Superhippy

I do think a few things stand out on that chart though that do show improvement overall. - Rushing Yards and TD's scored are way up. The passing game obviously hasn't improved at all this year which has cost us atleast one win, but Taggart has improved our running game a ton. Most teams have it the other way around, like Tulsa. They can sling the ball around all day, but their lack of a run game prevents them from winning most of their games. - Sacks. We are projected to give up nearly half as many sacks as we did last year. That's a good sign as well. Our offensive line has gotten much better this year, but the poor QB play combined with a ridiculous number of drops have obviously overshadowed it. The defensive numbers have gotten a little worse, but we also lost alot of talent on defense this year and are very young on that side of the ball. That's to be expected.

75% of the team from last year transferring to other schools while Perry, Allen, and Collins decided to stay has been the best thing that could have ever happened to Antigua. The team right now, even though it's against lower competition, already looks better then last year and with a few more top level recruits, they will be a legit threat to make the NCAA tourney next year. Hopefully he can get them to the NIT this year and get some postseason experience for the younger guys.

I think we will rush for atleast 130 this week, so yes he should do it easily. The scary thing (in a good way) about Mack is he is doing this with an offensive line that is still very weak. I wouldn't be shocked at all if in the next few years with improved offensive line play, he ends up in the top 10 in the country for rushing yards.

I was thinking the same thing. I just read more about what is supposedly going on in the locker room, then has even been reported by the local media in the last 2 years. I just have a hard time believing that the team practices all week while Coach T sits in his office hanging out, and then on game day he calls a bunch of plays they never practiced. I still don't think the game plans have been the biggest issue. The Bulls drop at least 4 and sometimes up to 6 or 7 passes per game. White and Bench have both been good for atleast 4 or 5 awful passes a game as well where they completely miss their target even when they are open. That's called not executing. If we could cut those mistakes in half, then this team would have beaten Maryland and maybe ECU, and would be looking at a 4-5 or 5-4 record right now.

Taggart absolutely made the right move here. His goal this year was to make a bowl game. He gave both White and Bench plenty of opportunities and combined they led this team to the brink of being eliminated from bowl eligibility. Now coming off a bye week against the worst team in the country, Flowers has an opportunity to be eased into a rough situation, and then most likely be given a chance to win 2 consecutive games against solid teams to save the season. My prediction is that we see USF play Georgia Tech ball this week. 20 rushes from Mack. 15 rushes from Flowers. 10 for Johnson. 5 - 10 for everyone else. Flowers throws 10 - 15 passes. We most likely will play primarily 1 WR sets with Davis, because everyone else has dropped the ball every other time it's in their hands. SMU has given up atleast 220 rushing yards in every single game they have played this year. My only criticism of this move is that Taggart has shown a willingness to shuffle QB's in and out when they have played poorly, but for some reason he has left the same offensive linemen, tight ends, and wide receivers in that have struggled as well. He is pretty much sending the message to the team that they are losing because their QB's suck, when in reality there is alot more blame to go around. Even if he has to go deep into the depth chart he needs to give some more players an opportunity to show what they can go on game day, not just in practice.

I wouldn't worry too much about his recruiting this year. Depending on where you look we have anywhere from 6 to 11 3-Star recruits already this year, which would put's us at 2nd on all the recruiting websites. We also have about 15 redshirt freshman 3-Star players from the 2014 class next year, that haven't even seen the field yet, not to mention the 4-Star offensive tackle transfer Gibbons coming in from Stanford who will almost certainly be a starter next right right away. If this team doesn't start ripping off some wins next year, then a change may be needed but the #1 thing we needed was an infusion of talent and Taggart is going that better than pretty much any other Non-P5 school.

Teams score an average of 13 more points then their season average against SMU. Teams score an average of 1 point more then their season average against USF. USF scores 19 points per game. SMU scores 9.5 points per game. I'll just do the easy math and say we win 32 - 10. I like that we are coming off a bye week too. Last time we came off of a bye week we played ECU really tough. Very young teams like USF benefit the most from having extra time to prepare. They also know that their backs are against the wall when it comes to making a bowl game, so theres some extra motivation there.

And that may happen soon, but we have to hope that Harlan has someone in mind before he does that. The Cubs pretty much fired their manager after one season cause they knew they had Joe Maddon to take over. Who will Harlan have take over? Maybe someone out west that is great at offense. USF needs to bring in someone that has an exciting offense that kids want to play in. USF football has been boring the past 5 seasons. That's a BS argument. If this team goes 11-2 and only scores 23 points per game, nobody will care that the team isn't "exciting", and that's a fact. Just look at the Bucs. For a decade they were one of the worst offenses in the entire NFL but they were winning alot of games, so RayJay was sold out for years on end. Or how about the Lightning. Prior to last year (when they actually starting winning), they were still scoring alot of goals, but their defense was awful and they lost a ton of games. People stopped showing up then even though they could score. Fans want WINS. You think Mississippi State fans care they only scored 17 yesterday? I really doubt it. They won though and that's all that matters.

Dumpster fires just take time to fix. Baylor / Art Briles - Team had gone 12 - 29 the 3 years prior to when he got there and had been bad for a very long time. He went 8-16 his 1st two seasons. They have gone 36-16 since and had a Heisman Trophy winner. Kansas State / Bill Snyder - Team had one bowl game appearance in the prior 5 years. Snyder (who they already knew was a great coach), then only went 6-6 and 7-6 his 1st two years. Now they are a consistent Top 15 team in the country. Let's give Taggart his 3rd year. If they suck next year then it's time to move on, but rebuilding can take time.

Are they really beating out the upperclassmen or are they just Taggarts players Seems toe a lot of his freshman played last year but where are they now Pretty much the entire class from year 1 were Holtz guys that Taggart was stuck with. USFBulls24 made the main point. We have a good chunk of true freshmen playing this year that are some of the best football players on the team. Mack has been the best player on offense. Byrd is one of the best 2 or 3 on defense. As we have seen with Flowers though, some of these guys just aren't ready to step on the field yet. Feeding those guys to the wolves just for the sake of burning a redshirt, and a couple games of experience though is stupid. This is the main reason why I think Taggart knows that Flowers isn't the QB of the future either. If he really did he wouldn't have wasted his redshirt just for a few series here and there.

I was at work for 10 hours yesterday and had a death in the family, so I wasn't exactly focused on the Bulls yesterday. I did catch a good chunk of the game on the radio though. What do you want me to say though? Houston is the best team in the conference right now. They beat a good Memphis team on the road. They smashed Temple last week by 21, and then Temple turned arround and beat ECU the next week. They made USF look like a joke of a football team. Houston right now is 5th in the country in points given up this year. 5th. They have only given up 20 points in three of their eight games this year, and have only given up 30 points once. They are holding teams to about 13 points below their season average as well. We only average about 19 points per game. If it wasn't so windy yesterday, we would have hit that 1st field goal, putting us at 6 points which would be exactly 13 points below our average. The game pretty much just went exactly how it should have gone. A great defense dominated a terrible offense. An average defense held an average offense to their season average. Next week is the big one in my book. If we lay an egg against a team like SMU, then Taggart in my book should be fired. Getting beat by a team that is in 1st place, and looks like they may win the conference though, is what it is though. Sorry about the loss in your family. And yes, I agree. CWT needs to beat SMU or this program has officially regressed since he took over. Losing to a good Houston is one thing, but to lose to a bad SMU team is inexcusable. Thanks for the condolences. It was a tough day, not to mention by brakes **** the bed too on my car, which for a pizza delivery guy is about the worst thing that can happen. Like I said I'm not going to overreact because a Top 5 defense squished our offense. That was a battle we were never going to win, especially on an extremely windy day. Let's just see how the SMU game goes. They have given up atleast 40 in every single game this year they have played. if we don't put up atleast 30 points, especially coming off a bye week, then there is something seriously wrong.

I'm not saying Flowers is the answer. You think what we've seen on the field makes that blatantly obvious that he isn't? I question if you understand anything about football. Yesterday for example he handed off twice and threw a pass as the play was called. Not his fault whatsoever that it was a three and out, he did what was called exactly how it was supposed to be done. He had less than a quarter to play against in NC state and he lobbed up a couple deep balls in desperation. Hardly tells me anything about his ability as a quarterback. Especially since on both of the plays the receiver had as much of a chance to catch the ball. I agree with you there. Sometimes a QB just has to trust his receiver to make the catch, something we don't seem too capable of doing. I said the same thing for Whites first interception at Cincy. Our WR's can't even catch the ball when it hits them in the hands most of the time. The only guy that they should have any faith at all in making a catch is Davis, but the other team knows that too. Houston did the smart thing and double and triple covered Davis all game. I would go with Bench because it's tough to evalute him against a Top 5 defense on a day where the wind was going strong. We have a bye week and then SMU. If he sucks still, then I would just use Flowers the last 2 games. White has had his chances against good teams and bad.

I'm going to be the one Bulls fan to defend Taggart today. We played the 5th best defense in the country yesterday. Houston held UCF to 12 points. They held Temple to only 10. They beat a solid Memphis team on the road. With SMU, Tulsa, and Cincy upcoming, Houston will most likely win the conference this year. They are just head and shoulders better then us right now. Let's just let the rest of the season play out. We were 2-10 last year and lost 8 games by atleast 14 points. Right now we are 3-6 and have lost 4 games by atleast 14 points. If we lose to SMU, and then get spanked by Memphis and UCF, then Harlan would have very legitimate grounds to fire Taggart, but as of right now, the team overall is still heading in the right direction. It's not happening as fast as I, or any other Bulls fan would have liked, by any means, but to fire Taggart after two years when he is trying to rebuild a dumpster fire of epic proportions would be foolish, especially when he has recruiting, and is still recruiting at a very high level for a Non-P5 team. He's only had 1 full recruiting cycle and class under his belt. The 1st one was leftovers from Holtz and whomever he could convince to sign up at the last minute. The class from this year was going to need a full year to develop, most of which will be on the bench. Even so though, our Top 2 Running Backs (Mack and Johnson) and our #2 WR (Adams) are guys Taggart brought in and have accounted for 48% of ALL of our offense. I'm inclined to give the guy another year to bring in even more talent and keep developing his massive recruiting class from 2014, with those type of results.

I was at work for 10 hours yesterday and had a death in the family, so I wasn't exactly focused on the Bulls yesterday. I did catch a good chunk of the game on the radio though. What do you want me to say though? Houston is the best team in the conference right now. They beat a good Memphis team on the road. They smashed Temple last week by 21, and then Temple turned arround and beat ECU the next week. They made USF look like a joke of a football team. Houston right now is 5th in the country in points given up this year. 5th. They have only given up 20 points in three of their eight games this year, and have only given up 30 points once. They are holding teams to about 13 points below their season average as well. We only average about 19 points per game. If it wasn't so windy yesterday, we would have hit that 1st field goal, putting us at 6 points which would be exactly 13 points below our average. The game pretty much just went exactly how it should have gone. A great defense dominated a terrible offense. An average defense held an average offense to their season average. Next week is the big one in my book. If we lay an egg against a team like SMU, then Taggart in my book should be fired. Getting beat by a team that is in 1st place, and looks like they may win the conference though, is what it is though.

It doesn't really matter who throws the ball when half of the good passes are just dropped anyways. At this point I don't really care if it's White or Bench playing QB, I just want to see some of the young WR's and what some of the TE's further down the depth chart can do. Maybe bring in some new Offensive Linemen as well. We keep changing QB's and keep getting the same results. At same point you have to start changing what is around the QB's, because obviously the guys that are playing just aren't working.

According to ESPN Recruiting, White was a 3-star, ranked as 37th at QB-PP. Mike has the tools, so I'm not sure why you're attaching "awful" to those attributes. What is fair to say awful about is his head game. For what it's worth, Taggart recruited Brandon Doughty at WKU, and look at how the kid is doing this year (he was a 3 star, 74th ranked QB). 3rd in the nation in throwing yards and TD throws. He had two full years to develop as back up, and began starting as a junior. White's accuracy has been awful. He is 123rd out of 126 QB's in terms of accuracy. Nobody can defend that. Go to Scout and he was the 78th overall QB. 37th Pocket Passer is nothing, especially at a time when in College Football you need someone who is a Duel Threat. The only Pocket Passers that end up doing anything these days are the best of the best and that's it. And no he doesn't see the field well at all. He makes his 1st read and if that isn't there he either takes a sack, or just throws the ball away. Our running backs this year have 15 receptions. TOTAL. There are 60 Running backs in the country that have more receptions then that on their own. If you don't even have 1 reception per half by your running back then your going to lose a lot of games. White has absolutely no idea where his check down is when nothing is there, and he hasn't gotten better at finding those guys.

He's just like my QB for my other team (Jets). Geno has a couple of games in a row where he finally looks like he is starting to get it, and then all of a sudden he looks even worse then he did in the 1st place. If we are all being really honest, Mike White didn't beat Tulsa in the 2nd half, Andre Davis and Marlon Mack did.

Taggart is in a tough situation right now. White - 2 star QB that was ranked 79th in the country in High School - He's just not getting it done. Yeah when Andre gets wide open he finds him but otherwise he's just awful. He doesn't see the field well, and his accuracy overall is awful. At this point I don't think he can go back to him. Bench - 3 star QB that was ranked 58th in the country in High School - He was destined to ride the bench for 4 years at Penn State so he came here. Just like White he has been up and down when he has hit the field. He has shown some flashes at times, but at other times he has looked just as bad as White. Flowers - 4 star ATHLETE. Half of the recruiting websites don't even consider him to be a QB prospect. We saw why when he came in and starting throwing interceptions right away. He may techinally be a "4-Star" but he is obviously not close to being ready yet and is way too raw to expect a high level of play. Wilson - Redshirt Freshman walk-on that has had zero time with the 1st team, and probebly almost no time with the 2nd team either. If we are expecting a walk-on QB to do anything then we are in trouble. Taggart has been recruiting extremely well overall since he got here, but if he doesn't find a QB by 2015, he is doomed. The scary thing is that if you look at the prospects at QB for next year, only 13 of the top 100 QB's are uncommitted still, and the only one we have is Kean, whose only other offers have been from MAC and D-2 schools.

The Bulls are still headed in the right direction, everyone is just overreacting after one loss. We played in Tulsa on a Saturday and then had to play in Cincy on a Friday. For a young team that's a recipe for disaster every time. We see it in the NFL all the time on thursday nights. Take a young team that looks like they are getting better and put them against a veteran team on the road, and it generally turns into a trainwreck. They will look better this week with a full week to prepare and a game at home. I still see this team getting out of the season at 5-7 and after the way they have looked the last 3 years, I really don't know how Bulls fans can complain too much about that. Next year will be the moment of truth for Taggart though, with another recruiting class under his belt.

This is exactly why Taggart is nearly emotionless on the sideline all game, even after bad things like penalties, and good things like TD's. He wants this team to create it's own fire. He can do it for them, like how Leavitt used to, but in the long run that's not how to build a championship caliber program. We saw that before. It was like the team was on Red Bull. They would be all pumped and would win the big game, and then for the next 3 weeks they would crash and never recover. The key now is for White to carry some of that emotion and fire within him into each and every game now. This week will be telling. Cincy's defense is AWFUL, maybe even worse then Tulsas.. I could easily see us scoring 35 - 40 on them, but if we come out flat again, it will be tough to come back down 20+ points. Cincy can score points, and they will.

White is the definition of a serviceable QB. Essentially he is a guy that can make all the throws, but only if his WR, TE, or RB is open. He rarely if ever, makes any throws that become completions because he made an amazing throw, it's almost always because his guy ran a great route or there was a blown coverage. Davis the other day made that very clear to me. Being a serviceable QB isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Some supposedly great QB's in the NFL are just disguised as great and are really just serviceable. Matt Ryan, Matt Stafford, Jay Cutler, Carson Palmer. Andy Dalton. All of those guys have put up big numbers over their careers but without their stud WR's, they wouldn't be much of anything, and every time their pro-bowl weapons get injured, it shows. USF can win with a serviceable QB though, Taggart just needs to make sure he recruits WR's and TE's that can get themselves wide open.

Lol, that's not really saying much. UF is a disaster right now.

True but under Skip we would have played a full 60 minutes and still lost by two. Our play calling is still pretty terrible if you ask me, we can move the ball on every team we have left we stop with the bad calls. Also our running game needs a better design, look how Tulsa had their blocking set-up it was genius. Now once we adjusted they didn't adjust and really they still ran the ball pretty well up until the last few drives. I just feel we should be getting more then 2-3 yards a run. The big run will happen but boy it would be nice to average 4-6 a pop and then throw in the big chunk run. Maybe time to redesign the blocking scheme a little Alot of that has to do with our play in the trenches right now. Our O-Line at it's best just holds our opponents d-lines steady, and at it's worst, they get steamrolled. Our D-Line may be the weakest unit on the team. We never create any pass rush at all without blitzing. It's the reason why teams like Tulsa, Western Carolina, and NC State are throwing for a crazy number of yards on us. We can change the schemes up but most of the play on the lines has more to just do with the talent.

Our definitions of great teams must differ greatly. Look. This team is better than the team last year. I think he's got us on the right track as far as the culture changing. Call me a debbie downer, but I think you're a little extreme on the optimism. It's an incredible win due to the circumstances (greatest comeback in school history), but at the end of the day we beat (1-6) Tulsa. We are on track to our program improving to what it's been the last 4+ seasons. The talent shows it and now the win column is starting to show it. We are still a long long long way away from being anything relevant in the college football world. We will just have to agree to disagree, which is perfectly fine. I just don't think we are that far off by any means. We are already playing good teams like Maryland, Wisconsin, and East Carolina very tough, we just don't have the talent to actually win those games instead of just keeping them close right now. The effort the team is giving though right now is extremely good though, and as Taggart brings in high level talent, the high level of effort and fight will already be established. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Not sure if we've been watching the same team. We're talking University of South Florida, right? When I think of great team, I think of a top 25 team. If we're not far off from that then I need to go get my brain and eyes checked. We have played 2 ranked teams (Wisconsin and ECU), and one that is starting to receive some votes and is somewhere right now in the 30 - 35 range (Maryland), and we lost by an average of 11 points to all three, If we were close in one game, and get beat down the other 2 I would say it was a fluke, but the Bulls are consistently fighting very good teams, and keep coming up 1 or 2 scores short. To me that says they are getting close. We will know alot by the end of the year. Memphis, UCF, Cincy, and Houston are all ranked from 50th - 65th in the college football computer rankings. If we go 2-2 against them, then we know the Bulls are somewhere in that range too. Those 4 games will be a very good barometer of knowing exactly where the team is at right now, and how close they really are to becoming really good again.

Our definitions of great teams must differ greatly. Look. This team is better than the team last year. I think he's got us on the right track as far as the culture changing. Call me a debbie downer, but I think you're a little extreme on the optimism. It's an incredible win due to the circumstances (greatest comeback in school history), but at the end of the day we beat (1-6) Tulsa. We are on track to our program improving to what it's been the last 4+ seasons. The talent shows it and now the win column is starting to show it. We are still a long long long way away from being anything relevant in the college football world. We will just have to agree to disagree, which is perfectly fine. I just don't think we are that far off by any means. We are already playing good teams like Maryland, Wisconsin, and East Carolina very tough, we just don't have the talent to actually win those games instead of just keeping them close right now. The effort the team is giving though right now is extremely good though, and as Taggart brings in high level talent, the high level of effort and fight will already be established.