Because of Riis' history people under estimate how much he does know about the sport, just like shudder Bruyneel shudder. On paper NTT has a decent squad that is underperforming, rather than a very weak one and their wins have come from decent riders like Nizzolo and O'Connor who have some handy wins in the past.
If you look back at the peak years of CSC, sure they had an excellent squad (Basso, Sastre, Schlecks, Cancellara, O'Grady, Julich, Voigt etc) but what Riis seemed to excel in was binding it all together into something cohesive. Watch Overcoming and you'll see.