Pre-Season Rankings

[The Jackal]

I still submit that not enough is made of the fact that after 2013, the SoCon lost two major programs and it sent the conference into a period of reordering.

Losing App State and Georgia Southern would be akin to losing North Dakota State and James Madison if they played in the same conference. It created a massive gap that took some time to fill.

[FUBeAR]

I still submit that not enough is made of the fact that after 2013, the SoCon lost two major programs and it sent the conference into a period of reordering.

Losing App State and Georgia Southern would be akin to losing North Dakota State and James Madison if they played in the same conference. It created a massive gap that took some time to fill.

…except, the SoCon had 4 Teams (CIT, Chatt, Samford, Woffy) in the Playoffs in only the 3rd season (2016) after those 2 (and E*Loan) departed and 6 seasons ago now…and those Teams won multiple Playoff games…and 2 of the 3 ‘Replacement’ Teams added have won the SoCon (ETSU & VMI) & the 3rd (Mercer) has been ‘on the doorstep’ of winning both the PFL & the SoCon…and those 2 Playoff Teams have ‘shown well’ in the Playoffs…and Mercer shoulda received an At-Large bid last year over FAMU, SELA, UNI, or SFA.

The tippy-top of the SoCon is probably not quite as strong as pre-2014, but the middle and the bottom are way, way, way stronger than they were. SoCon needs more Teams IN the Playoffs with fewer REALLY unfavorable matchups early…but that’s not going to happen with ever-increasing parity & full round-robin schedule in the Conference damaging contenders’ records, ever-existent flawed logic for human rankings and built into computer rankings (which both matter), and the current kinda/sorta regionalized quite unfavorably playoff system.

So…play hard, men…hope for the best…and remember what Coach Cooke taught us…

[FUBeAR]

Found these interesting multi-part Twitter threads (each Tweet you see below is part of a 6 or 7 part thread with analysis/charts about each Team) about SoCon Teams. Click on the 1 Tweet you see for each Team and you will go to the rest of the thread with the full analytics.

…have to divide into 3 posts because of URL/post limits…So this is 1 of 3.


ETSU - 31.6% to win SoCon…

Mercer - 26.3% to win SoCon…

Chatt - 21.1% to win SoCon…

[FUBeAR]

2 of 3…

Furman - 13.5% to win SoCon…

Samford - 8.6% to win SoCon…

WCU - 4.3% to win SoCon…

[FUBeAR]

3 of 3…

VMI - 2.8% to win SoCon…

CIT - 1.2% to win SoCon…

Wofford - 0.9% to win SoCon…

[The Jackal]

0.9% seems high for Wofford.

Conklin is at least bullish.

“When I came in in 2018 and 2019, I thought it was only fair to the players that were there at that time to make the transition slowly,” Conklin said. “At that point in time, we weren’t in a position where we could go this direction. Over the last three to four years, we’ve recruited really well. We have really talented guys on offense and defense.

https://www.goupstate.com/story/sports/ ... 176404002/

Strange quote, when you think about it. Wofford won the SoCon in 2018 and 2019, but Conklin wanted to make a slow "transition" to 1-10. Inspiring vision for the future of Wofford football.

Nothing says "things are looking up" like . . . hiring 10 new assistant coaches this offseason.

[FUBeAR]

0.9% seems high for Wofford.

Conklin is at least bullish.

“When I came in in 2018 and 2019, I thought it was only fair to the players that were there at that time to make the transition slowly,” Conklin said. “At that point in time, we weren’t in a position where we could go this direction. Over the last three to four years, we’ve recruited really well. We have really talented guys on offense and defense.

https://www.goupstate.com/story/sports/ ... 176404002/

Strange quote, when you think about it. Wofford won the SoCon in 2018 and 2019, but Conklin wanted to make a slow "transition" to 1-10. Inspiring vision for the future of Wofford football.

Nothing says "things are looking up" like . . . hiring 10 new assistant coaches this offseason.

…and, if FUBeAR recalls correctly (a 50/50 proposition, at best), he was talking about having decided to “rip the band-aid off” in 2019 when the PorchYappers Offense opened the season & looked terrible (4 INT’s) in an embarrassing loss to SC State and another to Samford.

So, because he really had no choice, he mostly went back to Wofford Football Offense - about 75% run…just like they were in 2017 under Ayers and under him in 2018 before he ‘fixed’ the O in those 1st 2 games of 2019, before quickly ‘un-fixing’ it…and, in what really was a down year in the SoCon, made it thru the rest of their schedule without anyone except Chatt really offering much of a challenge…until they looked bite-less losing their 1st round Playoff Game at home…

Then, back to this “slow transition” to be “fair to the players” in 2020/Spring 2021. Welp, it really wasn’t any better than it had been when part of his “slow transition” was to “rip the band-aid” off in 2019…BUT this time, he really didn’t have an option/running QB to revert to…to bail them out…he had ‘burned the ships’…and while they were still ~60/40 run/pass, it was bad…so they quit…and I guess still in “slow transition” in 2021, they were still running the ball, mostly ineffectively…but often…and more effectively than they could pass it.

The only thing he should be saying is…

“We’ve been horrible since the end of the 2019 season and we’ve been mostly rudderless during my entire tenure here. Relying on what Mike Ayers built, the Players he and his Staff had recruited, and the heart/commitment of those Players, we were able to win for 2 seasons despite my many, many mistakes as a rookie Head Coach. We have leaned a lot since the end of 2019 and I believe we will show this 2022 season that we are clearly headed in the right direction. If we don’t clearly demonstrate significant improvement, I need to step down from my Head Coaching position and give someone else the opportunity to put Wofford Football back on the level to which it had risen and sustained for so many seasons. Please support these Players this season. They have worked very hard, endured a very difficult and problematic transition, and deserve you being behind each of them 100%.”

[FUBeAR]

The TL/DR for all the previously posted embedded Tweets is…

[apaladin]

I just hope we are better than all these preseason prognostications who don’t give us a dogs chance.

[AstroDin]

I just hope we are better than all these preseason prognostications who don’t give us a dogs chance.

The pre-season rankings are a mix of so many things.
A lot of subjectivity, the year before team performance, whos coming back, and bias, to name a few things.
Related to the SoCon rankings and reviews of Furman, here's my beef.

The knock on Furman is the entirety of Furman's 2021 season offense. Often called mediocre. Which then starts the conversation turned to ETSU and why did they hire Quarles? Most reviews conclude that ETSU trusts Quarles not to wreck the ship.

Everyone skips over Furman's last half of the season offensive performance, led by a true freshman quarterback and a backup running back taking over for an injured all-So-Con running back. Then laziness raises its head. No one finds it worth their time to much less mention or do the digging into what Furman did to replace three offensive coaching departures.

Unless your head is in the sand - things are different this pre-season camp with the offense. Three new coaches, a new scheme, and it appears players believe that the new system is a better system.

Something's gotta give. Apaladin — to your point, people assume this Furman team will stay as competitive as last year. No better, now worse. So a lot of factors are just washed over. New coaching, the offensive line returning in its entirety, a deeper QB bench, the running backs, and an upgraded receiving corps.

Last point. What makes this even more frustrating is that Furman has two offensive linemen on the 1st team. The only team with two linemen. Add Ryan Miller as 1st team TE and Roberto as 2nd team running back. My POV is you have to give Furman a tiny bit of a benefit to the coaching change pedigree and the mix of a lot of experience and talent returning on both sides of the ball.

My guess is Furman beats one of the teams in the consensus top three (I think Furman takes down Chatty at home). I would then give us a puncher's chance at Johnson City. Mercer is the wildcard; lately, we've not played well against the Bears for the last couple of seasons.

[gofurman]

I just hope we are better than all these preseason prognostications who don’t give us a dogs chance.

The pre-season rankings are a mix of so many things.
A lot of subjectivity, the year before team performance, whos coming back, and bias, to name a few things.
Related to the SoCon rankings and reviews of Furman, here's my beef.

The knock on Furman is the entirety of Furman's 2021 season offense. Often called mediocre. Which then starts the conversation turned to ETSU and why did they hire Quarles? Most reviews conclude that ETSU trusts Quarles not to wreck the ship.

Everyone skips over Furman's last half of the season offensive performance, led by a true freshman quarterback and a backup running back taking over for an injured all-So-Con running back. Then laziness raises its head. No one finds it worth their time to much less mention or do the digging into what Furman did to replace three offensive coaching departures.

Unless your head is in the sand - things are different this pre-season camp with the offense. Three new coaches, a new scheme, and it appears players believe that the new system is a better system.

Something's gotta give. Apaladin — to your point, people assume this Furman team will stay as competitive as last year. No better, now worse. So a lot of factors are just washed over. New coaching, the offensive line returning in its entirety, a deeper QB bench, the running backs, and an upgraded receiving corps.

Last point. What makes this even more frustrating is that Furman has two offensive linemen on the 1st team. The only team with two linemen. Add Ryan Miller as 1st team TE and Roberto as 2nd team running back. My POV is you have to give Furman a tiny bit of a benefit to the coaching change pedigree and the mix of a lot of experience and talent returning on both sides of the ball.

My guess is Furman beats one of the teams in the consensus top three (I think Furman takes down Chatty at home). I would then give us a puncher's chance at Johnson City. Mercer is the wildcard; lately, we've not played well against the Bears for the last couple of seasons.

Right. And that leads to the objective assessment of 2 or 3 losses. Until we beat them you have to give Mercer the edge on us. Kudus to them. So assume that’s one loss. Then say we split Chatt and ETSU. Well that’s 2 losses. And that assumes no
Key injuries or - as usually happens - one disappointing loss where we were favored. Tht 2 - 3 losses. Add in a still young Jace Wilson AND - even if better - a NEW offensive system for everyone (!) I wouldn’t put us above 25-30% to win the conference. As Jackal often notes - correctly - we are far better with junior and senior QBs. We may be a year short. Let Jace mature and EVERYone get a year of real games under the new offensive system. I hope we roll 9-2. But I could easily see 6-5 or 7-4 with the Clemson game as an L. I would be happy if we were 7-4 and showed progress on offense and held fairly steady on D. Great D last year !! Well third downs weren’t good at times. Just need 25 points a game. If we move that offensive needle up a few points I’ll be happy. I recall - not looking - if we hit 25 points every game last year we would have probably hit playoffs

[apaladin]

GF- I think in CCH’s 6th season I think I would be disappointed at 7-4. Think about it when he took the job ahd if they told us in year 6 we will be in the middle of the conference would anyone had been happy with that?

[AstroDin]

GF — I'll take the bite on "what if key injuries happen"?

First, that can happen for any team in the SoCon… what happens if Saylors at ETSU or Ford at Chatty go down?
Again this is subjective, but IMO Furman has done an excellent job recruiting and building depth. Especially in the defensive backfield and offensive backfield.

We could see 7-4 or 8-3 this season. It's all a guess right now.

Furman needed to address its 3rd down woes on defense. Furman gets two critical players back and adds a transfer on the line. Furman gets two critical players back in the defensive backfield and adds a very experienced defensive coach.

Concerning the new offensive system - it appears the players are being successful at making the transition, and they like the scheme. I would be more pessimistic if we didn't have an experienced, talented o-line.

[The Jackal]

There are two areas where I saw us struggling, offensive efficiency and third down defense.

On offense, we are going to return 4 starters on the OL and two all conference tackles. Our WR group is deeper. Our QB room is more experienced. Our RB group should be deep. We should be better on offense.

On third downs, we'll return several DBs we missed last season. We'll be bigger in the front 7. We should be able to matchup better on those key downs.

[AllTimeFU]

Love being the underdog. #6, #11 and #18 = plenty of opportunity to earn the respect!

FCS NATION Preseason Top 25
1. NDSU
2. MT
3. SDSU
4. Mo St
5. Sac St
6. ETSU
7. MT St
8. So Ill
9. Nova
10. SFA
11. Chatt
12. Kennesaw
13. EWU
14. SELA
15. UIW
16. Delaware
17. UTM
18. Mercer
19. Richmond
20. Jackson St
21. UNI
22. Weber
23. SC St
24. USD
25. Holy Cross