What's amazing about the utterly thoughtless, reflexive devotion to The Cult Of The New Coach is the way it eliminates probably the best, strongest, most occam's razor-y justification for optimism.
The guys who left weren't fits, the guys who left weren't talented enough, the guys who left couldn't handle hard coaching, the guys who left hadn't been scouted thoroughly enough, all this balderdash whose sole and exclusive purpose is just to say words which conjure the blame outside of the realm of the savior figure. This isn't analysis, it's a Socratic thought experiment, it's like answering an SAT question or something.
What if this class and this season is going to be different because Underwood is a smart guy who possesses the ability to learn from his mistakes, take in new information, and get better?
DOES NOT COMPUTE for the Loyalty hivemind because it engages with the possibility of imperfection in the Savior Figure, but I doubt there is a successful coach in America who wouldn't point to that as a primary factor in building what they have built.
This goes for individual players as well. Whatever a player achieves was predestined by who they were as recruits, we just have to smash all these random data points into a narrative about what Good Recruits are and what Bad Recruits are. No, actually, players who are good are players who improve.