They have lost to Southern Utah, a Sky Conference "power" and barely beaten Tulane, in addition to beating WKU by a TD at home. So they are 2-1 coming off a bye.
One stat that stood out to me is that they didn't run as well as us aginst WKU....they had 144 yards and 3.7 ypc while we had 240 and 5.3 yards per carry. They were also pretty weak defending the run last year, giving up 164 yards per game and 4.2 per carry. This is probably a good matchup for us running the ball and slowing down theirs.
On pass D, their stats vs WKU were 27/47 282 yards, 3 TD, 3 ints. Against UT, WKU pass stats were 17/34 for 222 1 TD and 5 ints. Interesting...I guess the WKU is just an int machine, but I would say the USA passing D stats suggest that we will also have some success throwing. They were not that great against the pass last year either. One other note...they added four JC DBs this year...don't know what to think about that, but they didn't do much against WKU IMO (other than the ints).
As far as throwing the ball, they have a senior QB who had a 111 QB rating last year (against a soft schedule, but still not bad) and threw 12 TDs and 12 ints. This year he threw for 270 on WKU. They obviously have an advantage in their passing attack vs. ours, because we suck so bad.
However, I have to think that our passing attack, which started with very little experience at QB AND WR, will improve a bit week to week. It seems to have. If Worley can put together his best game so far and the WRs are a bit better at running routes (and holding on to the dam ball!
), we can hopefully do enough against their pass D to have a good day offensively. This might be the weakest pass D we have faced after Austin Peay. I hope so.
Anyway, just some FYI stats.
I do think we beat this team, and hopefuly have a good day on both sides of the ball and build up the teams confidence. They need it going into October.
