Off-season fun: College Football Teams with Best Shot to Go Undefeated in 2017

[NewApp]

If we don't get off press coverage and don't open the play book for Ga., I will keep my expectations as low as they belong....truth

Why should we open up the play book first game? No fan should expect a team to have everything down pat with some new personnel in key spots. This an SEC team, not Savannah State. We'll be up against superior speed overall, size, and 4 star talent across the board.

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

[EastHallApp]

If we don't get off press coverage and don't open the play book for Ga., I will keep my expectations as low as they belong....truth

Why should we open up the play book first game? No fan should expect a team to have everything down pat with some new personnel in key spots. This an SEC team, not Savannah State. We'll be up against superior speed overall, size, and 4 star talent across the board.

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint. Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

[NewApp]

If we don't get off press coverage and don't open the play book for Ga., I will keep my expectations as low as they belong....truth

Why should we open up the play book first game? No fan should expect a team to have everything down pat with some new personnel in key spots. This an SEC team, not Savannah State. We'll be up against superior speed overall, size, and 4 star talent across the board.

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

[bcoach]

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

[EastHallApp]

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

We'd get essentially the same bowl game we'd get if we don't beat Georgia and go undefeated in the Sun Belt.

But that's not the point. You implied, without stating it explicitly, that "showing what all we have" against Georgia would make it more likely that we'd lose to future opponents.

I don't know if you've seen other Sun Belt teams play football, but the odds of any team beating Georgia and not even finishing "high" in the Sun Belt are awfully long IMO.

[NewApp]

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

Then as I have said before, beating Michigan was better than winning our two Camelia bowls, but I've never seen anyone on this board agree with me.

[NewApp]

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

We'd get essentially the same bowl game we'd get if we don't beat Georgia and go undefeated in the Sun Belt.

But that's not the point. You implied, without stating it explicitly, that "showing what all we have" against Georgia would make it more likely that we'd lose to future opponents.

I don't know if you've seen other Sun Belt teams play football, but the odds of any team beating Georgia and not even finishing "high" in the Sun Belt are awfully long IMO.

Then I was not clear in my expressing my thoughts. I never meant to imply that.

As to seeing other SunBelt teams playing football, I have seen every one of our games against SunBelt teams either in person or on ESPN3 or live TV,

[EastHallApp]

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

Then as I have said before, beating Michigan was better than winning our two Camelia bowls, but I've never seen anyone on this board agree with me.

I think I agree with you on that.

Beating Michigan was huge in its own right. It didn't really increase our standing in FCS (since we were already the best program at that level), but it arguably was the game that made the eventual FBS move inevitable.

Now at the FBS level, we're the little fish again. Beating someone like Georgia would be a step toward earning us some notoriety outside of our conference and our home state.

[AtlAppMan]

Our overall goal is to continue to raise the level our our performance in FBS. To realize that achievement requires us to eventually beat some top 25 teams on a regular basis. We need to take down UGA this year to take a step onto the next rung on the ladder.

In FBS EVery game is important. UGA is very important to win.

[NewApp]

In the words of Herm Edwards, "You play to win the game."

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

Hmm. I see your point. Two things though. Wake will be watching every move we make both offensively and defensively, along with the rest of the SunBelt. Suppose we win the Georgia game, lose to Wake, and win only half our Belt games. What kind of place would that put us in the Bowl picture. With as many Bowl Games as there are, I feel we would still get one, but what level?

[EastHallApp]

You mean show all our future opponents what all we have? Georgia is not the only important game on our schedule. I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

Hmm. I see your point. Two things though. Wake will be watching every move we make both offensively and defensively, along with the rest of the SunBelt. Suppose we win the Georgia game, lose to Wake, and win only half our Belt games. What kind of place would that put us in the Bowl picture. With as many Bowl Games as there are, I feel we would still get one, but what level?

Remember, unless we make the NY6, we'll almost certainly go to one of the Sun Belt's tie-ins, likely one of the first four (New Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, Orlando). That's true if we lose to Georgia and win the next 11, or if we go 7-5. Theoretically we could be passed over and go to a non tie-in like USA did last year, but it's not going to be any lower-level than the league's primary tie-ins.

But again, I just don't see us losing half our conference games just because those teams got some good scouting footage on us. And if we ARE that worried about that, forget about Georgia - does that mean we should keep it vanilla against Wake too? Should we just drop all our OOC games to save ourselves for conference play?

I'm good with letting Arkansas State keep that MO.

[NoLongerLurking]

Win them all, Mountaineers! I'll hopefully enjoy watching regardless.

[bigdaddyg]

First of all we are going undefeated next season. Enough of the "what if" crap like "what if we go 7-5?" Why even speculate stupid mess like that??

As far as not showing anything against Georgia. Seriously?? Let it all hang out every damn game!! For crying out we beat several teams last year simply because we were better. On many occasions we could have screamed out the play ahead of time and the defense still would not have stopped us.

[SayYesToTheRock]

I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Beat Georgia or go 0-8 in the Sun Belt...seems like an unrealistic set of choices.

If this App team is good enough to beat the Dawgs in Athens...we could run the tables on our Belt schedule even if we gave out our playbook.

[NewApp]

Don't really understand this viewpoint.Do you really think that actually throwing whatever we can at UGA is going to cause us to "bomb out on our conference schedule"[/glow]? Seriously? You think we've gone 20-2 the last 2.5 conference seasons by doing a bunch of stuff our opponents have never seen before?

Whether calling plays aggressively would actually give us our best chance to compete with/beat UGA is another question. But this game isn't a scrimmage. Beating Georgia, however unlikely, would do far more for our program than anything we do against the Sun Belt.

I didn't say that.
If we beat Georgia and don't finish high in the SunBelt, do you think we would get a "quality" bowl game?

Well actually beating Georgia would be better than any bowl game we would be in.

Hmm. I see your point. Two things though. Wake will be watching every move we make both offensively and defensively, along with the rest of the SunBelt. Suppose we win the Georgia game, lose to Wake, and win only half our Belt games. What kind of place would that put us in the Bowl picture. With as many Bowl Games as there are, I feel we would still get one, but what level?

Remember, unless we make the NY6, we'll almost certainly go to one of the Sun Belt's tie-ins, likely one of the first four (New Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, Orlando). That's true if we lose to Georgia and win the next 11, or if we go 7-5. Theoretically we could be passed over and go to a non tie-in like USA did last year, but it's not going to be any lower-level than the league's primary tie-ins.

But again, I just don't see us losing half our conference games just because those teams got some good scouting footage on us. And if we ARE that worried about that, forget about Georgia - does that mean we should keep it vanilla against Wake too? Should we just drop all our OOC games to save ourselves for conference play?

I'm good with letting Arkansas State keep that MO.

I don't see us losing half our conference games either. I was just commenting to whomever implied that the Georgia game was the most important on the schedule as far as our prestige or something to that effect. Personally, I would rather have us win the game at home vs Wake Forest to avenge the 14 losses we had against them over the years.

[EastHallApp]

Wake is big for improving our perception in-state. Georgia is big for improving our perception nationally.

However, I think beating Wake is far more realistic. Plus it's a home game, so it's also important for growing the fan base.

[bigdaddyg]

I think another fun question to ask and debate is-

If you knew we could either go a minimum of 10-2 for the next 10 years or take wins over UGA, ECU, UNC and Penn State but the overall record would max out at 8 wins each year (so our best record would be 8-4 regular season) which way would you go? The thinking is that in scenario 1 we generally don't beat the P5 opponents but roll through the weaker non-conference and the SB. In the second scenario we beat the P5 teams but lay some eggs in conference. Under either scenario we still go bowling but the game varies somewhat due to overall record and finish in the conference. In the first scenario we are generally vying for the conference title and playing in the championship game.

There is no dream scenario for this question that has us beating the P5 and rolling through the conference.

[NewApp]

I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Beat Georgia or go 0-8 in the Sun Belt...seems like an unrealistic set of choices.

If this App team is good enough to beat the Dawgs in Athens...we could run the tables on our Belt schedule even if we gave out our playbook.

By bomb out, I did not in any way imply we would go 0 fer. and You're putting words in my mouth. Bombing out could mean as little as not placing in the top half of the conference. Remember the success of this team rests in part on the shoulders of Taylor Lamb. He has to stay healthy and listen to the coaching staff and not what he might hear from fans on message boards about how he doesn't have an arm for the long balls.

[appst89]

I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Beat Georgia or go 0-8 in the Sun Belt...seems like an unrealistic set of choices.

If this App team is good enough to beat the Dawgs in Athens...we could run the tables on our Belt schedule even if we gave out our playbook.

By bomb out, I did not in any way imply we would go 0 fer. and You're putting words in my mouth. Bombing out could mean as little as not placing in the top half of the conference. Remember the success of this team rests in part on the shoulders of Taylor Lamb. He has to stay healthy and listen to the coaching staff and not what he might hear from fans on message boards about how he doesn't have an arm for the long balls.

Do we have any reason to believe that Lamb has ever not listened to the coaches, or that he has ever paid any attention to comments on this, or any other board?

[NewApp]

I'd rather lose to Georgia by 4 TD's than to bomb out on our conference schedule. Hopefully we have 12 more (including a bowl game) important ones.

Beat Georgia or go 0-8 in the Sun Belt...seems like an unrealistic set of choices.

If this App team is good enough to beat the Dawgs in Athens...we could run the tables on our Belt schedule even if we gave out our playbook.

By bomb out, I did not in any way imply we would go 0 fer. and You're putting words in my mouth. Bombing out could mean as little as not placing in the top half of the conference. Remember the success of this team rests in part on the shoulders of Taylor Lamb. He has to stay healthy and listen to the coaching staff and not what he might hear from fans on message boards about how he doesn't have an arm for the long balls.

Do we have any reason to believe that Lamb has ever not listened to the coaches, or that he has ever paid any attention to comments on this, or any other board?

IDK, but a whale of a lot of posts have been made back and forth about whether or not he has an arm for the long ball and whether or not it is needed for our playbook.. If anyone thinks these players don't occasionally scan these boards, they are fooling themselves.

I'll answer your question with a question, how long did it take for us to determine that opponents were using our recruiting information done by firemoose and others? Answer: a pretty long time. Thankfully, you admins figured it out and took steps to screen whomever might be scanning this information.

The analogy is that letting the world see much of our playbook just gives our opponents more advantages when they face us. Coach Satterfield and staff are savvy enough to save some and use some as well as developing more wrinkles as the season rolls along.