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Predicitons for next year?

8-4 feels about right.

Too early for me to vote. Don't yet have a feel for how good we or our opponents are going to be. Need to find out more about other school's spring practices.

I ended up at 8-4, but honestly 6 or 7 seems more likely than 9.

Somewhere between 0 and 15.

A little too early to tell. Ask me again a week before the Syracuse game.

But if I had to guess based on where we're at now....9-3

The team almost finished with 9 wins last year, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Akron should have been a win. We were leading CMU by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Only lost to NIU by 4 despite the bevy of injuries and a true freshmen starting QB.

If the guys stay healthy, they should be fine. The offense returns so many pieces, it should be much more potent.

For those wondering, the 3 losses I think are Michigan, Toledo and Ohio. But there are a lot of games on the schedule that could really go either way.

I went 8-4. Other Cuse fans are more worried about the opener than I am. Cuse offense should be much improved in year 3 of Babers. We're inexperienced at WR and LB, but the staff has recruited some pretty good talent at both spots since taking over.

(04-17-2018 10:42 AM)ColinApocalypse Wrote:  A little too early to tell. Ask me again a week before the Syracuse game.

But if I had to guess based on where we're at now....9-3

The team almost finished with 9 wins last year, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Akron should have been a win. We were leading CMU by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Only lost to NIU by 4 despite the bevy of injuries and a true freshmen starting QB.

If the guys stay healthy, they should be fine. The offense returns so many pieces, it should be much more potent.

For those wondering, the 3 losses I think are Michigan, Toledo and Ohio. But there are a lot of games on the schedule that could really go either way.

But then again, we also won a few games which arguably we should or very easily could have lost too. That OT game against Buffalo we received some grace from God. I think our record was about what it should have been. We played at about a 500 level team. This upcoming season will, in my mind, be about whether our coaching leadership decides to change how it did things, or whether coaches figure that they did things right, but injuries or players not doing what they were coached to do where the reasons we lost games. I hope they change things.

This schedule is perfect for a great season. I would take this schedule every year. Now we need to take advantage of the schedule. Lester will make or break it this year. I am praying for the former.

Hard to tell until we get a clearer picture on the injury report when the season gets closer. The extent of injuries still being nursed in April is a little concerning.

I think we're 2-2 OOC regardless of how healthy we are.

Too early for me. And it seems to be especially harder this year at predicting. Will the WMU team that dominated CMU in the first half and took NIU to the wire show up? Or will we get the WMU in the second half vs CMU and that got steamrolled by UT?

Delaware St and Homecoming vs Eastern Michigan should be the only 'gimmies'.

With Wassink we should be able to keep the throttle down vs Central Michigan.

A 6-6 Middle Tennessee St team was able to beat Syracuse last year but Babers has been there a couple years now and his BGSU teams wrecked us.

I think a MAC team beats us more than UofM does.

Hard to say about the others. How's UT's new QB? Ball St was riddled with injuries last year so they should be improved. Chuck Martin hasn't completely righted the ship at Miami of Ohio but they should have a break-out year any time now. Ohio and NIU always seem to be top contenders.

I'll vote as the season nears.

7 wins

[quote='Motown Bronco' pid='15254079' dateline='1523996622

I think we're 2-2 OOC regardless of how healthy we are.
[/quote]

I’d trade a loss against Delaware St for a win @Michigan

Very early, but I think 9-3, losses to Syracuse (barely), Michigan (fairly close), Toledo (they find a way to demoralize us). Some inexperience will give us a scare in a few games and it won't feel like 9-3 until the last game with everything on the line. Plot twist, we still go to the MAC championship because Toledo lost to NIU and crapped a brick at EMU. OK, maybe only half serious about the last half of that, but that scenario would be quintessentially MAC.

These next two years set up very nicely for us in terms of a lot of returning experience. Here's our chance to keep the bar high.

I'll go 8-4. Losses:

Syracuse
Michigan
One of the MAC Road Games (not Ball State)
Toledo

I don't know what to make of Syracuse. Yes they lost to MTSU but they also beat Clemson.

They should be better in Babers' third year and they are a P5 team. But they finished on five-game losing streak and lost their Co-OC to Kent State HC.

Being at home helps us too, obviously.

(04-18-2018 08:13 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  I don't know what to make of Syracuse. Yes they lost to MTSU but they also beat Clemson.

They should be better in Babers' third year and they are a P5 team. But they finished on five-game losing streak and lost their Co-OC to Kent State HC.

Being at home helps us too, obviously.

Buffalo got 597 yards passing on us when they went to the chuck it every play strategy. Syracuse slings it every play, our defensive pass coverage was poor at best last year, and Philips graduated. I don't like this matchup personally.

(04-18-2018 08:13 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  I don't know what to make of Syracuse. Yes they lost to MTSU but they also beat Clemson.

They should be better in Babers' third year and they are a P5 team. But they finished on five-game losing streak and lost their Co-OC to Kent State HC.

Being at home helps us too, obviously.

I'm not sure what to make of us either. We played close in all of our first 9 games which included beating Clemson and playing LSU, FSU and Miami. Our starting QB got hurt at the end of the year and our staff wasn't going to burn the redshirt of our Freshman All-American QB. We ended up getting blown out the last few games to end the year starting a walk-on Senior and a Redshirt Freshman QB. We also lost a couple of our top DBs down the stretch. Our defense improved slightly last year and we're hoping to have more improvement on that side of the ball as the older guys struggled a bit to switch from Shafers attacking chaos defense to the Tampa 2 zone defense which rely on different types of players/skills. We've also been very young all over since Babers took over due to roster attrition and inbalance of classes at certain positions.

The class we have coming in this season is on paper the best we've had in a long time and Babers has brought in higher ranked classes each year. We should certainly have more depth and talent across the board than we've had in many years. Our running game has been pretty bad since Babers came in and can mostly be attributed to youth at RB and on the oline. Babers has said during the spring that we look better at both spots and we return significant experience at both. Our entire starting LBer unit is being replaced and they were the heart and strength of the D last year. The raw talent is supposedly better for the younger guys that are looking to fill those shoes, but its hard to say how they will react in real game action until they actually get substantial minutes.

On offense, as I mentioned before the WR group is trying to replace an All-American and an All-ACC player as our top 2 WRs were both Seniors last year. Some of our fans believe WR is plug and play in this system and for the most part, that holds up when looking at the performance of wideouts in Babers system. WR is also a position where Babers has had pretty good success recruiting since taking over Cuse as you would expect given the system.

If anyone has any more specific questions in regards to what you might expect to see out of Cuse, feel free to ask.

(04-18-2018 11:57 AM)orange_in_VA Wrote:  

(04-18-2018 08:13 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  I don't know what to make of Syracuse. Yes they lost to MTSU but they also beat Clemson.

They should be better in Babers' third year and they are a P5 team. But they finished on five-game losing streak and lost their Co-OC to Kent State HC.

Being at home helps us too, obviously.

I'm not sure what to make of us either. We played close in all of our first 9 games which included beating Clemson and playing LSU, FSU and Miami. Our starting QB got hurt at the end of the year and our staff wasn't going to burn the redshirt of our Freshman All-American QB. We ended up getting blown out the last few games to end the year starting a walk-on Senior and a Redshirt Freshman QB. We also lost a couple of our top DBs down the stretch. Our defense improved slightly last year and we're hoping to have more improvement on that side of the ball as the older guys struggled a bit to switch from Shafers attacking chaos defense to the Tampa 2 zone defense which rely on different types of players/skills. We've also been very young all over since Babers took over due to roster attrition and inbalance of classes at certain positions.

The class we have coming in this season is on paper the best we've had in a long time and Babers has brought in higher ranked classes each year. We should certainly have more depth and talent across the board than we've had in many years. Our running game has been pretty bad since Babers came in and can mostly be attributed to youth at RB and on the oline. Babers has said during the spring that we look better at both spots and we return significant experience at both. Our entire starting LBer unit is being replaced and they were the heart and strength of the D last year. The raw talent is supposedly better for the younger guys that are looking to fill those shoes, but its hard to say how they will react in real game action until they actually get substantial minutes.

On offense, as I mentioned before the WR group is trying to replace an All-American and an All-ACC player as our top 2 WRs were both Seniors last year. Some of our fans believe WR is plug and play in this system and for the most part, that holds up when looking at the performance of wideouts in Babers system. WR is also a position where Babers has had pretty good success recruiting since taking over Cuse as you would expect given the system.

If anyone has any more specific questions in regards to what you might expect to see out of Cuse, feel free to ask.

Do you think eventually Babers will run the ball? I've read the Briles offense is really about spreading out and tiring out the defense, and you need a threat of a downhill running game to be the straw that stirs the drink. But Babers doesn't seem to have ever run the ball yet, at BGSU or with you. Is it really personnel issues? Is he just saying it, or does he really want to incorporate it and just hasn't had long enough to build it yet?

Interesting to see how many people think we'll beat Ohio. They were arguably the best team in the MAC last year and will be again this year. They return pretty much everyone on offense and they have an exciting, dynamic young quarterback. They do need to rebuild their defensive front 7, but still...they will be dangerous with Solich still at the helm.

(04-18-2018 01:23 PM)RunningGame Wrote:  

(04-18-2018 11:57 AM)orange_in_VA Wrote:  

(04-18-2018 08:13 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  I don't know what to make of Syracuse. Yes they lost to MTSU but they also beat Clemson.

They should be better in Babers' third year and they are a P5 team. But they finished on five-game losing streak and lost their Co-OC to Kent State HC.

Being at home helps us too, obviously.

I'm not sure what to make of us either. We played close in all of our first 9 games which included beating Clemson and playing LSU, FSU and Miami. Our starting QB got hurt at the end of the year and our staff wasn't going to burn the redshirt of our Freshman All-American QB. We ended up getting blown out the last few games to end the year starting a walk-on Senior and a Redshirt Freshman QB. We also lost a couple of our top DBs down the stretch. Our defense improved slightly last year and we're hoping to have more improvement on that side of the ball as the older guys struggled a bit to switch from Shafers attacking chaos defense to the Tampa 2 zone defense which rely on different types of players/skills. We've also been very young all over since Babers took over due to roster attrition and inbalance of classes at certain positions.

The class we have coming in this season is on paper the best we've had in a long time and Babers has brought in higher ranked classes each year. We should certainly have more depth and talent across the board than we've had in many years. Our running game has been pretty bad since Babers came in and can mostly be attributed to youth at RB and on the oline. Babers has said during the spring that we look better at both spots and we return significant experience at both. Our entire starting LBer unit is being replaced and they were the heart and strength of the D last year. The raw talent is supposedly better for the younger guys that are looking to fill those shoes, but its hard to say how they will react in real game action until they actually get substantial minutes.

On offense, as I mentioned before the WR group is trying to replace an All-American and an All-ACC player as our top 2 WRs were both Seniors last year. Some of our fans believe WR is plug and play in this system and for the most part, that holds up when looking at the performance of wideouts in Babers system. WR is also a position where Babers has had pretty good success recruiting since taking over Cuse as you would expect given the system.

If anyone has any more specific questions in regards to what you might expect to see out of Cuse, feel free to ask.

Do you think eventually Babers will run the ball? I've read the Briles offense is really about spreading out and tiring out the defense, and you need a threat of a downhill running game to be the straw that stirs the drink. But Babers doesn't seem to have ever run the ball yet, at BGSU or with you. Is it really personnel issues? Is he just saying it, or does he really want to incorporate it and just hasn't had long enough to build it yet?

Babers has made mention of making running the ball a priority numerous times. I think our lack of running game so far can be attributed to the personnel on hand, however I'm not certain of how much emphasis he would place on it if it were more successful. His teams put up decent rushing numbers his last year at BGSU. We had a 1000 yard rusher for numerous seasons in a row before Babers showed up, so the system is definitely a factor. I'd have to look up the actual numbers to see how often we tried to run compared to passing, but this type of system incorprates a lot of short throws and screen passes to become the run game instead of traditional handing off. They've made it a big emphasis in recruiting to upgrade the talent at the RB spot though and like I said in my last post, the oline is expected to be better with another year of experience under their belts. Our QB has been the leading rusher the last two years even when missing the last 4 games of both seasons (His running is part of the reason he cant seem to stay healthy).

Babers offensive system hasn't hit it's stride so to speak at Cuse. His two previous jobs were in smaller conferences where the talent gap wasn't such a desparity. Most fans expect things to really get rolling on offense this year or next year in year 4 when the entire roster will mostly be his recruits and players that are comfortable in the system. Our starting QB Eric Dungey was recruited to Cuse by Lester and he's the best QB we've had in years despite his injuries every season. He passed Donovan McNabb for most rushing TDs by a QB in school history last year. The kid backing him up this year was a high school All-American and is said to be more of a fit for Babers system.

We have two bigger downhill RBs showing up to campus in the fall who might compete for carries, especially in short yardage situations, which we've struggled with lately. Our two-deep RBs are on the smaller side.