Honestly, there was only one game where I think I may have gone out on a limb giving us a W, and that is Wisconsin. But to be quite frank, they are going to be young at the same positions as us this season, and we went toe to toe with them on their home field, so I would at the very least expect nothing less in the rematch at Browns Stadium, where we will most likely have a slight homefield advantage, at worst a neutral crowd. Buffalo, Florida International, and Kent State should be blowout victories, as those teams are among the top 10 worst in college football. A loss to any of those teams would be quite mind-blowing to me. We may be young in spots, as was evidenced today at the Spring Game, but come on.Tricky_Falcon wrote:Not sure, but I am willing to bet that one of them will find their way on the field that day if Wisconsin is losing.falconfan1999 wrote:Doesn't Wisconsin have 3 players suspended for the game against us? I thought that they were all 3 running backs as well.
If that is the case, I think that this one could be closer than everybody is thinking.
24: I think a lot of people would call a 9-4 season a great accomplishment. I doubt that we will see nine wins though. We are extremly young at very important position. I think it's way too early to say how this team will perform. There are a lot of question marks. Is our defense going to be improved next year? How is our o-line going to be? Who is going to be the QB and will he be able to lead the team? Receivers, from what I hear they are either young, slow or cant catch. Oh yeah and we can't forget the kicking game... Hopefully the Florida duo will be as good as advertised.
When looking at the schedule there are some no brainer teams that we should be and have beat in the past but with a young team will those games that used to be easy W's still be? At the moment I'm not so sure. We had a veteran squad last year that did not finish where most of us thought.
If we don't start at least 4-1 in the first 5 games, we are in big trouble, because the 2nd half of the season is much, much tougher. Ohio State is a sure W, and then there are some tougher MAC teams present. I gave us two losses in this conference phase, I was bickering a bit on the Akron game, but I gave us the close win. Everybody knows dam well that if Omar had played against them last year we would have blown them clear out of Doyt Perry Stadium. As for Miami, they suffer from the same problems with youth as we do, except to an even larger degree. I don't see them coming in here and beating us either, especially after how we shut down star RB Brandon Murphy and just about everybody else on that team in Oxford last November.
Maybe I'm being slightly optimistic given the circumstances, but while I think our team last year had more talent that this coming year, it was poorly put together. Team chemistry, especially on defense, was a big issue. Lack of leadership really hurt the team, most notably against Western Michigan, where we simply laid down and rolled over once Omar got injured. I wanted to puke watching that. I don't see this being a problem this year, especially with all the younger players coming in to start this year, I think they will more easily buy into what coach Gregg Brandon tells them.
Just to shut them up for 1 day in this state.
