Guys, it's a long season.
Western looked like it was going to be hard to beat to start last year, but then Reid gets hurt, they start playing pretty sloppy, and they end up missing the playoffs after getting into the top 10 in the polls. 2 years ago, NC State went 8-4 with 4 QBs. Last year it looked like they may only win 3-4 and they ended up going 9-4 with bad QB play and only 1 RB who
might be a starter on other ACC teams (and no run game to speak of, #119 in the country).
It's a long season. Things change week to week. Regardless of how either team finishes up, I think Western deserves credit for what they did on defense
in this game.
Some of the takes around this game are weird. I don't think giving Western some credit for doing certain things well that they haven't done well for years (playing defense/tackling) is heaping excessive praise on them. If 5 games go by and WCU is 5-1 with wins over Montana and a supposedly good Elon squad, does that mean we can't beat them? If they then lose their next 6, while that would be an epic collapse it doesn't mean they weren't a good team for those 6 games.
These are all hypotheticals, and again, it's a long season. We'll see where it goes. I'll be happy when we have actual Furman football to talk about.
apaladin wrote:Western threw or attempted to throw almost every down. They only tried 13 running plays the whole game.
Western's ADOT (average depth of target) was 4.7. They were not going to give State a chance to apply any pressure, and traditionally State does have a good run defense. They got the ball out quick and made State make tackles. It was a good strategy for this game, but I don't think you'll see Western play that way the rest of the year. They're going to look to throw deeper routes giving some teams chances to get to him. At least that's what I would expect.
