Football Talent and the Florida Gators

I don't claim to be an expert at football, and what all constitutes "talent" in the sport.  To me, since it is played at different levels depending on whether it's high school, college, or professional, that "talent" designation seems to be relative to how well a player can fit and thrive in the environment he finds himself in.  It's hard to isolate a player from his team and judge his skill level without taking into account how well he plays with others...and how well others play with him. We've just had the recruiting process for college football, and schools have been ranked on how well they signed up the top "talent" in high school players.  The University of Florida usually does well with this recruiting, typically ranking among the top in the country.  After their recent head coaching change had left them behind with the recruiting this go around, they quickly recovered through the efforts of their new coaching staff and reportedly now have a lot of  new incoming "talent" to work with.  As for the players leaving the team after playing for them a number of years, Florida also has many, in comparison to other colleges, whom the National Football League has considered to be talented enough to invite to try out for that league.  H-m-m, so the players are "top talent" coming in to UF and they're "top talent" going out...so why is it that, during the actual Gator football seasons in the last few years, all I've heard was that this team was having to make do with less talent than those around them?  It seems to imply to me that the coaching staff wasn't doing a very good job of developing that top talent that they recruited and that, only after the very best manage to leave Florida, do they finally see the opportunity to achieve their full potential under more competent direction.

I have a feeling that this discrepancy with the Florida football talent has a lot to do with the recently departed staff.  I have to grimace a little whenever I hear in the media that a particular team's head coach is so beloved by his players that he is commonly referred to as a "players coach".  That usually means that the team is lacking in consistency and discipline, and that the players aren't challenged enough in practice to better themselves...in other words, to develop the talents that they already demonstrated in high school and which had made them such promising recruits in the first place.  The new coach, Jim McElwain, seems more interested in molding together a winning team and developing his players' talents to the next higher level than the previous one, who seemed more interested in making them like him than anything else...