It's now officially UCF/usf Week!!

[Bullpride08]

Maybe we will run more than 5 plays or so.

You see folks, the spin machine is hard at work.  Now they were hidding their offense from USF.  They were willing to go into the middle of the 4th quarter only leading a decent 1-AA team 7-0.  Oh, and the other internet excuse was the rain.

Here's a secret Dawg, man our offense was plain, plain jane yesterday.  We ran it 50 times, mostly up the middle.  Difference is we averaged 6.2ypc, whereas you all average 3.1.   It was also raining like crazy before the game in Tampa, horrific in fact.  Oh, and SC St, is about the same in terms of power rankings as UT-Martin.

Just some friendly advise for UCF fans, the fact is once your team lost Kamir Aikens, and Phillip Smith it lost all of it's real experienced game breakers.  You're playing four true freshmen RB"s, and you'd just be a spinning jerk if you tried to tell us they've all got the playbook mastered.  O'Leary said Friday on the radio he was just pleased they were getting the basic packages down.  Also, Greco is not a great passer.  As I've told you all since he signed.  He played at two HS's his junior and senior year and never threw for over 50%, he couldn't beat out some bad QB's at NCST, and looked only decent at a stacked PRCC team.  UCF, and O'Leary smartly put all their eggs into 2007, but because of it 2008 will be some growing pains.

The point here is once you lost Aikens, Guyton, and Smith the explosiveness for the time being went bye-bye too.  Syndey Haynes barely saw the field yesterday probably for the disciplinary issues we all spoke about.  You all struggled to complete 50% of your passes and surrendered 4 sacks and 3 QBH's against a 1-AA team.

But it is a good thing you kept it real vanilla, kept the score real close, and gave up all those sacks because instead of not showing us anything you instead seemed to be playing possum.  Maybe that's O'Leary's new trick, not vanilla but play dead so we come in so overconfident you spank us.

I am sure it will be a good game because your team will make it emotional but the fact is that your offense is not very good right now.  I am not overlooking you because of your talent and experience on defense.  That could be the great equalizer if we do not protect the ball well. 

I'm not sure we kept it vanilla because of USF.  I am concerned about the offense this year and have been since 24K left.  However, we did miss a FG and did fumble at the 1 yard line so the score could have been worse.  Honestly, even while winning 7-0, SCSU really had no chance.  They never threatened to score.

IMO, USF will beat us next week.  I don't see the offense on display last night scoring more than 14 points against you guys.  But it should be close.

Mav, good honest post so it's easy to talk now.  I am just being realistic at this point about UCF.  It's a simple issue that UCF has been stricken with some bad luck early losing Aikens, and Guyton, Phillip Smith, and to a lesser extent Syndey Haynes.  You're offensive team is going to have to spend the next few games finding options and developing cohesiveness.  I am not saying we're going to win, or you're going to lose but what you've lost on offense does make executing difficult for your staff.  I hope your fans realize that before ripping to hard on Salem.  I know some discontent goes back a few years with UCF fans and Salem, but right now they've got lots of questionmarks they're trying to find out about on offense.  Thankfully you all have a good defense, that's experienced.  If it doesn't help you win against USF it could pay huge dividends against teams like BC, and Miami who are both real young on offense, and by then your team will start to work things out on offense and probably start returning playmakers like Aiken.

I am hoping for a USF victory this weekend.  I feel very good about our team this year and the experience was very obvious.  UT-Martin stacked the box all night, and they play a very attacking defense with 4 BCS transfers on their defense.  But our team only threw the ball 9-10 times all first half, only 2-3 were down field, which we could have done all night since we were like 4-4 past 15 yards (not including a 40 yard TD pass called back).  We stuck to pounding the defense, despite their 9 man fronts, with straight ahead running, little Grothe, and lots of Ford, Taylor, and Williams.  Having 6-2 230lbs Ford is a huge advantage, most of the night he'd break a tackle even when they looked to stop the play and just lean forward for 4-5 yards.  That's hard for a defense to stop and demoralizing.

I hope we can do the same to UCF's stout defense.  Keep it simple, avoid injuries, and just play a solid game.  It would be great if both teams played a spirited and fun game but avoid injuries.  If UCF can avoid injuries, get into that bye-week before BC, get Aikens back, then I think you'll see some ills rectified.

Good luck.