Short of a small handful of coaches that aren’t coming, everyone else will always be a crapshoot. If you catch the right coach at the right time, sometimes you beat the odds, but the odds are always against you. Once Mack went downhill, it was almost guaranteed to be a long walk in the wilderness.
I’m always going to root for the guy in recovery to make good. His sobriety is a valid concern for anyone associated with UT, but as long as he has a plan and support system in place, I’m not going to hold it against him unless it becomes a problem.
His list of QB protégés is elite and he appears to be a brilliant and flexible offensive coach. Hopefully he picked up some of that Saban mojo. If he succeeds, I think that these will be the reasons that it seems so obvious in hindsight.
The odds are that he’ll be mediocre, but I’d say that for any coach other than Meyer. Getting upset that this coin flip is marginally better or worse than some other coin flip seems pointless to me.