TSU88

Ok, a few random observations: There aren’t enough superlatives to describe Flacco’s play. Love his pocket presence. That leap over a defender to score the TD was awesome, as was his 77 yard scamper. I like our receiving corp, but would like to see TE Clark become more integrated into the offense. Shane Simpson looks good at RB. I also like his pass catching dimension. Would like to see a little more of Yeedee at RB though. Kudos to the offensive line, which I thought overall did a nice job on pass pro & opening some running lanes Ok, so the D gave up 380 yards on the ground, but Citadel ran the ball 70 times!!! If you run 70 times, you’re going to accumulate some yards on the ground, & you’re bound to break 1 or 2 long runs. We’ve now faced 2 teams, Morgan & Citadel, who have collectively set the forward pass back by about 75 years. We’re lucky the Citadel missed a wide open receiver for a TD early in the game. Speaking of Citadel, I don’t like the fact we even scheduled them in the 1st place, notwithstanding we got an impressive W. They run that gimmicky triple option, which none of our other opponents do. Plus, our D has got to be dog tired, after defending against 70 running plays. I hope we escaped without any injuries. Huge game next week at home vs Stoney Brook, which rallied from a 21-0 deficit today to beat Villanova. We’re 3-1 & 1-0 in conference, while they come in at 4-1, & 2-0 in conference. I hope the weather is nice & that we get a bigger crowd than today. Student section wasn’t even full today, and, as usual, many of them were AWOL in the 2nd half.

7,323 attendance. I did a great job of setting the line at 7,500 in a different thread!!! I’m off to Vegas baby I hope we get a bigger crowd next week vs Stoney Brook, which is setting up to be a pivotal conference game with each team coming in with only 1 loss

Beat Mercer today to improve to 1-2. (Mercer earlier beat a highly ranked Samford). Their L’s are to highly ranked Wofford (which lost by 3 on the road to Wyoming) & Chattanooga (which is about to go 4-0). Both L’s were close; by 7 to Wofford & by 1 to Chattanooga. Citadel averages 60 rush attempts per game. They have 2 RB’s who each average 73 ypg & their QB averages near 50 ypg (this doesn’t count 2 other RB’s who combine to average about 60 ypg). They only throw the ball on average 10x a game, completing 4. Wondering if we purposely scheduled them coming off our off week, in order to allow extra time to prepare for their running attack. Maybe our 3rd-string QB (Rose) is running the scout team offense in preparation? Defending a triple option offense would seem to require discipline on D. This concerns me. Might be another game where the O is going to have to put up big numbers

If the line were set at 7,500 attendance, who would take the over?

I think the RB from that 2007 Navy team just scored another TD against us 😳

Not sure if UD is bad; perhaps just average. RI also scored 49 points (and lost) to a bad FBS team in Connecticut. They play Harvard this week, which could be a good game. The real meat of URI’s schedule is coming up, when they play Maine, Elon, JMU, UNH & Stony Brook.

I think that’s a legit concern about our DB’s. Last week, Citadel’s QB completed 5 passes...for 167 yards. That’s an average of 33 yards per completion, though I think the numbers are somewhat skewed by the fact 1 of the completions was a 77 yd TD. Still, the other 4 completions averaged over 22 yds each.

Great to see that. Is this the 1st time we’ve been ranked since the 2013 season? Pretty amazing that 28% of the top 25 teams are from the CAA. We still have to play 4 of the other 6 ranked CAA teams, having already played Nova. 3 of those games are at home (JMU, Maine & Stony Brook) with Elon on the road. Got to hand it to Rhode Island. Looks like this is a good year not to be playing them.

Well, Morgan’s W tonight leaves them at 1-3, but good for them; undoubtedly a big W for them, especially since they are ineligible for postseason play

I would think Morgan’s W is good for us, no? Albany barely beat Morgan last week & is fighting for dear life vs St. Francis tonight. I’m glad Maine lost today; a W over an FBS team (albeit a bad one, in Central Michigan) would have given them a leg up on us (though they only lost by 12, while we lost to our FBS opponent by 31). Stony Brook (3-1) plays Nova next week, so it’ll be good for us that 1 of them is obviously going to lose next weekend

I can’t say definitively, but I’m not sure there is any precedent for an 8-3 CAA team not making the playoffs. All this talk of playoffs is quite presumptuous, but it sure beats the alternative. Holding serve on this upcoming homestand, which would leave us 5-1, would be a great start.

Which is precisely why if we go 8-3 the polls don’t matter

History does bears out that the CAA is a multiple bid league, which should work in our favor. I agree that 8-3 gets us into the playoffs, though I’m skeptical 7-4 gets us in,even though New Hampshire will make the playoffs at 7-4, or even 6-5. So, at least at this early juncture of the season, the polls, IMHO, aren’t relevant. Bottom line...take care of our business & finish 8-3 (far from a given, but room for optimism after last Saturday) & we’re virtually guaranteed to make the playoffs, which is all that matters in the end.

Galling, but the solution is simple...JUST WIN BABY!!!

TF54, we also did a poor job of covering the TE vs Morgan. Of course, Morgan’s passing game was so generally inept that it didn’t make much difference in that game. Speaking of Morgan, they lost 30-27 to one of our future opponents this year, Albany. Albany’s QB, Vincent Testaverde Jr (yes, Vinnie’s son) had one of the strangest stat lines I’ve ever seen for a QB-15 of 43, for over 300 yards, 2 TD’s & 4 INT’s. As good as our O has been, I think it can be even better if/when Clark & Dorsey play & if we can get more games from Shane Simpson like the one yesterday. It is possible we’re going to have to win games in shootout “last team to have the ball wins the game” style. If that’s what it takes, so be it.

Since you brought it up, the history of this type of “logic” has it’s roots in, of all things, the 1936 Slippery Rock U football team. A sportswriter wrote a satirical piece how SRU should be the national champ that year, based on a similar pattern of game results as those in my TU post. So, modesty prevents me from taking credit for my clever post, assuming of course anyone found it even remotely clever in the 1st place.

Great minds obviously think alike. What that has to do with us, I haven’t a clue 🤔

I’m one who has been skeptical of some of our recent transfers (Mahalak, Olsen, Tsimis, CJ Williams, Kilgore) who for one reason or another have underproduced, or simply not produced at all. But I agree that yesterday’s W was in large measure due to the production of transfers. Lets face it, other than maybe North Dakota State, any FCS team that is successful is going to sprinkle in some transfers. There are always going to be FBS kids looking to transfer, for a myriad of reasons. I believe we had a number of transfers who were key contributors during the 2013 championship game season.

We beat Nova, who beat Temple, who beat MD, who beat Texas, who beat USC. So, that means we’re better than USC, right?🤔

Mat, were there really 1-2K Towson fans at the game, as RA claims?

No doubt, the biggest regular season W since 2013. I think you might have to edit your top-50 list to shoehorn this one in.

Huge W, on the road, versus #10th ranked FCS team which earlier beat FBS Temple. There’s finally an elite QB named Flacco😉. Nice to see the running game come alive. Also nice to see we didn’t fold up our tent after falling behind 14-0. Hope we’re ranked after this W. Savor this, enjoy the off week & then come out & take care of business in home opener (hopefully before a big crowd) vs Citadel

We’re getting $450K to play the Aztecs in 2021.

While early in the season, I still see this as a fork in the road game. Win & we’re 2-1 coming home; lose & we’re 1-2 & starting to feel like another ho-hum year. Lets face it-if we lose this Saturday, our margin for error in making the playoffs is razor thin. We’d likely have to go 7-1 (maybe 6-2) the rest of the season. I’m not particularly interested in another 6-5 season; been there, done that. If that’s the goal then we’re setting for & accepting mediocrity. Our D obviously isn’t as good as the Morgan game would suggest. I’d like to think it isn’t as bad as the Wake game would suggest (we gave up in excess of 500 yards I believe). Honestly, while I hope I’m wrong, I believe the D is closer to the Wake end of the spectrum then the Morgan end. I have a feeling of dread that the Nova QB is going to do surgery on us.

Hey, a lot of us (including me) thought we’d be LSU’s tackling dummies. Of course, that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. If Wake dropped 51 on us (yeah, I know, 14 were on punt returns) I would think Florida might eclipse 60. I wonder if we are getting a quarter million or more?