2021 Speculations

[Davemeister]

Since the Dawn of Man, human beings have sought the answer to two eternal questions:

1) What is the meaning of Life?

2) How is our Football Team gonna do this fall?

Today we will concern ourselves with Question #2.

After being SO WRONG about the Spring Season, I am gun-shy about making any predictions for a while for fear of jinxing the Paladins. But tradition demands that forecasting must be done and I, Davemeister, am not opposed to being the first to speak out:

6-5

How did I arrive at this conclusion? I consulted my anatomy. My Heart says 7-4. My Brain says 5-6. My Gut says 6-5. My Gut is most often right, so that's the way I'm going.

IMHO, we will have to be an improved team over what we saw a few months ago to achieve six wins. I believe I am showing confidence in our coaches & players to stick my neck out this far. But 6-5 is as optimistic as I'm going to allow myself to be at present.

What say you?

[Furmanoid]

Sounds about right. But if we luck up and find a phenom qb we might do better.

[Affirm]

<18 hours until first practice
<718 hours until kickoff against NCA&T

[apaladin]

Davemeister, I think I’m going with your brain and say 5-6 and I am not real confident on being that optimistic. I think we start the season at 0-3 in ooc and hoping for 5-3 in the SoCon so maybe 4th place. Prolly 4-4 is more likely since we can’t beat WC or Citadel, sure loss to UTC and one other.

[FUBeAR]

Davemeister, I think I’m going with your brain and say 5-6 and I am not real confident on being that optimistic. I think we start the season at 0-3 in ooc and hoping for 5-3 in the SoCon so maybe 4th place. Prolly 4-4 is more likely since we can’t beat WC or Citadel, sure loss to UTC and one other.

FUBeAR speculates that if we go 0-3 OOC, we will not win 5 SoCon games.

We will need to be 2-1 OOC & absolutely no worse than 1-2 OOC to be competitive in SoCon in 2021.

There will be at least 5 other very good Teams (UTC, ETSU, Mercer, Samford, VMI) and 3 others (CIT, WC, and, yes, even WCU - don’t sleep on Kerwin Bell and the merry band of Rent-a-Players (about 30, I think) he’s brought to Cullowhee with him - if he pulls them together, they now have enough talent to compete) that I have as question marks, BUT could also be very good in 2021.

[fupaladin01]

NC A&T - They are a fast, well-coached team, but they may be rusty. We have them at home. Until I see better QB play, I call it a (L)
Tenn Tech - Not a good team. Picked 6th in the OVC. (W)
NC State - Ain't gonna be pretty (unless we have a stud QB and are 2-0) (L)
Mercer - Talented and extremely well-coached. We have the talent and coaching to match. At home.. (W)
Wofford - Always tough but hit hard by injuries and transfers out. On the road... but our guys want the monkey off the back (W)
Citadel - They are not a bad team, but they aren't unbeatable. Payback at PS gonna be a B!+@# (W)
ETSU - Hope this talented team doesn't get consistent. Glad to have them at PS. (W)
UTC - The most athletic team in the SoCon. Transfers abound. On the road. (L)
WCU - The new coach will have them playing much better by the end of the season. Gonna be close. (W)
VMI - This talented team will have been knocked down a peg late in the season. We revenge at home (W)
Samford - Sammy has this game circled. We may have used all our luck last season. (L)

7 - 4
(If I'm being honest I don't think we go 4-0 against WC, ETSU, Cit, AND Mercer... but I just can't type 5-6...heart pulls the toss-ups to the good guys)

[gofurman]

6-5. Wins over These….
Ten tech , hopefully they aren’t too good
Mercer - we made everyone look good late last yr and were just horrid by the time we played them …great coach there but we should beat Mercer still if we can run block AT ALL.
Citadel
ETSU
WCU
VMI.

[Affirm]

6-5. Wins over These….
Ten tech , hopefully they aren’t too good
Mercer - we made everyone look good late last yr and were just horrid by the time we played them …great coach there but we should beat Mercer still if we can run block AT ALL.
Citadel
ETSU
WCU
VMI.

So we’ll lose AGAIN to Wofford (AKA “the monkey”)? Or are they just cancelling?

[FU3]

We were picked to win the “spring season” and were just plain bad. Furman has benefited from the ruling to allow an extra season giving us a player like Devin Wynn. There is a lot of talent on this team and they have something to prove. As out of sync as we looked in the spring, I find it hard to believe that Clay Hendrix can’t make the changes necessary to get this group to 7 or 8 wins. If we go 5-6 this year that coaching extension isn’t going to look like value. Enough of these low expectations… Furman wins Socon and at least a couple of playoff games.

[Davemeister]

NC A&T - They are a fast, well-coached team, but they may be rusty. We have them at home. Until I see better QB play, I call it a (L)
Tenn Tech - Not a good team. Picked 6th in the OVC. (W)
NC State - Ain't gonna be pretty (unless we have a stud QB and are 2-0) (L)
Mercer - Talented and extremely well-coached. We have the talent and coaching to match. At home.. (W)
Wofford - Always tough but hit hard by injuries and transfers out. On the road... but our guys want the monkey off the back (W)
Citadel - They are not a bad team, but they aren't unbeatable. Payback at PS gonna be a B!+@# (W)
ETSU - Hope this talented team doesn't get consistent. Glad to have them at PS. (W)
UTC - The most athletic team in the SoCon. Transfers abound. On the road. (L)
WCU - The new coach will have them playing much better by the end of the season. Gonna be close. (W)
VMI - This talented team will have been knocked down a peg late in the season. We revenge at home (W)
Samford - Sammy has this game circled. We may have used all our luck last season. (L)

7 - 4
(If I'm being honest I don't think we go 4-0 against WC, ETSU, Cit, AND Mercer... but I just can't type 5-6...heart pulls the toss-ups to the good guys)

You did a great job of working it out game-by-game and my Heart is with you . . . but the rest of my junk refuses to follow.

[Affirm]

We were picked to win the “spring season” and were just plain bad. Furman has benefited from the ruling to allow an extra season giving us a player like Devin Wynn. There is a lot of talent on this team and they have something to prove. As out of sync as we looked in the spring, I find it hard to believe that Clay Hendrix can’t make the changes necessary to get this group to 7 or 8 wins. If we go 5-6 this year that coaching extension isn’t going to look like value. Enough of these low expectations… Furman wins Socon and at least a couple of playoff games.

Wow.
I hope you are right.
I don’t believe you, and I hope I am wrong.

[apaladin]

We all hope that this mess has will get fixed by September. After seeing this team get worse with each game I have my doubts but have not given up hope.

[The Jackal]

We all hope that this mess has will get fixed by September. After seeing this team get worse with each game I have my doubts but have not given up hope.

I understand the sentiment. Really, I do.

Again, I'm urging perspective. Look at the national FCS scene last year. Roughly half the teams didn't play. The dedicated few that managed a season rarely looked good. This wasn't just a Furman problem.

Furman lost to VMI. We all hated that. That VMI team played James Madison to within 7 points on the road in the playoffs and put up over 400 yards of offense against the Duke's defense. That was the first time in 14 consecutive games (and the only time last season) JMU gave up 400 yards of offense to anyone, which included a game agains the eventual national champion. Most teams are lucky to break 200 against that defense.

Furman held the same VMI team to 14 points and 268 yards of offense. No one watching that game was left with the impression that VMI was clearly a better team. Like many times last year, Furman let an inferior team hang around long enough to beat them.

That's where I am with all of this. I watched Furman play last spring and was frequently left with the impression that we looked more talented than every team we faced. Our execution sucked, and allowed teams we should have run away from stay in the contest. Some managed to hang around long enough to win. I never once thought we looked clearly outclassed by anyone in the Southern Conference.

If our defense shows up like it did every week this spring - and there's no reason to think it won't - then we will be in every game. We have size, speed, and physicality across every level of that unit. The major question will again remain whether our offense can get it together long enough to maintain possession of the ball and put it in the end zone.

[Affirm]

As of this writing, 11 AM on 8/6/2021, I believe our first practice may be under way.
Affirm speculates, as of 10:45 AM on 8/6/2021, that our results will be as follows:
NCA&T L by 20
at TTU W by 5
at NCSU L by 50
Mercer W by 5
at Wofford L by 15
Citadel W by 5
ETSU L by 30. **** change that to “L by 3”. I ********* confused ETSU for UTC
at UTC L by 15. **** edit that, “L by 30”**********
at WCU W by 10
VMI L by 15
at Samford L by 20
4 wins: TTU, MU, Citadel, WCU
7 losses: NCA&T, NCSU, Wofford, ETSU, UTC, VMI, Samford
I will be especially thankful if we can beat Mercer and Citadel. Those would be the season highlights.
I hope we CAN win 4 games, at least. More would be great.
Also, I hope we will LOOK better than my projected score indicates in each of our losses and in each of our wins.
I will NOT be happy about 4-7, will NOT be happy if my projection about Wofford is true, and will be disappointed especially about the FINAL 2 games and how our season ends. We would be 3-3 in our first 6 games. We will be 1-4 in our last 5 games, if my projections about those are true.
Finally, I hope that COVID does not mess with this season, and that we avoid all other potential, illnesses, accidents, and controversies on or off the field.

Overall 4-7
SoCon 3-5
OOC 1-2

[Sir William]

Alright, time to say what a lot of us are thinking (well, at least what I’m thinking)…

Several on this board have been crying and whining about the spring collapse since April/May, and quite frankly the sentiment has been understandable to a point. But it’s now August and there comes a time when you’ve made your point ad nauseum, and it’s time to move forward. If you truly and adamantly feel that Furman is going to get their asses handed to them in SoCon play this fall, and that the coaches must be idiots who’ve lost their way completely, and that there’s no hope and you are in complete despair, then do the rest of us a favor and shut the H up. And for the love of all that’s holy, do not come to Paladin Stadium this fall - if we suck as much as you think and say, why would you come?

Honestly, I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m sick of the negativity. In fact, I’m more concerned about the crappy attitude of some of our folks here on UFFP than I am about our performance on the gridiron this past spring. Worst display of whining I’ve ever seen as a Paladin. Man up!! Take off your momma’s panties and put on your big boy pants!

Me - I’m staying positive, seeing the spring as a blessing in disguise, and looking forward to watching the numeral “2021” being hung on the Paladin Stadium field house under the heading of SoCon football champs.

Ok, I’m done.