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What Happened in 2005?


badnewspears

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The rest of the SBC just caught up to us. They were mostly newer or less recognizable programs that were well behind our program when we got to the SBC in 2001. By 2005, we had no solid QB play, no defensive pressure like we had, and no jump in recruiting from our SBC run. It all added up to a storm of crap that took years to unwind.

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28 minutes ago, H-towngreen said:

This....DD lived off of one great class.

Yep.  Actually the 2000 and 2001 classes were pretty good.  After that, the coaches got complacent, but I also think they bought in to RV's vision and started to realize he wasn't going to deliver.

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I still tend to think that had Andrew Smith been around for the 2005 season we wouldn't have seen such a huge drop off that year.  Then we also lost Byerly and had to force Meager into action too early. 

Granted, we were losing coaches right and left and weren't committing to increasing salaries or facilities.  Eventually we were going to have to have that bottoming out to wake up our administration to the fact that we couldn't just keep winning on pennies.

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10 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

The rest of the SBC just caught up to us. They were mostly newer or less recognizable programs that were well behind our program when we got to the SBC in 2001. By 2005, we had no solid QB play, no defensive pressure like we had, and no jump in recruiting from our SBC run. It all added up to a storm of crap that took years to unwind.

That is a myth that still gets perpetuated.  The only brand new team to D1 was MTSU - and they were our biggest competition.

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A couple of things;

DD never upgraded his coaching staff or recruiting practices.

The rest of the conference caught up and added Troy.

Dead quarterback left a big hole in the team.

People graduated and there was no depth.

The decline happened the season before, but the Sun Belt was so bad the record didn’t show.

The rumblings for the high school coach had already begun and “we” quit investing in the current product.

Diet Cokeboy got cocky and didn’t try as hard.

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14 hours ago, badnewspears said:

I was there and I suppose it's just been blurred through time but after four New Orleans Bowls and seeming to have a strong grasp in the Sun Belt with Dickey in his 8th year, how on earth did the bottom drop out and we go 2-9 that year?

Troy and FAU took the place of USU, NMSU, and Idaho. That’s what happened. Plus we had an inexperienced quarterback taking the helm with a depleted O-line. Lost a NFL defense end too.

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11 hours ago, TIgreen01 said:

I still tend to think that had Andrew Smith been around for the 2005 season we wouldn't have seen such a huge drop off that year.  Then we also lost Byerly and had to force Meager into action too early. 

Granted, we were losing coaches right and left and weren't committing to increasing salaries or facilities.  Eventually we were going to have to have that bottoming out to wake up our administration to the fact that we couldn't . just keep winning on pennies.

Andrew Smith killing himself was the biggest problem 2005 and I think it took Dickey down. Point the finger beyond that we did not build on our success the way we should of have. RV was a failure at that from the begining. 

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23 minutes ago, KingDL1 said:

Andrew Smith killing himself was the biggest problem 2005 and I think it took Dickey down. Point the finger beyond that we did not build on our success the way we should of have. RV was a failure at that from the begining. 

My recollection was that Smith died in 04 and was not the starter when he died. I recall Byerly or Ieans being the qb people pointed the finger at in ‘05. I don’t remember which.

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2 hours ago, Cr1028 said:

My recollection was that Smith died in 04 and was not the starter when he died. I recall Byerly or Ieans being the qb people pointed the finger at in ‘05. I don’t remember which.

It was supposed to be Joey Byerly, but his grades were bad and he couldn’t gain eligibility for the 2005 season, so we had to go with freshman Danny Meager, who was basically thrown to the wolves, not to mention he had Ramon flanigan coaching him (supposedly)...

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3 hours ago, Cr1028 said:

My recollection was that Smith died in 04 and was not the starter when he died. I recall Byerly or Ieans being the qb people pointed the finger at in ‘05. I don’t remember which.

Andrew did but that was the beginning of the end, and it really showed in 2005, I heard that DD was drinking more than ever and the DD stealth recruiting started  down the drain 2004. 

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