USFBulls727

It's not, and whether we won by 1 or 100 over SJSU and Stony Brook, it probably would have made little to no difference. Beating those two teams, or the vast majority of the teams on our schedule this year for that matter, probably don't impress the pollsters. I'm really surprised anybody can look at our schedule, and try to map out a path to the playoffs. If SOS was a total non-factor, then there's a path. But SOS is a factor, and absolutely should be, and our's sucks.

I'm with you here.Being ranked does give us more press and exposure, but the folks on here who are hoping everybody in front of us has three losses by season's end, and that all of our opponents go undefeated until they play us, or that UMass winning will somehow have a big impact on our ranking, are absolutely dreaming. Probably good entertainment for fans of other teams that poke their heads in here to visit this blog. Just win a conference title for once, and I'd be really happy with that.

Anytime rankings are being discussed on this board, I honestly can't tell when people are being sarcastic or funny, or when they're being serious. That FSU game last year is irrelevant now, but we were trounced in that game. It was over by halftime, and Cook must have averaged 10 yards a pop. Just look at our schedule through the first 8 games: San Jose State, Stony Brook, Illinois, Temple, East Carolina, Cincinnati, Tulane. This is just an absolute garbage schedule. An unrealistic amount of attrition would have to happen for there to be any significant jump in the polls. Not sure what the obsession with the polls is about anyway. Win out, we probably get the NY6. There's absolutely nothing we can do to get ourselves anywhere near the playoffs this year. Triple B guessed that Florida will jump us, which seems completely reasonable to me. Florida did something that we may not even get the opportunity to do this year, and that's beat a ranked team, and I honestly don't see much to complain about if they do jump us.

Much better than anybody we've played

Definitely possible. Beating a ranked SEC team will get more attention than anything we've done this year. Just being undefeated probably won't be enough for us to climb much. Western Michigan had several 3-loss teams, and even a 4-loss team ahead of them at the end of the regular season in 2016. We will likely see a similar scenario play out here.

Will probably end up being the signature win for the AAC this year. SMU will probably be a tough out for any AAC team as well....

Will be interesting to see if Mississippi State goes from being unranked to leapfrogging us. They are 3-0, and smoked #12 LSU today.

Just never know which offense will show up against Temple, the Stony Brook version or the Illinois version. I'm somewhat confident we have turned the corner now, but not totally convinced yet. Would like to see the defense tested against a good offense as well....which hasn't happed yet.

Yet we still put up 680 yards even with the sloppiness that you mentioned. Pretty amazing turnaround from the Stony Brook effort to tonight. Love that we have an easy stretch.....including Temple apparently....to start the season to get the kinks out. We may not have a really stiff test until our NINTH game of the season against Houston.

Agreed. Running the table and winning the conference is what I'm hoping for. The playoff talk is amusing, but I guess "homer" type thinking is to be expected on a team blog. BTW, the offense was actually around 680 yards, which I'll take any day no matter the opponent....

I think that even with dominating performances, the climb up the ranking would be extremely slow. I don't see us at 12-15, maybe more like 16-17. Nobody would have been impressed with blowout wins over SJSU, Stony Brook, and an Illinois team that might lose all but 1 or 2 of their remaining games. I do agree with you though that we need to be more impressive against vastly inferior opposition. If blow out each of the remaining teams on our schedule, we would still have a couple of 2-loss teams in front of us. Nothing wrong with aiming high, but there's no way we get in. This was a great effort tonight on both sides of the ball. maybe the most complete game (offense & defense, NOT special teams) that I've seen in years from this team. Illinois will probably prove to be a crap team, but I liked what I saw tonight....

That would help, but not as much as the OLD learning how to.block...

Preseason polls anyway. Example: Notre Dame was #10 in the 2016 preseason poll, and went 4-8. If they waited until, say, the third or fourth week of the season to put the first poll out, would be interesting to see if we make the cut in such a scenario.

SJSU has yet to open up the playbook

What about rescheduling with UConn?

Well, that's reassuring. The OL doesn't look anywhere near close to getting this offense down. My guess is, we will see flashes of good play (2nd qtr SJSU) followed by what we mostly saw against Stony Brook.

Agreed. I was hoping to keep the GCO, or something very similar to it, around at least through the QF era. That offense was tailor-made for him. Too bad he will be spending his Senior season trying to get this offense down, which may or may not happen. Think Taggart's first year here. 2-10 without any improvement shown all season. That's what this season could potentially look like. Looking at it the other way, we did score 42 & 31 points (albeit an unimpressive 31 points), where 17 was about the ceiling for Taggart in that first season. We have shown flashes of explosiveness against SJSU, so it doesn't feel as hopeless as watching Taggart's original offense. This is the worst performing OL we've had in quite some time. As lost as they've looked, this doesn't seem like it will be a quick fix. I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of the run consistently getting stuffed, and QF being forced to win games with his arm. As great as he's been in the past, not certain he can be a Marino-type gunslinger and consistently light it up without the threat of the run. QF averaged 7.7 YPC last year, 3.8 this year so far. If teams manage to limit his rushing yards, then how much better suited is he to run this offense than Kean or Olakudon? Not suggesting he's not the guy, but an accurate passer seems more important in this offense than a guy who can run. QF tends to have spells of inaccuracy sometimes. He was light-years ahead of the other QBs in the GCO. Not sure Kean couldn't have matched QFs passing numbers so far this year.

Maybe, but will they be around in a few seasons? With the talent we have, and how favorable the schedule is for us this year, it would truly suck if we squander this opportunity while screwing around with an offense that's not best suited for our personnel.

I'm not even sure that Raymond Woodie even communicated with CWT during games. I believe he was listening to rap music on those headphones.

In Taggart's first year, we never really got the Power Run thing mastered. There was virtually no improvement throughout the entire season. That's what I suspect will happen here. Even QF running on broken plays doesn't seem quite as effective so far this year. If we struggle to run, even against Stony Brook, and count primarily on QF's arm to win games, that's something I'm not quite as comfortable with. I'm sure Gilbert's offense can be successful somewhere, just not sure it will be here.

Yes, he's 2-0, and could possibly have a good run here, but unless there's dramatic improvement, unless our OL suddenly learns to function in the new system, there's no way this team runs the table, even with the garbage schedule. Thankfully UConn & Illinois are next. Things can only get better while we squeak out two more wins.

Agreed. It won't do us any favors in the polls, but I really don't care about the polls. Just improve on offense and win the conference, and I'd be satisfied with that....NY6 bowl or not. The NY6 thing would certainly be nice, just does't seem realistic at the moment.

They were picked to be 8th in the Colonial. How good can they be? We certainly made them look good, which is reason for concern. I'm definitely concerned about Strong and his staff, at least for now. They've taken a great offense, and have turned it into something that would be a middling Colonial offense. Kragthorpe did well at Tulsa, then totally sucked at Louisville. Holtz did well at ECU, then totally sucked here. Strong did well at Louisville.....

We weren't much better than Stony Brook. This is really a difficult game to predict. I would expect that Sheriffs gets the start for them this week. He came into the game and brought them back last week, and had a pretty good game against us last year. If we get our **** together on offense, this could be a relatively easy game. If not, this could end up looking like the humidity game from the Holtz era....and we'll no doubt hear similar excuses on this board.

Great post, totally in agreement with this. Also, we are going to clam up due to field position against Stony Brook?? We have an enormous talent advantage here, and seemingly playing scared at times against totally inferior opposition. I also think the OL is probably the single biggest concern right now. That gets fixed, then I'll feel much better about our chances at winning the conference.