Pike's "way" is of a prior era - he needs to change a lot about his way of doing things to succeed in the current era. He's had success in the past finding the value guys that are better than their HS ratings and coaching them up over years... but that style is rapidly going extinct.
Those value guys you bring in will be looking at overvalued NIL promises from other schools pretty quickly and will likely cost you more to keep developing than it would to bring in guys who already cut their teeth elsewhere. Every year you need to rebuild a team from scratch unless you have overflowing coffers to retain all the guys you want to retain, which we most certainly do not.
The "pounding nails" culture of defense, where new guys slot into gaps between veterans steeped in the culture and system.... that's not going to work anymore. Coaches in this era need concepts that can be quickly understood and internalized by coming-in-cold-off-the-street players that don't even really know each other's names on the first day of camp. You can't rely on any year-over-year carry over - and the guys you do have will quickly look at greener pastures if you make their lives too uncomfortable.
Pike needs to do a lot of introspection this offseasons.
