This will be quick. And mostly a USF review, because I don't know very much about the Citadel, and also, we are playing, I mean really, its the Citadel. Supposed to be the only easy win we get all year, and it really needs to be an easy win.
South Florida was encouraging to me for a couple of reasons. First, obviously, games where we'e won with defense have been few and far between for the past 11 years. And secondly, it was just good to see this team fight and gut out a close win that could have gone the other way. I am fairly concerned about the offense, which I still think is more talented than many others seem to think. However, our offensive line is clearly not good, and we lost two starters from that unit in the first quarter to injury. So it is difficult to evaluate the offense. And it (hopefully) will still be difficult after tomorrow, as we should roll to a comfortable 45-14 win or something similar, even with a bad offense. After the game tomorrow and 2 extra practice weeks before Temple, the Temple game should provide a much better chance to see where the offense is in its development.
And to be clear, I expect a bad offense this season and that would not be a sign of much concern in my opinion. The reason I'm concerned right now is I am worried we may be even worse than just bad. The transition will be difficult, and we don't really have the right pieces to do what the current staff wants right now. But I still believe our talent is good enough to cobble together just a regular "bad" offense, and not a terrible one. South Florida is among the worst defenses we will face all year, and 250 yards and 14 points is... not good. But, maybe we can chalk that up to the scrambling offensive line having to shuffle a couple players unexpectedly, and hopefully we will see continued improvement as the year goes on. Otherwise, expect a lot of games where we score 7 or 10 points, and it'll be a long year.
But I'm optimistic that we can be bad, and not terrible.
Anyway, as I said, I know next to nothing about the Citadel. So far this year they have played two pretty good FCS teams (Elon and Towson) and lost both by just 1 TD each. Recently, they have not been terribly good at the FCS level, going 5-6 last year. They run option, which you think we'd be familiar defending. They did play Bama respectably for a half last year (might have been more about Bama sleepwalking than the Citadel doing anything). Ultimately, in their last 3 games vs FBS teams, they were eventually blown out, although two of those were Bama and Clemson. (The third was UNC). In 2015 they pulled one of the all time upsets in my opinion, beating South Carolina 23-22. So, the unthinkable can happen, but I hope... HOPE... we have enough to make this a comfortable win.
As always, let's go Jackets!
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