canoso said:
Aberzombie1892 said:
Redbrickbear said:
blackie said:
Redbrickbear said:
blackie said:
Redbrickbear said:
Jacques Strap said:
Coaches at UT and A&M have done less with more many times.
Joey is doing more with more, so hat's off to him.
CAB did more with less, which made him a Unicorn.
And Baylor is always going to need to find those kinds of guys who can do more with less.
Grant Teaff, CAB, Rhule
Guys who can spot talent others overlooked and get them to come to Baylor
Then the challenge is keeping them at Baylor, which to Aranda's credit he has been doing. Can argue a lot how good a coach he is, but up to this point, losing players they want to keep to the portal has not occurred.
You don't only have to develop players, but also have to have something in your culture or lots of money to keep them. CAB, Teaff and Rhule never really had to worry about that as they were here well before this ridiculous free agency we have today where roster stability is chasing a wild rabbit.
Is Aranda actually good at talent spotting?
And if he is....is he good a coaching them up and getting the most out of them?
Teaff, CAB, and Rhule were.....and they had the wins to prove it
The reason for my reply was to point out that the environment those three coaches operated within no longer exists. It is impossible to know if they would have been able to keep any talent they developed when faced with larger programs willing to throw money at those players. This board was adamant a year ago that all the good players would leave. They really didn't. I don't know the reason they stayed and neither do you. It probably wasn't all based on money because others have a lot more than do we, so there is something there we can't see that the players do that keeps them here.
So then the let's reframe the question
Given that Aranda has failed to talent spot and develop in the old college football system (the one that Teaff, CAB, and Rhule succeeded in)….what positive signs do we have that Aranda can succeeded in the new system of NIL payments going forward?
The 2022 season was the first season after NIL was fully implemented, so, considering his success during the 2021 season, one could argue that the premise of the question is faulty. Posters can blame it on Rhule's players if they would like - even though that's not entirely true - but it doesn't change the fact that he accomplished something that neither of Rhule or Briles did.
NIL isn't the reason he hasn't come anywhere near to that since. The reason is that Aranda doesn't find under-the-radar players and develop them.
This isn't true at all, like even sort of...he's had misses, sure, but he's also landed some mostly unheralded prospects who've played good to great for us.
K. Thomas wasn't one of the most prized LB transfers in the country when we signed him (his other big suitor was Miss State)...but he became one in his first year under Aranda and we had to pay to keep him *because of that development*! Keaton is a fantastic Big 12 linebacker who has a shot at finding a spot in the league now. Elinus Noel III wasn't some major prospect either, but he was an extremely effective run-stuffer for us in 2024.
Conversely, we lost out on Taurean York due to NIL - he had a great relationship with Dave but Agg threw a massive bag his way. A KT & TY linebacking core would have been elite on a national level but it was NIL that kept us from getting there.
Dave took responsibility for the very misguided NIL approach whether it was really all his decision making or not, and it's clear that lack of NIL commitment in '22-'23 damned us to a thin roster through this season.
pathological optimist
