about where Kelly has been recruiting for a while now. You're right, the cupboard was not that bare based on the 2005 and 2006 season, because those classes had upperclassmen talent. They couldn't succeed against teams like OSU or LSU in the bowl games because they did not have depth, but they could hold their own against very good teams in, let's say, a home game.

But the cupboard was EXTREMELY bare come 2007 thanks to Ty's golfing. The head coach does not "own that 100%", don't be ridiculous. Now some of the recruiting is on Weis there, he could have mitigated one of the bad classes some by coming in to recruit right away rather than staying on with the Patriots for a few more months.

I do agree, a better coach would have done a lot better than 3-9 in 2007. But even an Urban Meyer could not have coached that team to 9-3. I would say a good coach could have brought the 2007 team to 5-7, while even a guy like Urban Meyer would have needed a miracle to get them to 8-4 thanks to Ty's lazy ass. There's a reason why Urban Meyer turned Notre Dame down, look how quickly he won at Florida... he knew he had no chance of achieving that at Notre Dame.

a team full of players that had played for him 2 seasons entering 2007. Yes, he was missing a true senior class. However, he had a full junior and sophomore class and the real reason Weis got his ass handed to him 2007 and every year after that is because he flat out cannot teach college kids how to play the game.

What Weis can do is take people that have been trained on the fundamentals by someone else and he can then create a scheme and call offensive plays well -- evidenced in the NFL and his 2005 and 2006 seasons.

and certainly would have had the team more competitive in the games that it did lose.

The first team was young, but crap, they were talented.

LT--Sam Young--SO. Drafted. Still playing in the NFL.
LG--Mike Turkovich--JR. Undrafted. Signed with Cowboys. Waived.
C--John Sullivan--5th. Drafted. Still playing in the NFL. Heading to the Super Bowl
RG--Eric Olson--SO. Drafted the by Broncos and waived.
RT--Paul Duncan--JR. Didn't play in the NFL.
TE--John Carlson--SR. Drafted and retired after 6 seasons in the NFL.
QB--Jimmy Clausen--FR. Drafted by Bears. Played 3 years in the NFL.

And that's just the offensive line and the guy under center.

Like 2016, that year was marred by stubborn stupidity and the inability to develop a game-day strategy suitable to the players on the field rather than the coaches' (Weis and BVG) delusions in the heads.

Ty is certainly responsible for the lack of talent in the recruiting classes that became JRs and SRs in the 2007 season. That's supposed to be the core of the team, and that core was rotten. I don't hold Weis (with his Patriots obligations) accountable for not doing more to salvage the recruiting class that signed 2 months after he was hired. That's just so late in the process. I doubt it would have made much of a difference if he or some other coach would have been able to take over full time on day 1. Weis could have done more to polish that turd over the next 2 years and gotten more production out of them by the time 2007 came around.... but it really was a turd.

However, Weis is responsible for getting very little production out of his first full recruiting class, who were Sophomores in 2007. That was a pretty highly rated class but there were lots of transfers and lack of development from the guys who stayed. I think Sam Young and Eric Olsen were the only guys drafted, and they both went very late.

In the bigger picture, it wasn't really going to matter what their record was in 2007. The 3-9 record would have been forgiven as an explainable blip if Weis had got the team back on track by 2009. But that obviously didn't happen. In hindsight, Weis's lack of experience at the college level made him ill equipped to handle the rebuilding job that needed to be happening behind the scenes at the scout team level and in the weight room during the 2005 and 2006 seasons.