NT93

I honestly don't know what prompted me to look at Washington State's schedule, but I did, and I noticed some strong similarities to UNT this season. 1) They are 5-7, we are 5-7 2) They lost 5 games by a total of 30 points: Arizona St. (11) UCLA (8), Stanford (3), Cal (4), Washington (4). We lost 5 games by a total of 28 points: UTSA (8), FIU (8), Tulane (7), Navy (3), Memphis (3). 3) They got beat pretty bad twice: Arizona (38) and Oregon (14). We got beast pretty bad twice: Cal (37) and SMU (24) Not trying to say we're on level with Washington St., but maybe we're the G5 version. No real point to this, I just thought it was interesting.

It seems to me we’ve done okay in the portal: Chandler Roger Ayo Adeyi Jay Maclin Mazin Richards Noah Rauschenberg Trey Cleveland Ethan Miner No doubt I’m overlooking some players. We are identifying people who can help the team, we just need more of them.

Pretty interesting to revisit. Several people had us losing to Cal, Navy, Memphis, Tulane, UTSA. and SMU. I would bet most thought the Cal game would have been closer and the Tulane game would have been worse. Navy and SMU about as expected. Probably varying opinions on how bad Memphis and UTSA would beat us, but I’m sure no one thought Memphis would have to score with 10 seconds left to beat us. Then there’s the FIU loss…🤷🏼‍♂️ Tip of the cap to @Jason Howeth @meanJewGreen @MeanGreenTexan and @El Paso Eagle Well done!

Congrats to SL. I think he’ll do a great job.

By “fine line” I mean that we lost 4 games that were one possession games very late in each game. You can pinpoint the reason(s) we lost those games, but the fact is each of them were very winnable.

I’m not sure if you mean this as a positive or a negative, but it illustrates the fine line between 5-7 and 9-3.

I agree, but he’s got to have a short leash.

The poll has been edited to choose the winner of SMU vs Tulane. But it appears all previous votes remain, so…

Navy was 4-4 in conference and gave Memphis and Air Force good games, so I guess there are lots of easier opponents. FIU is unexplainable, but I have no doubt we beat them later in the year as they regressed and we got better.

I think there’s a big difference in having shame in being 5-7 and being proud of it. I’m neither proud of nor ashamed of our season. The FIU game is the one that I just can’t reconcile. Win that game and we’re 6-6 and playing in a bowl game in our first season in a new conference. I liked not getting our ass handed to us as many times as usual. And neither of our 20+ point losses were like the past few years where the game is over by halftime and we score meaningless points to cut the deficit to 20. We were in the Cal game until the TD with 7 seconds left in the first half seemed to deflate us. (But, yes, they hammered us). And the SMU game was competitive until we gifted them field position in the red zone in the 3rd quarter. Game went downhill hill after that. Most people thought we’d finish around .500 and be middle of the pack in the AAC. We did that with the most difficult conference schedule and now people want to shift expectations. Bottom line for me is this: I’ll take the 2023 team over the 2022 team all day, every day. This offense would shred that defense and Aune would gift us a pick 6 or throw at the WR feet on a big 3rd or 4th down conversion. Again, not proud nor ashamed, but looking forward to next season.

Might have repeated that if we were still in CUSA.

Nixon played for a pretty highly regarded DC in Phil Bennett. He never played for Caponi, so I’m not really following the point you’re trying to make.

I agree. If you watched any of the Tulane vs UTSA game, they showed highlights of Tulane against us in our black helmets, white jerseys, and black pants. As an avid UNT fan I barely recognized it was us. No way a casual fan has a clue. And the obvious answer to the question posed by @GMG_Dallas is to go undefeated. If you have to contemplate more than half a second, you’re thinking too long.

We have complete control over what uniforms (colors) we wear and it’s very easy to make it happen. We don’t have total control over going undefeated and it’s obviously a very difficult goal that very few teams accomplish.

Futbol Took’em behind the woodshed🤣

This frustrates me more than our defense.

Didn’t they though? They didn’t give themselves a chance to win. Tulane defense looked stout. Our offense is pretty good.

You’d get no argument from me with any of those combos. My not very well stated point was really to just keep it simple with green and white.

All green or all white. It’s really that easy.

Not intending to speak for @Monkeypox but I thought he was talking in general terms and not just about this game. At this point, I agree with you that I wouldn’t play someone against UAB if it causes him to lose his redshirt. Earlier in the season I would play whoever gives us the best chance to win disregarding redshirt status. That’s a paradigm shift for me because of the portal and it’s possibly a negative unforeseen consequence of the portal as players potentially miss out on a redshirt season.

They seem similar to us: score a lot and give up a lot. I expect a high scoring game.

No better example of this than the start of the 2nd half against SMU. Defense forces a punt to end SMU’s opening possession and we fumble a few plays later to give SMU the ball inside the 20. That was a back and forth game up until that point, but SMU took advantage and it was down hill from there.

I understand offense much better than defense, but I haven’t noticed a lot this year when I feel like Caponi has called a bad defense for the given situation. One glaring exception was when we appeared to be playing man coverage at the end of the game against Memphis. I think a lot of people calling for Caponi’s head probably don’t know defense any better than I do, but they see it’s not working so they automatically blame the coach. I’d love for someone who really understands defense to give some examples of Caponi making bad play calls that are a detriment to the team. Because he runs a 3-3-5 is not an example. We knew when we hired him that’s what he’d run.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think any team in this conference would have trouble beating Tulane, Memphis, UTSA, and SMU in consecutive weeks.