recruiting typically go hand in hand. It's not too often that you have a great recruiter who is not at least a decent coach, but it does happen. It's also hard to recognize when perhaps somebody is a good coach but a bad recruiter as we associate the losing with bad coaching.
Nick Saban, one of the goats, would have never taken Toledo to a national title no matter if he'd coached his entire career there. You simply could never get the best athletes to go to Toledo.
Part of KWhitt bringing this up is likely to excuse himself from his bowl losses to tOSU and PennSt. He likely feels he was the better coach in those games, but his opponents had the better athletes.