***OFFICIAL UNT vs. SOUTH ALABAMA IN-GAME DISCUSSION***

[RBP79]

Eric Morris needed this win bad....good for all the Mean Green Nation.

Now if Caponi could pick up the Defense.

I was definitely a "Doubter".....

[GMG_Dallas]

3 hours ago, 97and03 said:

I couldn’t care less about yards, but 38 points is too many. 

I agree. Again though, what did it look like when the game was close? At 42-26 in the 4th, the defensive approach changed. 3rd quarter defense in a close game was very good as shown by the 7 points given up and 3 out of 4 possessions going 3-and-out. Another positive is stopping three 2-point conversion attempts. That would have never happened last year.

[GMG_Dallas]

2 hours ago, TheColonyEagle said:

Good take 👆

And I would tend to Agree....I think some (me included) are still shell shocked by how bad the D was last year, so to watch a game where they had no answer for our offense and we took complete control of the game in the 3rd quarter and still sat there in the 4th never feeling like we had the game won was frustrating.....

Hopefully we get the week 1 to week 2 improvement and the offense just keeps rolling

I had the same feeling that it was never won. Even with a couple minutes left, I saw what our offense did last year in a couple games and felt uneasy.

SFA will be a good test the week before Texas Tech. Here's to hoping the defense makes some more progress.

[El Paso Eagle]

Went back and watched the replay. Especially in the 4th quarter we played a lot of extreme prevent. There were several plays where the commentators mentioned that we had three defensive backs starting off probably 30 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Not that it would have made a monumental difference,  but there were a lot of junk yards after we got up for South Alabama. At times are looked to be improved from last year but we still are playing way too loose on the receivers and in year two still have not seemed to figure out how to cover swing routes and a scrambling quarterback.

Edited September 1 by El Paso Eagle

[wardly]

13 hours ago, Matt from A700 said:

I will be nicer than many here about the defense. They still aren't good. But they are better than Game 1 last year. While they gave up a lot of yards, they had key stops. Three three-and-outs in the first four seconds half possessions after no stops in the first was huge. I wasn't optimistic trailing at half with USA getting the ball first.

Also, we didn't give up too many big plays, and we didn't look embarrassingly bad too often like we did against Cal.

Well the good news is that Texas Tech may have a worse defense than us.

[southsideguy]

any place showing the replay of the game?

[NT80]

7 hours ago, TheColonyEagle said:

Good take 👆

And I would tend to Agree....I think some (me included) are still shell shocked by how bad the D was last year, so to watch a game where they had no answer for our offense and we took complete control of the game in the 3rd quarter and still sat there in the 4th never feeling like we had the game won was frustrating.....

Hopefully we get the week 1 to week 2 improvement and the offense just keeps rolling

I would like to get the backup freshman QBs some game work against SFA.   As good as we looked yesterday on offense, I feel we're only one key injury away from a doomed season.

[El Paso Eagle]

50 minutes ago, southsideguy said:

any place showing the replay of the game?

ESPN+

[wardly]

8 hours ago, NT93 said:

You (and others) don’t seem to be giving any credit or blame to USA.  We score 52 so our offense is awesome.  We give up 38 so our defense is trash.  Is it not possible that we scored 52 because USA’s defense is pathetic and gave up 38 because their offense is really good.  The reality is somewhere in the middle of those extremes.  

Maybe you are right. My major concern is Morris with his history of injuries. If he makes it thru the season injury free we could have a really good year with 8 wins or so. If he goes down the season flips.
 

[Jonnyeagle]

4 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

Went back and watched the replay. Especially in the 4th quarter we played a lot of extreme prevent. There were several plays where the commentators mentioned that we had three defensive backs starting off probably 30 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Not that it would have made a monumental difference,  but there were a lot of junk yards after we got up for South Alabama. At times are looked to be improved from last year but we still are playing way too loose on the receivers and in year two still have not seemed to figure out how to cover swing routes and a scrambling quarterback.

What did you see with the offense that was different?

[3_n_out]

3 hours ago, Jonnyeagle said:

What did you see with the offense that was different?

Probably a really good former P4 caliber QB

[3_n_out]

3 hours ago, NT80 said:

I would like to get the backup freshman QBs some game work against SFA.   As good as we looked yesterday on offense, I feel we're only one key injury away from a doomed season.

Would be nice, but with a defense like ours….it makes it really hard

[NorthTexasWeLove]

4 hours ago, NT80 said:

I would like to get the backup freshman QBs some game work against SFA.   As good as we looked yesterday on offense, I feel we're only one key injury away from a doomed season.

I would like to see EM not run our QB. Seems unnecessary in this system. 

[NT80]

40 minutes ago, NorthTexasWeLove said:

I would like to see EM not run our QB. Seems unnecessary in this system. 

Yes.  USA Coach said the same of his QB.   

Morris ran 5 of UNT's 34 rushing attempts.

Gio ran 13 of USA's 33 attempts

[UNT Family Man]

13 hours ago, NT93 said:

You (and others) don’t seem to be giving any credit or blame to USA.  We score 52 so our offense is awesome.  We give up 38 so our defense is trash.  Is it not possible that we scored 52 because USA’s defense is pathetic and gave up 38 because their offense is really good.  The reality is somewhere in the middle of those extremes.  

Nothing new will be learned next week with that opponent. Weeks three and four will give a better idea of— you are right or I am. 

[3_n_out]

I do agree the defense played a bit better and seemed tougher compared to last year. They had timely stops in the second half, tightened up and kept fighting. However, they haven’t quite solved the poor tackling issues that plagued them last season. And, I don’t understand how this defense has three safeties…THREE…yet give up deep passes. The total yardage and points given up is quite disheartening since that’s all we saw last season. Would be nice to have some “comfortable “ wins, but the optics from the current defense suggests otherwise. It early, but I hope it’ll be proven wrong. I’ll gladly eat my words. If not, Caponi should never be allowed to step foot in Texas again. 

[NT93]

1 hour ago, UNT Family Man said:

Nothing new will be learned next week with that opponent. Weeks three and four will give a better idea of— you are right or I am. 

I don’t think it’s a matter of one person is right and the other is wrong.  I think it’s funny to make a blanket statement that our offense is awesome because we scored 52 and our defense is trash because we gave up 38 without considering the opponent’s offense or defense.  Based on their performances on Saturday, I don’t think Wyoming or Tech will tell us much about our offense.  They both gave up over 500 yards and almost 50 points.  Now, if Wyoming goes for 38 I’ll definitely agree that our defense is trash.  They had 52 yards of total offense until their last drive of the game.  Honestly, if SFA scores 21+ I’ll be pretty concerned with the defense.  My point being, who you score 52 against matters, as does who you give up 38 against.

[El Paso Eagle]

6 hours ago, Jonnyeagle said:

What did you see with the offense that was different?

Just how smooth Chandler was. He seems to be able to take in multiple reads with no panicking. 

[El Paso Eagle]

2 hours ago, UNT Family Man said:

Nothing new will be learned next week with that opponent. Weeks three and four will give a better idea of— you are right or I am. 

I'm hoping we get a chance to see our two freshman QBs get some live game snaps.

[outoftown]

How i see it:

why did UNT win:

1. because it has a great offense that worked continously and kept the shooting in the foot stuff to an absolute minimum

2. Because It got a special teams score

3. Because when USAs offense shot itself in the foot UNTs defense at times didn't let them off the hook (that is the best I can say about the defense)

 

However looking at it from a USA perspective is enlightening I think. Why did USA lose? Most of it was on the coaches, not the talent or players.

1. Because in three consecutive drives early in the second half the playcaller gave up on the run after first down. That is not necessary against UNT. Yes UNT had missed assignments galore against the pass, but passes are always higher variance than running. And against this UNT defense, if you run it twice, chances are you'll get what you need to move the chains. you have two passes drop, your drive will stall. That is BBBBad in a shootout and resulted in them having to chase.

2. Because USAs Offense shot itself in the foot several times with untimely/unnecessary penalties that turned potential TDs into FGs and stopped drives.

3. Because they started chasing 2-point conversions unnecessarily early and kept coming up empty because they tried to pass in those short field situations.

4. Because they lost the only turnover of the game for a TD

 

In summary I think that it was a great win by UNTs offense. Could hardly have done much more and since its never easy to win on the road, it oughta be enjoyed. However I am not so sure it will be all that predictive of the future games in the season. It was still a win that took a bit of luck and where the opponent probably has missgivings on the coaches game management. Take those coaches errors out and the winner becomes a total crapshoot here. I am really worried about what happens when a decent running offense tries to run the clock against this defense and gives the offense less rythm as i think such an offense might score almost every drive. However, I have at least hope that the backfield will be better once 3 DBs come back. one can only hope that this will then also allow to put more attention to defending the box against the run. While its not completely outlandish to think that might happen, I will not be holding my breath.

 

Edited September 2 by outoftown

[3_n_out]

3 hours ago, outoftown said:

“It was still a win that took a bit of luck and where the opponent probably has missgivings on the coaches game management. Take those coaches errors out and the winner becomes a total crapshoot here.”

Discipline and execution is a big part of football. As been noted by some on here, the defense stepped up and held together especially in the second half. Those early 3-and-outs early in the second half were huge. So, some credit is deserving for them. 
USA coaches also probably saw how potent and efficient the offense was. Because of that, they may have felt they needed to be as close as possible to get it within one score. So, I don’t believe the coaching was poor on their part, just how effective our offense was. That and timely stops on D…1-0.

Edited September 2 by 3_n_out

[GMG_Dallas]

4 hours ago, outoftown said:

2. Because USAs Offense shot itself in the foot several times with untimely/unnecessary penalties that turned potential TDs into FGs and stopped drives.

3. Because they started chasing 2-point conversions unnecessarily early and kept coming up empty because they tried to pass in those short field situations.

 

2.  UNT also had a bad penalty that kept a USA drive going. UNT up 42-26 with about 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter when UNT gets called for pass interference on 3rd and 8. Instead of 4th and 8 and possibly punting from their 27, USA goes on to score on that drive.

3. USA's first 2 point conversion attempt was to get the lead to 7 points. It made sense at the time, even if a bit early. An extra point made it a 6 point lead at 20-14 so there was no benefit to going for the extra point at that time, especially if it was going to be a shootout. Give credit where it's due. UNT's goal line defense held up. Even if you think they should have ran, Lopez is a dual threat QB and he was contained on all 3 attempts to the point that there were no lanes for him to scramble. The defense remained disciplined on all 3 attempts.

We played an FBS program on the road. Not an FCS program at home like so many others did in week 1. I'm not going to downplay that.

[outoftown]

32 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

2.  UNT also had a bad penalty that kept a USA drive going. UNT up 42-26 with about 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter when UNT gets called for pass interference on 3rd and 8. Instead of 4th and 8 and possibly punting from their 27, USA goes on to score on that drive.

True, but i would still feels that USAs offense had more drive killer penalties than UNT had drive prolonging ones on defense. And also on offense UNT had less penalties than USA had on offense. Was a big part in winning this game. It does reflect well on how the coaches teach certain things.

However you can't bet on your opponents giving you similar false starts etc down the road. It'll happen sometimes, but as the season progresses teams are likely to become cleaner

Edited September 2 by outoftown

[Venson]

On 8/31/2024 at 6:33 PM, rcade said:

Does South Alabama's sideline brick look like DATCU to anyone else?

I went to the game so I am not sure how it looked on TV or online. If you are referring to design, the sideline brick is a lot like DATCU. However, if you are referring to color, not so much. Theirs is a much more red brick. Another thing I noted was that it emptied out at halftime like DATCU when the band parents leave. So, maybe their fan base is as jaded as ours. I was surprised because they had the lead. There were so many students leaving during halftime that I thought maybe they could go out during the halftime and come back in when halftime was over. I had to ask one of the security personnel if that was the case and they said "No. Once they leave, there is no return."

[GMG_Dallas]

39 minutes ago, outoftown said:

True, but i would still feels that USAs offense had more drive killer penalties than UNT had drive prolonging ones on defense. And also on offense UNT had less penalties than USA had on offense. Was a big part in winning this game. It does reflect well on how the coaches teach certain things.

However you can't bet on your opponents giving you similar false starts etc down the road. It'll happen sometimes, but as the season progresses teams are likely to become cleaner

I agree you can't bank on opponents making mistakes. Do teams really get cleaner as the year goes on, though? I can't say I've ever seen an undisciplined team become disciplined in one season...