I agree that he is no one to fear, but we have to accept that the data suggest that Jimbo is generally a successful coach. His national championship was in his fourth year— pretty much his guys in his system at that point. His win totals, all comers, are 10, 9, 12, 14, 13, 10, 10, 5, 9. His first season (10 wins) followed a 7 win campaign. His last one was at a new school so again he could be compared. He won the same number of games, but improved the mean scoring differential from 1.3 to 7.2, won his (lower tier) bowl in a blowout, and improved the final ranking from NR to 16. He followed that up with aggy’s statistically best recruiting the era of online rankings, grabbing Leal and Wright along the way. Looking at all of that data, the 5-win season looks like a bit of an outlier. Tucked against a 13 and a 12, the 14 looks less like one.
For a number of reasons, I think we under Herman will fare much better than aggy under Jimbo. I don’t happen to believe, however, that one of those reasons is, “Jimbo hasn’t accomplished squat without Jameis.” Given that FSU continued to get worse after he left, I think a reasonable summary is that he has the ability to succeed, but that catastrophic program rot after circa 5 years is not unforeseeable.