played on same team and all of those players pretty much put every single 4 star recruit stoops he brough in to shame. They were driven and they had a coach that knew what he was doing a coach that knew how to get the most out of his players and develop them. A PROVEN COACH. Something that stoops is far from. I don't think these players would've had near the same amount of success under Stoops had he been the coach for those players. I mean look what stoops is doing with all these 4 star recruits and they're not performing near as well as all those players I mentioned so just imagine if stoops was working with 2 star recruits like Brooks was. And what about Muschamp and his entire roster loaded with 4-5 star players. They still sucked. It's called bad coaching and what it can do to diminish talent and take the drive out of players.
If you have a bad coach, or an unproven coach, or a coach that hasn't done very well in the least in the player development department. You might as well throw the star ratings out the window. These are the results you get. Brooks knew how to develop players. I'll give you Cobb he's a one of a kind talent. But the rest Brooks pretty much squeezed every little bit of production out of them as humanly possible in a way that I don't think Stoops could even if he coached another 20 years. Dorian Baker is every bit of talented as Keenan Burton. Yet Burton is a wayyyy better player. The difference is stoops really ain't that good or good at all at developing talent. I truly believe if Brooks was coaching Baker he'd be an All SEC receiver right now. And according to Saban, Elam was one of the best DL in the country coming out of high school. I truly feel like Elam would be a monster and very high on the draft boards next season had he went to Bama.
To answer your question yes. I TRULY believe coaching matters. I really do. Individual talent doesn't make a TEAM. You have to get the talent to work as one cohesive unit in order to succeed and in order for each player to succeed to the best of their ability. I don't see anything that resembles these things out of Baker and Bone and so on and so forth. At least not to this point. You can have a bunch of players with a ton of individual talent but if they don't work as a team then it's all for nada. Our players don't work as one cohesive unit and in turn don't get the most out of their abilities. If Brooks were coaching then I truly believe Baker and players alike would be a million times better than they are now. And I truly believe if stoops had his hands on a lot of Brooks players then they wouldn't have had careers half as successful as the ones they had here at UK.
I mean they were 2 star players and we see what he's doing with a lot of these disappointing 4 star players. So if point system means everything like you believe then why would he be able to succeed with 2 star players but not 4 star players considering that the 4 stars are a million times better than Brooks players due to the 5.9 (at least by your logic) next to their name on the rivals page? In fact look at Bud Dupree. There was a significant drop off in his production his senior season here, makes zero sense to me as to why either. I don't think Dicky Lyons would've been a remotely halfway decent player under stoops. Yes. I truly believe coaching matters.
I feel like since for once we finish with almost decent recruiting rankings (not in comparison to the SEC though). That now all of a sudden it's the indicator for success since it's convenient for you and something you know how to spin in a way to make yourself feel secure, warm and fuzzy about UK football and since you can find a way to spin it to fit your stoops apologetic agenda. You try and make it seem like these point rating systems somehow make stoops a good coach and to you is a good enough reason to fool yourself into believing he's the right man for the job as if it's the only aspect to the game of football..... Screw game plans, schemes, game preparation, clock management, in game coaching, the ability to make players buy into the system i.e coaching. Point system ratings is what wins games and proves who's a good coach and ready for the job and who's not. Not all these other factors that actually show up on the field. Let's judge a coach based on something that literally doesn't matter to every single player on the field once the ball is kicked off. Players don't ask opposing players on the field, what was your rivals point rating coming out of high school 3 years ago? Oh wow you were a 6.0. Well I guess you're better than me and your team is gonna beat us. Shucks we forfeit! Why we even playing the game if your point rating from 3 years ago is higher than mine, ugh!
What about Iowa last season? What about Morgan Newton? What about Muschamp at Florida with players a million times better than ours and rated a trillion times higher than ours? Unless you get nothing but 4-5 stars like the OSU's, the Bama's, the Michigan's, the Notre Dames of the world then might as well throw it out the window because 3-6 4 star players each season doesn't guarantee success and a bunch of 5.7 3 stars doesn't guarantee a damn good football team. Your logic is blasphemous as far as what you use as the indicator to success. Individual talent is nice and all but if a coach can't get that talent to gel together as a team then It doesn't matter how talented your team is. This isn't basketball. This is football. The most team oriented sport in the world. So take your individual player point ratings sheet and throw it out the window. Because EKU isn't going to come into commonwealth afraid of us and fold and let us walk all over them due to our players individual recruiting ratings. They're gonna hit our players in the mouth and watch our not very well coached team respond poorly. Wonder what the difference in our recruiting ratings and there's was last season when we needed a miracle to win.
Again. Point ratings are as meaningless as it gets once the bullets start flying. It's about who wants it more and who's willing to sacrifice themselves for the men left and right of each other. Not the point rating they were given by rivals out of high school 3 years ago. None of that matter once the ball is kicked off. Yes jauk, coaching matters way more than these point rating systems. I'll believe that til the day I parish from this world. If we were talking basketball I might agree but we're talking about the most team oriented sport in the world right now. And no point rating tells you how hard a player is willing to work to get better and no point rating is going to tell you how much they're willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the team and no point rating is going to tell you anything about a coaches ability to get his players to buy into the system. It's not 5 on 5. It's 11 on 11.
