How far away are we?

Some people think SU has a long way to go to get back to .500 FB. While SUs talent is down compared to past SU teams how far away is our talent from Bowl bound teams? I believe that coaching had more to do with the GRob era than poor talent. Just look at his first season here. So I decided to take a look back at GRobs record and how SU did against bad teams. Here is what I found:

Record vs 1AA teams: 1-0... yes we only played a 1AA team once.

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season under .500: 6-6... that is bad. However with better coaching shouldnt we beat more of these teams?

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season .500: 3-5... that is still bad. But again with good coaching we could easily get more Ws here. If you are a .500 team shouldnt you be expected to be on par with other .500 teams? If GRob could almost go .500 against these teams shouldnt Marrone have no problem?

Record vs 1A teams that finished the regular season above .500: 0-26... yes it was ZERO Ws. That is amazing. Are we really that far away from Bowl bound teams? Or did GRob and gang have no clue how to play teams with any talent?

So against teams that lacked talent GRob was 10-11 overall, despite his poor coaching. So it seems that we certainly have the talent to beat bad teams. Against teams with decent or better talent he was 0-26. While we dont have the talent to beat these teams with any consistency, upsets happen all the time. The fact that we didnt even upset one of these teams is amazing. And that IMO reflects on the coaching. The other thing this all shows me is that SU plays a difficult schedule. Of the 47 games we played 26 teams that finished better then 7-6 (ND) and 20 that finished worse.