I'm struggling with how to interpret our recruiting. It was the one knock on Fuente coming in and I have to say, I am not impressed this year.

I understand that it is his first full cycle. However, we used to excuse our "relatively" poor results against other new coaches for the "new coach" bump. If anything, we have regressed compared to our better years. Now this year isn't over, but I don't see more than 2 or 3 more 4* players signing up. Perhaps we get Hunter, which would be really nice.

Is it just that our program was viewed that poorly by so many younger kids? Is it that Fuente and Foster aren't doing a "good" job? Is this our ceiling moving forward (without the post MNC "bump" from the mid-2000s?)?

Would our oline recruiting have been better if we kept Searles?

I'm struggling to figure out where this is going. I know people will say we are in "good shape" for 2018. I'm not sure that will turn out any differently, though. So I'm inclined to think this might be our short term ceiling under Fuente. And maybe that is acceptable. But Virginia has enough talent to stock a playoff team, if we could keep it. And I know we can't. But my question is still: why? Why are we getting olinemen without any FBS offers? (okay, you get a bump after the verbal to Vt, but the fact remains, we are recruiting guys who weren't even on our radar before missing a bunch of other targets)

I understand the "coach em up" mentality but, there comes a point. Motu is a perfect example. I don't think he would be a starter on practically any other team (aside from Liberty) that we played all year. We still need joes.

And my other final thought is that this is in a season where, although we would like to have 2 games back, Fuente has had a ranked team and has won enough games to (almost certainly) make it to the ACCcg.

I'm confused. Winning doesn't hurt recruiting, but it isn't helping ours nearly enough, or perhaps not nearly fast enough.