But the fact that Utah has continued to have D line success, and has even improved on their defensive numbers since Kalani left, suggests to me that the greater part of the credit should go to Whittingham and his defensive scheme. In the 6 years that Kalani coached the defense at Utah, they averaged 23rd in defensive efficiency (which I've found to be the most accurate statistic in telling the quality of a defense), which is awesome. However, in the two years since he left, Utah has averaged 17th in defensive efficiency.
I'm really not trying to knock Kalani and Tuiaki here, I think both are good coaches and good recruiters. It just seems that on this site, we have a tendency to hype people up to be greater than they have actually proven themselves to be. I think this often contributes to angst and discontent in the future if those coaches or players don't meet the unrealistically high expectations some have for them.
If Sitake can get BYU to consistently have top-50 recruiting classes, that will be better than anything Bronco ever did while here. If we can get that kind of talent, we should be able to consistently break into the top 25.
I got my information about recruiters from Rivals.