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Nice season preview at Hustlebelt today...

http://www.hustlebelt.com/mac-football/ ... on-preview

I can see us getting ranked at some point in the season...right now I think we are a Top 35-40 team. The scary thing is we could return 10 starters on O in 2015?? Damn.

GO FALCONS!!! BEAT WKU!

My only concern is that there just might be TOO much hype about us this year.... if we were to lose a couple of key players to injury etc., this could become a problem for the season.....in the meantime, I'm looking forward to our trip to BG, (Ky. that is) to see the start of what should be a very interesting, and hopefully successful, season.

I do not think we're a Top-25 team. However, I do think we have the potential to be one. But in order to do that we need to better ourselves from recent years past, including even last season. Our recent track record of not being able to beat a BCS team (which we actually used to be very successful doing and did several times when we were ranked several years ago) and avoiding a loss to a fellow MAC school (see: Toledo, which has beaten us four consecutive years) are trends we need to reverse in order to do so. But if you think back to even as recent as last year, our own guys admitted their heads got too big prior to the Indiana game when we were receiving votes in the Top-25 leading up to that game and Indiana took us behind the woodshed. Honestly, I can live with not being ranked if we can win do two things. 1. Win the MAC Championship. 2. Win a bowl game again (we've also lost our last four bowls). Doing those two things means you had a great season to have been there and achieved them. Looking at this year's schedule, of course I want to win every game, but if our only loss is to say, Wisconsin, I'd be ecstatic. That would mean we'd have finally beaten a BCS team (Indiana), our nemesis (Toledo), won the MAC Championship again and finally won a bowl game. And if all of that were to happen, they yes, we might even find ourselves ranked in the Top-25 with a record of 13-1. The rankings are nice, but they come with wins which are much, much better.

I agree..if anything we might be a tad overhyped right now. I know the MAC is a heavily QB dependent league and we have the top returning QB ( Hendrix at Miami and Ely at UT might be wildcards in that discussion) but we have a new coach implementing a drastically different system. The results could be...... interesting.

There is one thing I am positively giddy about....adding Lewis and Dieter to Burbrink, Jackson and Moore at WR (along with Redding and possibly Rhodes) could give us the best QB, RB and WR group in the conference. See there...even when I'm being cautios about the hpe, I start engaging in hype. It's totally infectuous....

Agree as well, I don't see us being close to a top-25 team and believe there is a little too much hype as well. We're not going to know how good this team is until they play Wisconsin and Indiana and you have to hope they don't trip up at WKU next week. The potential exists for a very good to even great season if everything falls the right away which is possible, but its a long season and everyone likes to talk things up in August.

This WKU game is huge. We drop this one and a 1-3 starts looks likely.

Also...I think it will also be interesting to see how/if this new Coaching Staff keeps the teams, 'head's on straight'...'focused'....'feet on the ground'
(or however you wish to describe it).

We're polishing up the MAC trophy and haven't played a game yet!

Falcon Commander wrote:Also...I think it will also be interesting to see how/if this new Coaching Staff keeps the teams, 'head's on straight'...'focused'....'feet on the ground'
(or however you wish to describe it).

Exactly. We're going to get everyone's best shot. And we're going to have to face most of the strong tests on the road. But I am very excited and curious to see us play as so much of what we're projecting is based on what we looked like last year and we're going to have a different look this season.

I don't think BG belongs in the Top 25, but I am mildly surprised we aren't getting any votes at all. Pundits correctly see BG as an intriguing dark horse. If the Falcons win out, they may very well play on New Year's Day. That said, I don't know that BG is overhyped. Hype usually includes some Top 25 love.

Schadenfreude wrote:I don't think BG belongs in the Top 25, but I am mildly surprised we aren't getting any votes at all. Pundits correctly see BG as an intriguing dark horse. If the Falcons wins out, they may very well play on New Year's Day. That said, I don't know that BG is overhyped. Hype usually includes some Top 25 love.

This.

Honestly, I think it has something to do with people looking at the MAC as a whole. The conference went 0-5 in bowls last year...but honestly that just shows how short sighted people are. The amount of non conference wins the MAC has had the past two years is pretty incredible. Cincinnati, Iowa, Purdue, Virginia, penn state, and even scares with Akron vs Michigan and bg vs missisppi state.
Anyway, it's hard to be overhyped when you have NO love in the top 25. If we come out and cream WKU, we'll get our first points. If we keep winning it'll snowball from there.