Jeremy, reading your post above one would get the impression that every coach that ever enters a new program would struggle immensely the first few seasons. And yet we've seen many times where a new coaching staff comes in and is immediately successful, or at least more so than the previous regime. We saw it not too long ago here with Friedgen.
Regarding recruiting, I agree with everything you say if this were a "typical" situation. If this was a new coach that needed time to come in, establish connections, etc. But that's exactly not the case with Locksley and was a big reason for his hire. That he already has those connections, already knows those players, etc. He was recruiting those some guys for Alabama this time last year. DJ Durkin, having pretty much no ties to the area, managed to put together back-to-back Top 30 recruiting classes and 1 in the Top 20 in his short time here. He also wasn't dealing with the fallout of the death of a player, so a point to Locksley there.
Ultimately I'm not all that concerned about that though - I just agree with MikeLowe, there's no way they should be THIS bad. Just watch the games - the players (again, many of them highly ranked coming out of HS) have no clue what is going on.
How many can you find that do? Larger programs having turnover isn't going to be as noticeable, the top players are still going there, it's all about name and brand. Here though, we are NOT a big player, we have to fight and claw for who we can get. If a player hits a certain level here, they won't consider MD cause they aren't a national power, and perception bias is a thing. Kids don't want to go to a place that might be better in a couple years, they want a place that's already the top and they can just plug and play. Ralph was a special coach, pretty sure he's an outlier.
Lox didn't recruit or go after many/any of the kids he was recruiting at Alabama, the Juniors and Soph. he was before he left weren't changing their commitments to follow him, it's Saban and Alabama. There was an article a while back saying something like out of respect for Saban the ones that were committed were off limits and he was focusing on what wasn't signed or committed.
You're also putting a lot of stock in these rankings. It's a lot like prospect rankings in baseball. Sure a bunch of them will live up to the hype, some will come out of no where, but a lot of them will be busts too. Sure all of them look great in HS, but not everyone can do it at the next level. Those classes if I remember were mostly based on depth too, there were no 5 star recruits in there. Alabama had 3 just this year, and has one next year from Baltimore. Clemson and LSU are killing it for next year because of their success the past 2 years, including the best player in the 2020 class from Damascus. I guess where it's getting telling is in the 2021s only two of the top 10 players from MD are even considering MD, where in the 2022 class all of the top 5 are.
