2018 Schedule Thoughts

wardly · June 11, 2018

Guys, what concerns me is that we won every close game last year, several on the last play. That takes a certain amount of just plain old luck.I think we caught lightning in a bottle last year , and cannot overstate the value of Moore. I still think we field a competitive team,but are looking at a 7 win season. Losses at home to SMU and FAU, on the road at Arkansas,UAB, and ODU.

TheColonyEagle · June 11, 2018

55 minutes ago, wardly said:

Guys, what concerns me is that we won every close game last year, several on the last play. That takes a certain amount of just plain old luck.I think we caught lightning in a bottle last year , and cannot overstate the value of Moore. I still think we field a competitive team,but are looking at a 7 win season. Losses at home to SMU and FAU, on the road at Arkansas,UAB, and ODU.

I would say a team full of underclassmen yes....it can take luck. The offensive POY was a sophomore and as great as he was...he still threw too many picks. We depended on Moore last year because this offense full of sophomores didn't finish drives at times lasts season. I expect more TDs next year.

Wouldn't you expect those same players with another year under their belt to overcome some of the issues from last season, learn from it and grow? Why would we expect to see less wins with basically the same team coming back...all with more experience? This years' players have the same names but they have another year of experience and time in this system. We're not going from year 1 to 2, we're going from year 2 to 3.

Why would we not expect forward momentum? If I compare this team to what we've always seen with UNT then sure...7 wins is reasonable. If I don't use the past as a lense to judge the 2018 team then 7 wins = disappointment.

#Hit10

Edited June 11, 2018 by TheColonyEagle

wardly · June 12, 2018

Defense suspect. I hope I am wrong, but where do you see major improvements in defense that gave up about 7 touchdowns per game [I don't remember exact number ]? Not talking about Iowa, but SMU,FAU,Troy?

SilverEagle · June 12, 2018

2 hours ago, wardly said:

Defense suspect. I hope I am wrong, but where do you see major improvements in defense that gave up about 7 touchdowns per game [I don't remember exact number ]? Not talking about Iowa, but SMU,FAU,Troy?

You don't get burned deep as often as our defense did unless you have poor DB coverage or your DL is not chasing the QB around. On many occasions we had pretty good pressure from the outside, but not up the middle. But a good amount of those burnings had to do with poor DB coverage too.

Get one aspect of that defense cured and we're 10-2 for sure.

Get them both corrected (mostly) and we could be seeing a 12-0 season.

TheColonyEagle · June 12, 2018

4 hours ago, wardly said:

Defense suspect. I hope I am wrong, but where do you see major improvements in defense that gave up about 7 touchdowns per game [I don't remember exact number ]? Not talking about Iowa, but SMU,FAU,Troy?

I agree with what Silver said above. We don't need a drastic improvement in defense. Generally the getting burned deep is a positioning problem: i.e. mental. That can be fixed with experience in a system. (A system by the way that was in year 1 last year if I remember correctly) But yes we need to improve. My argument is more consistency on offense will help our defense. In the 4 games you're talking about, our big losses, our offense was just as big a problem as our defense. Not enough points and too many turnovers:

vs SMU - We scored 10 pts in the 1st half (shutout in the 2nd qtr) and only had 17 pts through 3 qtrs. Plus we had 2 INTs

vs FAU (1) - We scored 7 pts in the 1st half (shutout in the 1st qtr) Plus we had 2 INTs

vs FAU (2) - We got SHUT OUT in the 1st half. (That can't be understated....this offense went into the lockeroom at halftime of the Conference Championship with a big goose egg on the board). Plus we had 2 INTS

vs Troy - Better...we scored 20 pts in the first half but had 5 turnovers in that game. And in the 3rd quarter we lost the game. We only had 3 points while Troy scored 3 TDs on one long drive but also 2 drives of 27 yards, and 13 yards

We are not going to have 2002 or 2013 UNT D. But our offense should be powerful enough to constantly put pressure on the other team and I would expect that to happen with these players coming back in their 3rd year in the system. As good as the offense was....there is still a lot of room for improvement. Namely finishing drives and reducing turnovers.

Edited June 12, 2018 by TheColonyEagle