Athlon 2019

[EastHallApp]

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.

The one position on the field where UNCC is head and shoulders above Alabama.

[AppStFan1]

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.

Duh. We all know there are things we can't control. If the things we can't control go against us we will likely lose some games. I'm sorry but had Satt returned, even with the super conservative playcalling, we had every reason to expect a SBC sweep with a win at UNC and a possible win against the Gamecocks. Nothing has changed here. Could we lose and things go against us? Sure. Should we expect to win every game this year heading in? Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with that expectation.

I have gone back and looked at the playcalling at NC State. We truly have a more gifted QB and a bunch of weapons every bit as good as NC State. Look at Sutton and tell me honestly if NC State has a returning WR better than him. They don't. We have a lot of talent. The reason some of our real young players have left is because of that talent and the depth in most areas. I'm not naive and I know that some things could go against us but as long as we stay healthy and don't lose key players I think the expectation in our lockerroom is that there is not a game we can't win. They expect to be able to win every week and we should. I never thought we would beat Penn State, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan the second time, etc but this year I fully expect a win over UNC and feel like South Carolina truly is a 50/50 game. There is nothing wrong with that.

I'm sure you will ask what my concerns would be. After ZT at QB I am not sure if we have a big time talent who can win games. I hope so but just don't know. We aren't deep on the DL in terms of experience for sure and are still undersized there. We are a little thin at CB and have unknowns there. I'm a little concerned about OL depth but if we are mostly concerned with depth and aren't poking holes at the starters that is a good sign because most teams have multiple spots in their starting lineup where they feel they have a hole in the SBC. We are lucky not to really have that.

[AppStFan1]

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.

The one position on the field where UNCC is head and shoulders above Alabama.

I agree. He was very good. He is at the right place because they don't get in the endzone very much but likely get in his range for a FG a good bit. lol

[ericsaid]

All true, but we have to beat the Carolina Blue leaning refs.

Considering it's a 2-1, shouldn't Sun Belt ref's be at UNC?

It's not a 2-1. There is one stand-alone game in Chapel Hill and then a home-and-home.

Ok so where will the refs be from?

The Big 10 refs screwed us at Penn State and we just about won anyway. It's likely to happen again, but I don't think UNC is good enough to beat us, even with refs in their corner. That said, I'm sure they will be ACC refs.

If this is the 1 for 1 game, Sun Belt ref's will be there. If this is the Money game and the other 2 are the 1 for 1, it will be ACC ref's.

I look back to the holding call on Meadors against Miami that held Cox up from getting to about 130 yards rushing by the second quarter on 8 carries as an example of the danger of having ACC ref's. Then you have the high-low blocks called, phantom holding, etc. That isn't to say that the ref's lost App the game but they killed momentum several times.

[appchicago]

Was listening to the latest (and probably last) PAPN podcast this morning and they were interviewing Mitch Light from Athlon. They ran through Athlon's bowl projections (which were pretty good, even if this sort of thing has to be taken with a massive grain of salt before the season even begins).

Anyway, they projected an App/Marshall New Orleans Bowl.

That would be amazing.

[beav910]

Was listening to the latest (and probably last) PAPN podcast this morning and they were interviewing Mitch Light from Athlon. They ran through Athlon's bowl projections (which were pretty good, even if this sort of thing has to be taken with a massive grain of salt before the season even begins).

Anyway, they projected an App/Marshall New Orleans Bowl.

That would be amazing.

I heard that episode too. I agree a bowl game with Marshall would be amazing.