meangreendork

Rice's passing attack is weak, though. 105th in the nation. Their defense against scoring is weaker than ours as well, ranked at something like 40th or so. Interestingly, their strength of schedule was ranked at 114th vs. ours at 89th, according to Phil Steele. More interestingly, Marshall's SoS was ranked 111th. Considering what our team did to MTSU and what MTSU did to Marshall, I think that the Phil Steele ranking was correct. Lots of people (myself included) only saw Marshall's record and didn't consider who they had on that record.

That's awesome of their fans to do that and considering that the failures of the program aren't really on the fans or players, more power to them. Except for tomorrow.

I am. I mean, it looks like Marshall thought MTSU would just hand them the game. MTSU handed them a loss instead. Our guys better go in there like it's another shot to beat Georgia.

Saw the whole game last night while playing a long session of Skyrim. Marshall isn't as good as their record and stats would lead you to believe. I took a look at their pre-MTSU record and a few things stood out: 1.) Most of the CUSA-East has losing records. Up until recently, two teams in the CUSA-East had zero wins under their belts. 2.) Marshall's record has some weak wins in it - the win over FAU and the win over UTSA. Marshall made a handful of mistakes, too. They didn't pressure Kilgore nearly enough. They didn't lock down the running game of MTSU, and their special teams had some serious problems that cost them the points needed to win the game. If they're supposed to be as good as their pre-MTSU record says, they didn't show it last night. They looked like some late Dickey/Dodge era stuff last night. But considering that their last season was 5-7 with a lot of high scoring games, that doesn't surprise me.

I love how it's totally clear that his lower body is not at all capable of controlling anything the weight of his upper body forces on it.

That's about what I figured. It does sort of boggle the mind to see programs like LaTech or USM take the tumble they have. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with capitalizing on it.

I was looking all their other threads over and still have yet to find an explanation as to how they go from their 2011-12 season (which was almost perfect) to their 2012-13 season, which was absolutely awful.

NT by 21. All things aside, this better not be a loss. Really, every game but Rice and Tulsa are games that are easily winnable as long as the team goes out there knowing they still have to go to work and that no game against any team is a given.

I wouldn't go there. Not based on football, at least. I did look at the other kids on the list. More North Texas offers and at least a handful of which UNT is the best school on the list. I'm hoping these guys see it the same way.

Many seem to agree with being 7 down. Some think it's more like 21 down.

Their offense was held to 7 points. Those other 14 were defensive scores, if I remember it accurately. Our team beat itself that night.

This is probably the worst thread ever.

The thing about Kilgore being pulled is that they might've done worse had been out there. He's not as quick as Grammer and the MTSU O-line was pretty porous. As hard as our defense hits and as much as they like to strip the ball, it could've ended up worse than 7-34.

If MTSU were as good as some of us thought, that might have been the 6 points needed to win. By skill, effort, and a bit of luck, the team only needed 14 points to win, but it would've been terrible if it came down to play like at Tulane or Ohio and that 6 points was crucial to the win. IIRC, one our guys got in Wright's face about his penalty, and for good reason. Some penalties are honest mistakes, but that one certainly wasnt.

Actually, that's 355U. For proper reference, 356C is the ideal color and reference point color. It's also the mandate color green on coated dull and gloss paper. For uncoated paper, 355U can be used if the paper will yield a darker color (like 357C) if 356U or 356C were to be used.

The other teams are stacking heavy against the run, you're right - long passes will be the way to keep the defense honest for both the run and for mid/short passes.

When you play the #9 team in the nation that sports a Heisman-quality RB and you play another team with one of the best QBs in the nation, they're gonna put some yards on you.

All this proposal talk is hilarious. The NCAA's AQ confs would want you to think it'd be better for everyone else when it's really an even bigger f-you to the other conferences than the current system. In the current system, a non-AQ conference might be able to claw its way in. In this proposal, it seems pretty clear that anyone not in the AQ club is not only told to go home when they get to door, they're also getting a letter taped to their mailbox at home.

It's not like it would've made a difference had the hits been called as penalties.

On defense, I think our guys can hold Tulane at bay and create opportunities for the offense. They picked apart Ball State's Wenning (who has performed better at tougher places than Apogee and was #10 in the nation at QB at 9/14). They held off Georgia's offense for half a game, who summarily went to LSU and beat them handily this past weekend, despite LSU being higher ranked. That same D also forced Georgia to rely a great deal on passing because their running game was weak even with a Heisman-candidate RB and equal caliber backup. My big worry is passing and running over the middle - our LBs and DBs have given up plays in that area and it has to be better covered. Forced fumbles and interceptions will be a huge part of stopping Tulane. Special teams will be big - forcing TOs and taking the ball back for 6 should buy our team the momentum it needs to seal this away. Offensively, I think that Thompson has the chops to put their DBs to shame and our WRs are helping shoulder the load that was solely on Brelan's shoulders last season. Adding more yards to the stats of the TEs will probably help spread the Tulane defense out, too. Our running game should have room to shine as the Tulane D has to back off to cover our receiving corps. I feel a bit shaky about our guys playing a game away, but they held it together at Georgia (considering) and they put up a good fight at Ohio even if they were still jelling. I think it runs close for the 1st quarter and part of the 2nd. After that, our depth and conditioning shine, the D locks down and our team wins by 14-21.

This is nice, but I'm sure our guys are less focused on a bowl game and focused more on winning the games to get to a bowl game.

It almost happened to Cristobal.

I don't think fan attendance will make a difference. It may actually make it even worse if their fans are the kinds to be loud at the worst possible times. Their team will have to win without whatever convoluted fan support they think they'll get.

Probably trying to feel better about the amount of money poured into the SMU football program and how it gets wasted just about every season.

Some of the posters pulled out the "if they didn't break those special teams moves on us" lines, as if special teams won't make or break a game. Come on, there are more than just the offense and defense phases of the game - there's special teams and that phase can radically change the momentum just like the other two phases. Lots of bellyaching to me. Had a few of the near-punt blocks gone our way, it would've been another 14 pts for the Mean Green.