Here's the thing, this is a very reasonable bunch of folks here (with a few exceptions) and no one is trying to discount the successful season A&M had or Manziel. The observations that are being offered here are based on what we've seen historically. Abarn for instance hired a new coach who brought in an offensive guru to run his spread offense. It did ok, but was made almost unstoppable with an amazingly gifted ahtlete running it. Their staff got raises, promotions and contract extensions. Said player goes pro and two years later they win 3 games, coaching staff gets fired and no one can figure out why. It wasn't the coaching staff, it wasn't the system, it was the system and this amazing athlete together. Take either out of the equation and you've got a mid tear SEC team.Wasn't trying to pick a fight -- just thought accuracy was important. Sorry if I offended.
I'm sure that not playing 9 games straight (the last 2 on the road) with no bye week, might help aTm as well. Actually I think aTm having 2 tuneup games before Al comes to town may be as important as Al having a bye week before. Sumlin appears to know how to get his team ready for straight games even away games as shown by this past seasons run. I guess we will have to wait til September to find out.
I think that's where a lot of the views from this side of the table come from. A team like that can have some great years when they have the right player in position, but they can't maintain it year in and year out because those type players don't come around all the time. Please don't point to teams outside the SEC as examples because that really doesn't apply because we're talking about the SEC. We're talking about real big boy football.