Athlon 2019

[TomA415]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

[Rick83]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

If I recall correctly, we were also rotating in a higher number of freshmen than usual to give them game experience.

[Yosef84]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I actually agree that we didn't play that well, at least initially. Charlotte defended our running game pretty effectively which is why Zac was throwing in the first place. We also let them move the ball between the 20's more than I would have liked but the D was shut down once they got close to the red zone. I think we did fine but it wasn't our "A" game.

[AppStFan1]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

[AppStFan1]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

If I recall correctly, we were also rotating in a higher number of freshmen than usual to give them game experience.

I believe we did as well. I'm glad we got them that experience at the end of the year but early on we let a few teams last a little longer than they would have had we only played our starters. A few teams stayed in games longer than they should have just because we were draining the clock and running the ball more instead of being aggressive. He still won a lot of games doing it but if we were not very sharp and the other team gets a few breaks then a game could last longer than you want it to at times.

[AppSt94]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

Wow! I mean how do you argue with this type of logic? We had the third youngest team in FBS. Winning college football games is a tough business and winning on the road is even tougher. You don’t beat the snot out of everyone week in and week out. You take the W and move on. Charlotte has a pretty fine defense if you recall and we put it to them. We can’t score every possession and when we don’t, it isn’t a failure. You play to execute your preparation and hope that it is good enough to win. In the end, no one cares if you win by a little or a lot. Geez.

[bigdaddyg]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

Wow! I mean how do you argue with this type of logic? We had the third youngest team in FBS. Winning college football games is a tough business and winning on the road is even tougher. You don’t beat the snot out of everyone week in and week out. You take the W and move on. Charlotte has a pretty fine defense if you recall and we put it to them. We can’t score every possession and when we don’t, it isn’t a failure. You play to execute your preparation and hope that it is good enough to win. In the end, no one cares if you win by a little or a lot. Geez.

Completely agree. Some guys need to take a look at other games that are basically over at the half. How many times do you see a team up 35-0 at the half win 42-0? It’s called taking your foot off the gas, substituting liberally, conservative play calling, etc. A win is a win, especially by 3 scores or more.

[NattyBumppo'sRevenge]

I'll have to admit, I was disappointed we let them kick 3 field goals. That was a little excessive. I believe they were all over 45 yards if I'm not mistaken.

[AppStFan1]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

Wow! I mean how do you argue with this type of logic? We had the third youngest team in FBS. Winning college football games is a tough business and winning on the road is even tougher. You don’t beat the snot out of everyone week in and week out. You take the W and move on. Charlotte has a pretty fine defense if you recall and we put it to them. We can’t score every possession and when we don’t, it isn’t a failure. You play to execute your preparation and hope that it is good enough to win. In the end, no one cares if you win by a little or a lot. Geez.

You can't beat the crap out of everyone. We all know this. I know that Georgia Southern and Troy and others are going to be tough games. Of course you take the W and move on. My whole point was that we had a slow start against Charlotte and even against Arkansas State we had some areas where we could have played a lot better. I know that many games will be close because you can't be perfect.

But you even said we were young last year. We played very well most of the year and should obviously expect a better year in 2019. 8-9 wins would have been fine last year but this year Drink and the team clearly has a goal of winning every game. We now have the experience, depth, and the offense is finally going to be opened up like it was against MTSU.

We can still have the goal to eliminate slow starters and mistakes. Every coach will tell you they want to start fast, finish, limit turnovers, and execute their game plan. If we want to be a ranked team our goal can't be to just win the games. Whatever the line is we must win by more, we can't play the SBC close, and must beat UNC in order for the pollsters to take us seriously or a NY6 Bowl to take us seriously. We could have one hiccup perhaps where it is a close game but overall we can't afford to play the SBC and anyone outside of the P5 very close and still get respect in the polls. I personally want to be ranked and go undefeated. It is possible we lose a game or two but outside of injury to ZT or a massive wave of injuries it is 100% fair to expect a great season.

My entire reason for what I said is that we were a very good offense last year but Drink has said he wants to open it up more. We saw what happened against MTSU when we unleashed the offense more and weren't as conservative. This team could seriously blow away the numbers we put up in 2018.

[AppStFan1]

I'll have to admit, I was disappointed we let them kick 3 field goals. That was a little excessive. I believe they were all over 45 yards if I'm not mistaken.

One of those was almost 60 yards. That kicker had an insane leg. We only gave up 3 but I honestly wanted to see a shutout. I know UNCC will improve but their team last year was awful and the only good player they had (the guy who got drafted) did not even play against us.

[AppStFan1]

This is not like with a game like UNCC where we did not play too great and still won big.

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

Wow! I mean how do you argue with this type of logic? We had the third youngest team in FBS. Winning college football games is a tough business and winning on the road is even tougher. You don’t beat the snot out of everyone week in and week out. You take the W and move on. Charlotte has a pretty fine defense if you recall and we put it to them. We can’t score every possession and when we don’t, it isn’t a failure. You play to execute your preparation and hope that it is good enough to win. In the end, no one cares if you win by a little or a lot. Geez.

Completely agree. Some guys need to take a look at other games that are basically over at the half. How many times do you see a team up 35-0 at the half win 42-0? It’s called taking your foot off the gas, substituting liberally, conservative play calling, etc. A win is a win, especially by 3 scores or more.

Look how many teams we became vanilla or took the foot off the gas, not just as a staff calling plays but where the energy from the team was much lower. Look back at Troy. The entire second half it felt like the team and coaches were just wanting to milk the clock and get out of there. There were many times we get up by 17 or so and instead of putting the foot on the gas to open it up more we would just run the ball and milk the clock. With our conservative playcalling we still beat teams by double digits every week. Can you imagine what will happen if Drink keeps the foot on the gas, even when we have backups in the game, or speeds up the tempo more? This offense could be very dangerous. Hopefully we stay healthy and we finally see our offense on steroids.

[AppSt94]

What game did you watch? Other than Zac's fumble on the one we absolutely manhandled them. Zac went 14/14 for 3 TD's and our defense gave up 9 points. Could we have won by more? Absolutely. But on no planet would I say we didn't play great.

I'm talking more about the slow start. It took us 10 or 11 minutes to score a TD and was only 24-9 at halftime. They weren't out of the game completely at that point and we really could have been up 35-6 or so at halftime. Just glad we tacked on a few more scores and shut them out in the second half. We really could have beat them by more than we did.

Arkansas State is another game that I'm sure our players and coaches would tell you could have been worse. We won 35-9 but really were about 45-50 points better than them. Had we played our A game we could have beat them 52-9 or so. The east was that much better than the west division last year.

Wow! I mean how do you argue with this type of logic? We had the third youngest team in FBS. Winning college football games is a tough business and winning on the road is even tougher. You don’t beat the snot out of everyone week in and week out. You take the W and move on. Charlotte has a pretty fine defense if you recall and we put it to them. We can’t score every possession and when we don’t, it isn’t a failure. You play to execute your preparation and hope that it is good enough to win. In the end, no one cares if you win by a little or a lot. Geez.

Completely agree. Some guys need to take a look at other games that are basically over at the half. How many times do you see a team up 35-0 at the half win 42-0? It’s called taking your foot off the gas, substituting liberally, conservative play calling, etc. A win is a win, especially by 3 scores or more.

Look how many teams we became vanilla or took the foot off the gas, not just as a staff calling plays but where the energy from the team was much lower. Look back at Troy. The entire second half it felt like the team and coaches were just wanting to milk the clock and get out of there. There were many times we get up by 17 or so and instead of putting the foot on the gas to open it up more we would just run the ball and milk the clock. With our conservative playcalling we still beat teams by double digits every week. Can you imagine what will happen if Drink keeps the foot on the gas, even when we have backups in the game, or speeds up the tempo more? This offense could be very dangerous. Hopefully we stay healthy and we finally see our offense on steroids.

Dude, you just don't get it. You control what you can control. You can't control the polls and you can't control the outcome of the game. You prepare to win but things like injuries, ejections, and bad calls happen. You prepare to play to win and let everything else take care of itself. It's cool that you want us to win every game by 40 and make a NY6 bowl. But if those things don't happen, the season and this team is not a failure.
Peace Out.

[bigdaddyg]

Many people also tend to forget or maybe fail to consider the fact that the teams we face recruit, practice and even compete. Everyone of them actually wants to win and generally don’t give up. Some of our opponents actually have good players like we do. How many fan bases out there would kill to have a program like ours? Maybe about 80 or so BCS level schools?

[Rick83]

One point about our giving up 3 FGs to UNCC; remember our defensive philosophy, at least in the recent past, was a bend but don't break mentality. So, opposing offenses could move the ball approaching the 20 before we would tighten up and stop the drives. The focus was to not give up scores on big plays. This of course results in giving up the the 3 points if they have a good FG kicker and UNCC did have a good one, perhaps still do. Hopefully that dude graduated...

[Stonewall]

I think he was a freshman.

[Rick83]

I think he was a freshman.

Well....damn! I wouldn't expect a shutout against them then.

[AppSt94]

To the post above about Drink leaving his foot on the gas. That’s not going to happen. We are not going to sacrifice much needed snaps for backups and risk injury to guys when the game is in hand. This isn’t a video game that you play in your mom’s basement.

[Stonewall]

I think he was a freshman.

Well....damn! I wouldn't expect a shutout against them then.

The kid is a beast , well for a kicker...

[NewApp]

To the post above about Drink leaving his foot on the gas. That’s not going to happen. We are not going to sacrifice much needed snaps for backups and risk injury to guys when the game is in hand. This isn’t a video game that you play in your mom’s basement.

Zactly!

[Rekdiver]

I think he was a freshman.

Well....damn! I wouldn't expect a shutout against them then.

The kid is a beast , well for a kicker...

He is an outstanding kicker who would start for most of the P5 teams. I really liked him.