BillySee58

I feel like you took the “discourse is terrible” comment personally. I just scanned through the comments plus was going off of previous comments in other threads when I made my comment. Wasn’t meant to be personal or adversarial. Who is your favorite QB isn’t even discourse.

I also agree on Rogers. I think Fine, Morris, and Rogers were/are all very good college quarterbacks and I like the conversation of evaluating their quality here because I think it is a really good discussion, as long as we are just evaluating quality. Because if the conversation is “who accomplished more as a Mean Green QB” then obviously the answer is Fine and there’s no room for discussion regarding the Chandlers. Not sure of the exact number attributable to Fine, but we were sacked 136 times in the 52 games he was on the roster. Call it 120 sacks on Fine in the 49 games he played. That’s about 2.5 sacks taken per game by Fine. And it wasn’t just because we had a bad offensive line. He held on to the ball too long at times throughout his career. Obviously he made up for it, with his performance on the drive being an example that he could get the ball out when he needed to. This year our line hasn’t exactly been the pillar of consistency in pass protection or with health. Still, Morris has been sacked just 5 times in 5 games and beyond that he just has a better feel on when to climb, when to get out, and having that internal clock to know when to get the ball out. Not to mention doing this with two of our top three outside receivers missing a lot of time. Throwing to Guyton and Bussey on the outside compared to Blair Conwright and Nick Rempert is a material factor to consider as well. And also, if we’re just evaluating quality of play, Morris has mostly faced bad defenses here but he does have a 461 yard passing performance in Waco against a highly ranked Baylor team on his resume. Again, if we’re evaluating the body of work in a Mean Green career there is no argument. But if we’re just evaluating who is the better QB, that opens up going off of all available sample. Morris’ TCU career he completed 65.5% of his passes and is right at the same number here at UNT, which leads credence that this isn’t a fluke what we have seen in just five games. He has three 400-yard passing performances in his 14 career college starts which is as many as Fine had in 48. Definitely understand the desire for more sample size to solidify any stance, even qualitative. Morris will never surpass Fine’s UNT totals. These three are all really good Mean Green QBs and they all have put together really high levels of QB play here that feel and are pretty comparable. That’s why there’s a discussion, which is subject to and absolutely allowed to change.

Sure, there’s some room for interpretation. But it’s pretty clear that if the question was something along the lines of “Who ya got as having the best legacy at QB in school history?” or anything along the lines that would involve full body of work, of course the 4-year starter is clearing the guy who has played 5 games here, or the guy who played just one season here. There is no conversation involving full body of work that could be realistically be made between Fine and the other two right now. Who is better, who you would pick between the three, who is the better QB, those kind of questions that center around quality, not quantity are the only ones that can be had between these guys at this point.

Morris is the better quarterback and everyone sees it, whether they want to admit it or not. The discourse here is terrible. Fine being here for four years or Morris being here for potentially just one is irrelevant to who is the better quarterback. Same for bowl wins. I know we really want one badly, but there are a lot of variables to winning a bowl game outside of how good the QB is. Who is better at playing the position? Fine being here for four years or being a great story doesn’t factor into that determination. Morris has him beat in terms of pocket presence, accuracy, arm strength, and ability to read a defense. We can wait to crown Morris until the season is over, but he is better as a QB than Fine. Hopefully he plays up to his ability the rest of the way, because if he doesn’t then it’ll just be a wasted opportunity for this team and program. I fully expect him to keep it up though.

According to the SRS (simple rating system) on sports reference, the 2024 team’s current rating is +3.67 which is good for 6th best in program history as it stands, behind ‘77, ‘78, ‘67, ‘66, and ‘59. I like the SRS because it gives a good approximation of where a team stands relative to the field in college football that season, with strength of schedule and margin of victory playing roles. For example, SRS does not rate the early 2000s team very favorably among the entire field of FBS teams those years, despite winning the relatively weak Sun Belt. 2017 is a similar story. Meanwhile those late 50s-70s teams were performing well against legit competition. According to SRS, this is our best team since returning to the FBS and one of only four teams with a positive SRS in that time frame. 2024 - +3.67 2013 - +3.05 2002 - +0.61 2018 - +0.58

Tulsa allowed an average of 366 yards coming into yesterday. We racked up 620, 254 over their season average against other opponents. South Alabama has averaged allowing 421 yards since we played them. We had 550, 129 over their season average against other opponents. Wyoming has averaged allowing 375 yards per game outside of when they played us. We had 534 against them, 159 over their season average against other opponents. We are an extremely large part of why these teams are ranked so low defensively. These defenses not being great doesn’t change the fact that we are exposing them in ways that other teams are not. We are outperforming their other opponents by very large amounts.

This is a simplistic outlook. Stats give us data that serve as a foundation for predicting future win/loss outcomes. If you choose not to use that data, that’s fine. Just waiting for the result to happen is cool. But to act like stats don’t serve any application and reducing to a quick, snappy statement like “stats are for dads” is just a very short-sighted approach.

I agree. Feels clear now. Ward, Conwright, and Aaron is a serviceable outside trio but not much behind them. Hopefully we can give Morris an A+ for playing without two of them for most of these last two games, but also not make him have to deal with that again.

South Alabama is a good team. If Lopez plays against Ohio, they beat them instead of losing to them by a touchdown. Then they had to play at LSU. ESPN’s matchup predictor gives South Alabama a 65% chance or better to win each of their remaining games, except at Louisiana where it’s 55%. When the season is over we’ll look back at that opener as one of our better non-conference wins in recent years. But definitely get your point. We have a good team. Bad or average teams don’t do what we just saw. We have 3 good teams left on our schedule. Hope we make those opportunities count now that we have the team to do so.

Well put. I think a lot of fans are waiting for the perfect Mean Green football team to get behind. This one isn’t perfect but they’re playing really well and have earned credit for their accomplishments and support.

I wonder if there is something in common between the top two guys leading the nation in passing touchdowns

Oh no! We have to endure quarterback play that produces school records and leave the replacing of that QB up to the coach who has developed 2 of the top 5 passers in the FBS right now!

That team was just never the same after that La Tech loss. Maybe that could be chalked up to Seth rumor mill factors, but that team just wasn’t very good after that 4-0 start. Only went 5-4 from there while struggling to beat a 1-11 UTEP team by 3, struggling to beat a 3-9 UTSA team by 3, playing neck and neck for 3 quarters at home against a 2-11 Rice team, and losing to a 4-8 ODU team after starting up 28-0 on them. Week in and week out in that second half of the season the execution was just really underwhelming given the expectation that team set early on. Which speaks to the point of “it’s too early” with this team. If they play like they have the last two weeks (or even like they did against South Alabama), they probably go 8-4 or maybe even 9-3 against this schedule. But just glad we’re even having this type of conversation two years into Morris’ tenure.

Chandler is tied for 2nd in school history in career 400-yard passing games with 2, in just his first 5 starts. Also, since that last pick against Tech where the ball hit off our receiver and got batted up 15 feet in the air, Morris has thrown 88 passes with 8 touchdowns against 0 interceptions. The outside receiver play has been pretty unreliable with Ward and Aaron out/limited during that time. Really excited to see us get some guys healthy and back to full speed over this bye week.

@WanderingEagle and I are back to discuss the Mean Green victory and game 2 of the home stand against Tulsa Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/S-XQ5RAU6pk

Never popped up anywhere else. Left summer of 2015 after his redshirt freshman season and never showed up on any other college’s roster after that.

If Chandler Morris plays: UNT 41 Tulsa 24 If Chandler Morris doesn’t play: UNT 20 Tulsa 27

Something to keep in mind with Spruiells is that he still has a redshirt available. Allen and Brice have already redshirted but Spruiells could take a redshirt this season as long as he plays in 4 games or less. Might be the smart play given the ramp up these guys will likely need to get back in playing shape.

Absolutely. One of those plays that it’s easy to overlook the athletic difficulty because of how good these guys are. Excited to see if he can top it this week.

That’s the spirit!

Exactly. It’s a great way to ensure you will be mad throughout the regularly scheduled entertainment. I don’t know if it’s more of a human-nature thing or just a scarred UNT fan thing but it is pretty apparent people would rather bitch about the team doing poorly than give them their praise when they do well. Especially with someone like Caponi who our fanbase has completely turned on. It’s one thing that this message board gets flooded with criticism when the defense doesn’t do well, and that we don’t give him much credit when he does do well. It’s another that we have stopped actually analyzing the defense completely. We can admit it will take time to earn good graces back while also paying close attention to what is actually happening, and be honest in our evaluation even if it contradicts feelings we have going in.

Oh, swing and a miss! That Wyoming offense only picked up 240 yards and only scored 10 points.

Ugh, hate that it’s even arguable we have another game as bad as Cal on our resume this season. Surely nothing more like that, right?

They’re better than 8 other teams on our schedule. Means nothing if we don’t start playing better but we absolutely are capable of winning a decent amount of games this year. Now let’s play like it and not be the team that South Alabama fans wonder how they lost to us.

@WanderingEagle and I are back, facepalming with our left hand and holding our talons high in our right. Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vun84GP25Cs Audio Only: https://sites.libsyn.com/482808/mean-green-gridiron-2024-episode-5-wyoming