SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Did you ever try to take on the US Army?
- Army’s football team can also be difficult. It’s not he Blanchard and Davis days any more but the discipline and focus of the Army team can be difficult to match and Texas-San Antonio found out the hard way when the Cadets controlled the ball for 44 minutes against them in a 37-29 Army win. Army ran 65 rushing plays in that game. Not 65 total plays, (that was 83 pays – to 56). 65 running plays that netted them 254 yards. They gained another 188 on 8 pass completions: 23.5 yards per completion. To combat the option, you have to assign a defensive player to each option. They wind up tiptoeing sideways. Their teammates creep up to help them if their man gets by them. It’s then easy to pass over them for long gains. You know – the way Georgia Tech did when they beat us 56-0 in Atlanta a few years back. UTSA was pretty efficient themselves, gaining 360 yards on 56 plays and scoring 29 points. But it wasn’t enough to beat a team that seemingly had the ball all the time.
- They won’t be helping us out with penalties but we might be helping them out with them.
- Their coach, Jeff Monken is a Paul Johnson disciple who has brought success to an Army football program that had endured 18 losing seasons in 19 years, (they were 7-6 in 2010) and set a record by going 0-13 in 2003. Under Monken, they had the last two losing seasons of that stretch but have been 60-32 in the last eight years. This guy knows exactly what he’s doing – and will know exactly what we’re going.
- Our 3-3-5 is not the ideal defense to stop a running game, although it will be interesting to see how it matches up against a triple option.
- They keep coming at you. They are 10 for 10 on fourth down this year. That can wear a defense down.
- Army’s addition of a passing game hasn’t slowed down their running attack. They are still 9th in the country with 236 yards per game. But now they’ve added 178 yards per game passing, making them all the harder to stop. Look out for 6-4 200 Isaiah Alston who has 46 catches for 968 yards and 6 scores in two+ years. He’s our kind of receiver but he’s playing for them while out star is out. Their offense must be something similar to the old Pasqualoni-DeLeone offense that combined the run and the pass in somewhat equal amounts and the defense didn’t know which they were going to do.
- We will want to test their pass defense. That’s how we beat their 9-0 team in the Dome in ’96. Last year Army had the 3rd best pass defense in the country. (Strangely they had the 118th best run defense, even though they faced the run practice every day.) This year, after three games, they are 26th vs. the pass and 55th vs. the run. This isn’t a team we can just roll over because we want to.
- We’ve been doing well but our success seems a bit fragile. We can’t afford to lose Shrader, obviously, (Carlos Del Rio Wilson could be good someday but it will take a while) We are down three offensive linemen and our star receiver. Who else will the injury bug bite? Will our talented receivers learn to catch the ball? Other than Shrader’s wonderful fakes, we haven’t done a lot on the ground and every DC will have those fakes on film. We’ve got a gauntlet coming up but could it start with a loss to Army? That would be a gut punch.
- They’ve played Louisiana-Monroe, Delaware State and Texas-San Antonio. But we’ve beaten Colgate, Western Michigan, and Purdue. Purdue was the Big Ten West champion last year but I don’t think they are as good this year and our victory over them may lose its shine as the season progresses. That was a road win but so was UTSA, who had a better record last year, (11-3 – they won Conference USA) than Purdue (8-6) and they got more Top 25 votes, (113-4 from the writers and coaches combined). You could argue that they’ve had the tougher schedule.
- Remember when Middle Tennessee bragged that they’d played in a dome- the Alamo Dome, and we laughed at the comparison to our dome? Well, they beat us. Army just came back from beating UTSA there.
- If SU’s team is totally focused on beating Clemson, they’ll have a chance to do it- and to lose this one.
- Army’s football team can also be difficult. It’s not he Blanchard and Davis days any more but the discipline and focus of the Army team can be difficult to match and Texas-San Antonio found out the hard way when the Cadets controlled the ball for 44 minutes against them in a 37-29 Army win. Army ran 65 rushing plays in that game. Not 65 total plays, (that was 83 pays – to 56). 65 running plays that netted them 254 yards. They gained another 188 on 8 pass completions: 23.5 yards per completion. To combat the option, you have to assign a defensive player to each option. They wind up tiptoeing sideways. Their teammates creep up to help them if their man gets by them. It’s then easy to pass over them for long gains. You know – the way Georgia Tech did when they beat us 56-0 in Atlanta a few years back. UTSA was pretty efficient themselves, gaining 360 yards on 56 plays and scoring 29 points. But it wasn’t enough to beat a team that seemingly had the ball all the time.
- They won’t be helping us out with penalties but we might be helping them out with them.
- Their coach, Jeff Monken is a Paul Johnson disciple who has brought success to an Army football program that had endured 18 losing seasons in 19 years, (they were 7-6 in 2010) and set a record by going 0-13 in 2003. Under Monken, they had the last two losing seasons of that stretch but have been 60-32 in the last eight years. This guy knows exactly what he’s doing – and will know exactly what we’re going.
- Our 3-3-5 is not the ideal defense to stop a running game, although it will be interesting to see how it matches up against a triple option.
- They keep coming at you. They are 10 for 10 on fourth down this year. That can wear a defense down.
- Army’s addition of a passing game hasn’t slowed down their running attack. They are still 9th in the country with 236 yards per game. But now they’ve added 178 yards per game passing, making them all the harder to stop. Look out for 6-4 200 Isaiah Alston who has 46 catches for 968 yards and 6 scores in two+ years. He’s our kind of receiver but he’s playing for them while out star is out. Their offense must be something similar to the old Pasqualoni-DeLeone offense that combined the run and the pass in somewhat equal amounts and the defense didn’t know which they were going to do.
- We will want to test their pass defense. That’s how we beat their 9-0 team in the Dome in ’96. Last year Army had the 3rd best pass defense in the country. (Strangely they had the 118th best run defense, even though they faced the run practice every day.) This year, after three games, they are 26th vs. the pass and 55th vs. the run. This isn’t a team we can just roll over because we want to.
- We’ve been doing well but our success seems a bit fragile. We can’t afford to lose Shrader, obviously, (Carlos Del Rio Wilson could be good someday but it will take a while) We are down three offensive linemen and our star receiver. Who else will the injury bug bite? Will our talented receivers learn to catch the ball? Other than Shrader’s wonderful fakes, we haven’t done a lot on the ground and every DC will have those fakes on film. We’ve got a gauntlet coming up but could it start with a loss to Army? That would be a gut punch.
- They’ve played Louisiana-Monroe, Delaware State and Texas-San Antonio. But we’ve beaten Colgate, Western Michigan, and Purdue. Purdue was the Big Ten West champion last year but I don’t think they are as good this year and our victory over them may lose its shine as the season progresses. That was a road win but so was UTSA, who had a better record last year, (11-3 – they won Conference USA) than Purdue (8-6) and they got more Top 25 votes, (113-4 from the writers and coaches combined). You could argue that they’ve had the tougher schedule.
- Remember when Middle Tennessee bragged that they’d played in a dome- the Alamo Dome, and we laughed at the comparison to our dome? Well, they beat us. Army just came back from beating UTSA there.
- If SU’s team is totally focused on beating Clemson, they’ll have a chance to do it- and to lose this one.
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