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We are now 5-1 against the spread in our past six games. That means we've beat the expectations of the smartest college football followers in the world (the guys setting the betting lines in Vegas) five of the past six weeks. If you are asking the question in your head if we are better this season....the answer is easy. We are MUCH better this year. The problem is that it's incremental progress and we were SO bad last year that it makes it tough to measure progress objectively. Yes, we are better but we're still not good or even average and that's upsetting.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
1) Offensively we have increased our average points per game scored by just short of three points. That's obviously an increase of a field goal. We have increased our yardage output by about 40 yards or nearly half of a football field. Jeff Tuel has been a beacon of hope. His passer rating is 126 currently and once he qualifies with enough attempts that would put him just ahead of Jake Locker and just behind Jeremiah Masoli at sixth in the conference. He's up to 111 pass attempts on the season and we need him to pick up another 100 at least to get to a full season of experience. He's truly getting invaluable experience and he's talented enough to expect he'll build on it. We should be really excited for the next three years with Tuel.
The incremental improvement is also while playing a cadre of newcomers (Tuel, Simone, Winston, Reitnour, Pencer, Forzani) and deep reserves (just about the entire oline outside of center) on the offensive side of the ball. We should all EXPECT to see a huge leap next year as these guys assimilate into the system and have game reps under their belt. If not, we should look for a new offensive coordinator and shake up the assistants. We still are one of the worst offenses of BCS conference teams but the improvement is present. In the third year of Sturdy's system and with most of our contributors at least sophomores we should expect to see that output increase by a touchdown and 60-80 yards of game offense. If that happens we would be about 8th in the Pac-10 for total offense. That would make us slightly below average but similar to what the Huskies are running out this year which is a passable offense if you play efficient (limit turnovers and force some of your own.)
2) Defensively we have decreased our average points allowed from last season by just short of a touchdown. It's a still terrible average of 37 points a game and at times our defense looks hopeless. We continue to give up huge chunks of yardage on each play. But it's not the unmitigated disaster that we saw last season. We have seen some areas that are worthy of being excited about like forcing turnovers. However, it is shocking how slow we are and we still seem to be really hesitant out on the field. Our read and react skills are depressing. This should improve as youngsters get older but I am a little distressed about our aggressiveness. Young guys usually make mistakes moving at full speed. Our guys seem to be frozen on the field at times.
The hope with defense are the guys that are redshirting. More than 75% of the redshirting players this year will play on the defensive side of the ball. Theoretically they will provide an instant speed upgrade without any loss of size. Our safeties are about as fast as good tight ends right now. We don't have a single speed rushing dend to provide pass pressure. But when you infuse names like Markle, Atofau, Kaufusi, Carpenter, Washington, Rankin and Buckley you can expect to see a massive set of new faces on defense next season and if this season has bought us anything on defense it is the ability to redshirt those guys and play them at the proper weight and speed next year.
If we improve on the defensive side of the ball with just some more speed to close out plays in space and form a semblance of a pass rush with the players we have returning it's totally reasonable to expect the same touchdown improvement we've seen this year. If that happens then our average margin of defeat moves from the current -22 to about a margin of -8. That will make us look an awful lot like the Huskies of this year. Would you take that at this point? It's still short of a bowl but the psychological return to competitiveness and maybe an upset or two sprinkled in would hopefully energize the fan base and lead to another wave of recruiting.
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