9/17
Troy at App

9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

10/1
Texas State at JMU

10/8
App at Texas State
Coastal at ULM
JMU at Ark State

10/12
Louisiana at Marshall

11/5
Georgia State at Southern Miss
South Alabama at Georgia Southern

11/10
Georgia Southern at Louisiana

11/12
ULM at Georgia State
Southern Miss at Coastal

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

Missing a few options here?

9/17
Troy at App

9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

10/1
Texas State at JMU

10/8
App at Texas State
Coastal at ULM
JMU at Ark State

10/12
Louisiana at Marshall

11/5
Georgia State at Southern Miss
South Alabama at Georgia Southern

11/10
Georgia Southern at Louisiana

11/12
ULM at Georgia State
Southern Miss at Coastal

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

I think there is some heavy underestimation going on here regarding the West.

9/17
Troy at App
I think App takes this one, but it won’t be a blowout by any means. Troy is showing major signs of improvement and will be ready to compete this season.

9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Like Troy, stAte is improving. ODU is, too, but stAte won’t be beaten down quite as much ODU coming into this game. stAte only has Ohio State as the only body bag game prior to ODU, while ODU has VT, ECU, and UVA. I think stAte pulls out the win.

Marshall at Troy
Troy is improving, but I think Marshall still pulls out their first conference win in the Sun Belt at Troy. Marshall could easily make a run at the conference championship this year.

10/1
Texas State at JMU
I’m leaving this one as a toss up. It’s a ‘plenty of room to grow FBS team’ versus a ‘top-notch recently FCS team,’ so there’s no telling where it could go. My gut says JMU wins, but Texas State has shown signs of life and will be the overall bigger team. Again, a toss up.

10/8
App at Texas State
As long as App doesn’t overlook this one, they’ll pull out a win.

Coastal at ULM
Like App@TXST, as long as Coastal doesn’t overlook this one, I feel fairly confident that they’ll pull out a win.

JMU at Ark State
Maybe I’m seeing something in stAte that others aren’t or maybe I just secretly root for the other ASU when they aren’t playing the Mountaineers, but I do see them doing much better this season and being bowl eligible. JMU will still be experiencing growing pains, but this could still be a toss up.

10/12
Louisiana at Marshall
Another toss up, go figure. I think this one is solely dependent on how the new UL coach shapes up. If he runs with what he was setup with, UL wins. If he struggles to jump in, Marshall wins. Yes, Marshall is at home, but both will be coming off a bye week, so both will have equal time to prep. This will be a staple game of the season.

11/5
Georgia State at Southern Miss
Georgia State is quickly becoming a contender and will prove that further this year. Southern Miss is still in rebuild mode while GSU is almost there. GSU takes this one if they keep their heads on straight.

South Alabama at Georgia Southern
I could see this one being a toss up, but my gut is telling me USA wins. GS is just such an unknown at this point. I think we’ll see signs of improvement from them, but I think USA is in a better place as of today. The scales could easily tip the other direction by November, all dependent on new coaches.

11/10
Georgia Southern at Louisiana
Kind of like USA@GS, this could be closer with a great coaching staff at GS or poor coaching staff at UL, but as of right now, the Cajuns win, likely big.

11/12
ULM at Georgia State
Another game where the Panthers are just more prepared, even if ULM is seeing signs of improvement. GSU will be facing the eastern gauntlet, though, so they could easily be worn out and running on fumes.

Southern Miss at Coastal
Coastal has too much upside here. They’re at home and will likely be a contender for the CCG at this point in the season, so I think they play balls to the wall.

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama
My last toss up. I think this one could go either way, but it’s a Thanksgiving Weekend game, so don’t count on home field advantage playing any massive role. ODU could surprise everybody this year, but USA has more signs of being most improved.

(08-09-2022 12:25 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

The Red Wolves were 2-9 last year, giving up a whopping 38.6 points per game and were last in the conference in run defense giving up 260.9 yards per game. Though they should see some improvement, by consensus opinion of the pundits, they do not project to be much better this season. Coming to Norfolk will mark their third road trip in a row, following trips to Ohio State and Memphis, and that should bode well for the Monarchs who won their last five games last year to be bowl eligible and return 10 starters on offense. In front of a home crowd, the Monarchs should get their first Sun Belt win.

The Jaguars won 5 games last year and are generally expected to do about the same this year. They do return seven starters and add eight P-5 transfers to a defense that was fairly well regarded for most of the season last year before losing their last four games. But keep in mind, the Monarchs do return 10 starters on offense to do battle with that defense. Eight starters return on offense for the Jags, but quarterback Jake Bentley is gone after completing 70% of his passes last year. Still competing to replace him are Toledo transfer Carter Bradley and redshirt junior Desmond Trotter. The Monarchs and the Jaguars appear to be pretty evenly matched, and I have to agree, this game is as much a 50-50 game as any in the conference. Adding to that is that this is the last game of the season, and that makes any preseason prediction tenuous at best. Nevertheless, here in August, if I am going to pick a winner of this game to be played in November, I'm definitely going with my Monarchs. I'm sorry Coach Rahne. I know this flies in the face of your "go 1-0" philosophy, so with that in mind, GO MONARCHS -- BEAT THE HOKIES!

(08-10-2022 09:20 AM)ODU AGGIE Wrote:  

(08-09-2022 12:25 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

The Red Wolves were 2-9 last year, giving up a whopping 38.6 points per game and were last in the conference in run defense giving up 260.9 yards per game. Though they should see some improvement, by consensus opinion of the pundits, they do not project to be much better this season. Coming to Norfolk will mark their third road trip in a row, following trips to Ohio State and Memphis, and that should bode well for the Monarchs who won their last five games last year to be bowl eligible and return 10 starters on offense. In front of a home crowd, the Monarchs should get their first Sun Belt win.

The Jaguars won 5 games last year and are generally expected to do about the same this year. They do return seven starters and add eight P-5 transfers to a defense that was fairly well regarded for most of the season last year before losing their last four games. But keep in mind, the Monarchs do return 10 starters on offense to do battle with that defense. Eight starters return on offense for the Jags, but quarterback Jake Bentley is gone after completing 70% of his passes last year. Still competing to replace him are Toledo transfer Carter Bradley and redshirt junior Desmond Trotter. The Monarchs and the Jaguars appear to be pretty evenly matched, and I have to agree, this game is as much a 50-50 game as any in the conference. Adding to that is that this is the last game of the season, and that makes any preseason prediction tenuous at best. Nevertheless, here in August, if I am going to pick a winner of this game to be played in November, I'm definitely going with my Monarchs. I'm sorry Coach Rahne. I know this flies in the face of your "go 1-0" philosophy, so with that in mind, GO MONARCHS -- BEAT THE HOKIES!

Last year was last year.

(08-10-2022 09:30 AM)Appst94 Wrote:  

(08-10-2022 09:20 AM)ODU AGGIE Wrote:  

(08-09-2022 12:25 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

The Red Wolves were 2-9 last year, giving up a whopping 38.6 points per game and were last in the conference in run defense giving up 260.9 yards per game. Though they should see some improvement, by consensus opinion of the pundits, they do not project to be much better this season. Coming to Norfolk will mark their third road trip in a row, following trips to Ohio State and Memphis, and that should bode well for the Monarchs who won their last five games last year to be bowl eligible and return 10 starters on offense. In front of a home crowd, the Monarchs should get their first Sun Belt win.

The Jaguars won 5 games last year and are generally expected to do about the same this year. They do return seven starters and add eight P-5 transfers to a defense that was fairly well regarded for most of the season last year before losing their last four games. But keep in mind, the Monarchs do return 10 starters on offense to do battle with that defense. Eight starters return on offense for the Jags, but quarterback Jake Bentley is gone after completing 70% of his passes last year. Still competing to replace him are Toledo transfer Carter Bradley and redshirt junior Desmond Trotter. The Monarchs and the Jaguars appear to be pretty evenly matched, and I have to agree, this game is as much a 50-50 game as any in the conference. Adding to that is that this is the last game of the season, and that makes any preseason prediction tenuous at best. Nevertheless, here in August, if I am going to pick a winner of this game to be played in November, I'm definitely going with my Monarchs. I'm sorry Coach Rahne. I know this flies in the face of your "go 1-0" philosophy, so with that in mind, GO MONARCHS -- BEAT THE HOKIES!

Last year was last year.

He has a point. Arkansas State was on their way to being the SBC's all time worst defense midway through the season before becoming only marginally better. You don't fix that in a year. ODU will cut through them like a hot knife through butter. The SBC-W is set to improve in a big way, but outside of Texas State, Arkansas State is the one I have the least amount of faith in to do so. Butch Jones has a lot of work to do.

(08-10-2022 07:21 AM)CardinalBlackTrojan Wrote:  I think there is some heavy underestimation going on here regarding the West.

Sounds like y'all have some perception to flip. I'm all for it.

Here's how all teams rank preseason based on averages from Athlon, FPI, Phil Steele, and SP+
1. App
2. Marshall
3. Coastal Carolina
4. Louisiana
5. Georgia State
6. Troy
7. Southern Miss
8. Old Dominion
9. JMU
10. South Alabama
11. Georgia Southern
12. Texas State
13. Arkansas State
14. ULM

If we're going by this, every East team except Georgia Southern is favored in both of their cross-division games.

Trying to eliminate my bias, but I'm pretty sure A-State can deal with ODU and to a lesser extent JMU. There's no way to sugar coat our season last year, but it wasn't that long ago we were winning SBC games at greater than 75% clip. It's hard to make the transfer up from FCS; App and Southern are the exception not the rule.

Our defense will be better than last year's abysmal performance. We lost some close games last year. I'm cautiously optimistic and looking forward to it. We may not have the chemistry we did under Freezus, but Jones is building a Malzahn culture to me. Hopefully his recruits show up to campus and perform unlike Malzahn's.

On a side note, can't pick a better place for Freezus to land than Liberty- talk about two peas in a pod there.

(08-10-2022 09:43 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Here's how all teams rank preseason based on averages from Athlon, FPI, Phil Steele, and SP+
1. App
2. Marshall
3. Coastal Carolina
4. Louisiana
5. Georgia State
6. Troy
7. Southern Miss
8. Old Dominion
9. JMU
10. South Alabama
11. Georgia Southern
12. Texas State
13. Arkansas State
14. ULM

If we're going by this, every East team except Georgia Southern is favored in both of their cross-division games.

But we all know preseason rankings are only a best guess. Troy gets APP and Marshall, so we may go 0-2 there anyway, but I think Troy will be higher than 6th, but so does every team in the conference this time of year, so we'll have to see!

(08-10-2022 09:43 AM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Here's how all teams rank preseason based on averages from Athlon, FPI, Phil Steele, and SP+
1. App
2. Marshall
3. Coastal Carolina
4. Louisiana
5. Georgia State
6. Troy
7. Southern Miss
8. Old Dominion
9. JMU
10. South Alabama
11. Georgia Southern
12. Texas State
13. Arkansas State
14. ULM

If we're going by this, every East team except Georgia Southern is favored in both of their cross-division games.

And we know the preseason rankings are always correct, right? It’s funny these rankings would have South Alabama 4th in our division, but SBC coaches voted us second with two first place votes. Our own coach wasn’t one of the #1 votes; in fact he voted us last because we’ve not proven anything yet. So the other coaches that actually see our team seem to have a different impression than a lot of you and a lot of these preseason rankings.

15-0 as Marshall wins the Championship Game too

(08-10-2022 09:53 AM)TroyFootball05 Wrote:  But we all know preseason rankings are only a best guess. Troy gets APP and Marshall, so we may go 0-2 there anyway, but I think Troy will be higher than 6th, but so does every team in the conference this time of year, so we'll have to see!

(08-10-2022 09:55 AM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  And we know the preseason rankings are always correct, right? It’s funny these rankings would have South Alabama 4th in our division, but SBC coaches voted us second with two first place votes. Our own coach wasn’t one of the #1 votes; in fact he voted us last because we’ve not proven anything yet. So the other coaches that actually see our team seem to have a different impression than a lot of you and a lot of these preseason rankings.

You could also break it down like this (all JMO)

Teams that are looking to minimize losses and drop-off:
Louisiana
Coastal
App State
Marshall
JMU

Teams that could make a big step forward:
Troy
South Alabama
Ark State
Southern Miss
Old Dominion
Georgia Southern (people don't like me putting GS here but we've backed it up with fast turn-arounds in 2014 and 2018

Now drop-offs from the first group are more likely than break-throughs by the second group so that will favor the West, but I think it's inevitable the East will be the stronger division for at least this season.

Troy at App
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy
Texas State at JMU
App at Texas State
Coastal at ULM
JMU at Ark State
Louisiana at Marshall
Georgia State at Southern Miss
South Alabama at Georgia Southern
Georgia Southern at Louisiana
ULM at Georgia State
Southern Miss at Coastal
Old Dominion at South Alabama

(08-10-2022 09:20 AM)ODU AGGIE Wrote:  

(08-09-2022 12:25 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

The Red Wolves were 2-9 last year, giving up a whopping 38.6 points per game and were last in the conference in run defense giving up 260.9 yards per game. Though they should see some improvement, by consensus opinion of the pundits, they do not project to be much better this season. Coming to Norfolk will mark their third road trip in a row, following trips to Ohio State and Memphis, and that should bode well for the Monarchs who won their last five games last year to be bowl eligible and return 10 starters on offense. In front of a home crowd, the Monarchs should get their first Sun Belt win.

The Jaguars won 5 games last year and are generally expected to do about the same this year. They do return seven starters and add eight P-5 transfers to a defense that was fairly well regarded for most of the season last year before losing their last four games. But keep in mind, the Monarchs do return 10 starters on offense to do battle with that defense. Eight starters return on offense for the Jags, but quarterback Jake Bentley is gone after completing 70% of his passes last year. Still competing to replace him are Toledo transfer Carter Bradley and redshirt junior Desmond Trotter. The Monarchs and the Jaguars appear to be pretty evenly matched, and I have to agree, this game is as much a 50-50 game as any in the conference. Adding to that is that this is the last game of the season, and that makes any preseason prediction tenuous at best. Nevertheless, here in August, if I am going to pick a winner of this game to be played in November, I'm definitely going with my Monarchs. I'm sorry Coach Rahne. I know this flies in the face of your "go 1-0" philosophy, so with that in mind, GO MONARCHS -- BEAT THE HOKIES!

Keep in mind that we have a brand new team this year with over 50 Freshman. I don't think anyone knows what to expect from us. Most pundits just assume we'll be bad because they can't say anyway we'll be good without knowing anything about who the players are.

We absolutely have the ability to win in Norfolk. Most of our own fan base sees that game as a toss-up. Depends whether our defense really is any better.

(08-10-2022 09:48 AM)runninjoe Wrote:  Trying to eliminate my bias, but I'm pretty sure A-State can deal with ODU and to a lesser extent JMU. There's no way to sugar coat our season last year, but it wasn't that long ago we were winning SBC games at greater than 75% clip. It's hard to make the transfer up from FCS; App and Southern are the exception not the rule.

Our defense will be better than last year's abysmal performance. We lost some close games last year. I'm cautiously optimistic and looking forward to it. We may not have the chemistry we did under Freezus, but Jones is building a Malzahn culture to me. Hopefully his recruits show up to campus and perform unlike Malzahn's.

On a side note, can't pick a better place for Freezus to land than Liberty- talk about two peas in a pod there.

To a lesser degree JMU?

(08-10-2022 10:31 AM)chiefsfan Wrote:  

(08-10-2022 09:20 AM)ODU AGGIE Wrote:  

(08-09-2022 12:25 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  9/24
Ark State at Old Dominion
Marshall at Troy

11/26
Old Dominion at South Alabama

The Red Wolves were 2-9 last year, giving up a whopping 38.6 points per game and were last in the conference in run defense giving up 260.9 yards per game. Though they should see some improvement, by consensus opinion of the pundits, they do not project to be much better this season. Coming to Norfolk will mark their third road trip in a row, following trips to Ohio State and Memphis, and that should bode well for the Monarchs who won their last five games last year to be bowl eligible and return 10 starters on offense. In front of a home crowd, the Monarchs should get their first Sun Belt win.

The Jaguars won 5 games last year and are generally expected to do about the same this year. They do return seven starters and add eight P-5 transfers to a defense that was fairly well regarded for most of the season last year before losing their last four games. But keep in mind, the Monarchs do return 10 starters on offense to do battle with that defense. Eight starters return on offense for the Jags, but quarterback Jake Bentley is gone after completing 70% of his passes last year. Still competing to replace him are Toledo transfer Carter Bradley and redshirt junior Desmond Trotter. The Monarchs and the Jaguars appear to be pretty evenly matched, and I have to agree, this game is as much a 50-50 game as any in the conference. Adding to that is that this is the last game of the season, and that makes any preseason prediction tenuous at best. Nevertheless, here in August, if I am going to pick a winner of this game to be played in November, I'm definitely going with my Monarchs. I'm sorry Coach Rahne. I know this flies in the face of your "go 1-0" philosophy, so with that in mind, GO MONARCHS -- BEAT THE HOKIES!

Keep in mind that we have a brand new team this year with over 50 Freshman. I don't think anyone knows what to expect from us. Most pundits just assume we'll be bad because they can't say anyway we'll be good without knowing anything about who the players are.

We absolutely have the ability to win in Norfolk. Most of our own fan base sees that game as a toss-up. Depends whether our defense really is any better.

I expect to win there. We will see.

(08-10-2022 10:32 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(08-10-2022 09:48 AM)runninjoe Wrote:  Trying to eliminate my bias, but I'm pretty sure A-State can deal with ODU and to a lesser extent JMU. There's no way to sugar coat our season last year, but it wasn't that long ago we were winning SBC games at greater than 75% clip. It's hard to make the transfer up from FCS; App and Southern are the exception not the rule.

Our defense will be better than last year's abysmal performance. We lost some close games last year. I'm cautiously optimistic and looking forward to it. We may not have the chemistry we did under Freezus, but Jones is building a Malzahn culture to me. Hopefully his recruits show up to campus and perform unlike Malzahn's.

On a side note, can't pick a better place for Freezus to land than Liberty- talk about two peas in a pod there.

To a lesser degree JMU?

Yes I'm less confident we can beat JMU, but I still think we will. There are growing pains when moving up. We have talent here. People have wrote us off as an easy win this year like we don't have a history of being successful in this conference.

I think we win 4 in a row starting with ODU, ULM, JMU, and USM with our final win against UMASS later on to finish 6-6.

Obviously, this includes a Grambling win.