@Redsea You’re absolutely correct about the schedule over-exaggeration. A very good MAC team should be able to hang with both UK and UC for four quarters and crush both Northwestern and RMU. NIU hung with UK without Lombardi and only lost by a TD.
Martin has now acknowledged that “everybody deals with injuries throughout a season”, not just us.
A coach with nine years experience in building a program ought to understand the importance of building depth. To a great extent he had built it on defense and lost much of it through no fault of his own. To be fair, I think he did a decent job there of patching the holes through the portal.
But all that depth in the running back room hasn’t seemed to matter a whole lot and it became clear after game one there was absolutely no depth of experience in what looks to be a decent QB room.
Our now highly-experienced offensive line hasn’t played like anything special either all season. And, of course, our offensive schemes are pedestrian compared to many teams in the FBS and FCS.
If he can coach, he’ll squeeze exemplary performances out of this team tonight and next week and find just enough left in the tank to eke out two wins. We’ll see.
Yet lost to WMU at home…so whatever, injuries suck…Brett potentially could have been prevented…our issues have less to do with schedule and more to do with actually managing the game on it, IMO.
A “very good” MAC team should go at least 2-2 with that OOC, having JMU at home. A team that loses 3 or 4 MAC games, going 7-5 or 6-6, is not only not a “very good” MAC team, it’s not a very good team. Going 9-3 or 8-4 would validate us as a “very good” MAC team. If we can’t get there, we’re just continuing to be mired in MAC mediocrity.
When we canceled our home-and-home series with Liberty we should’ve replaced it with an FCS home game imo - would have a good chance at starting 2-2 with a remote chance at 3-1 if we somehow pull of an upset against Da U/UC. With JMU not missing a beat in moving up to FBS, our pre-2022 standard of 1-3 looks like the most likely scenario.
Scraping out another 6-6 regular season record probably gets Chuck off the “hot seat”, but it doesn’t mean that Sayler should not still demand changes to the play selection, staff, and OC position in particular.
Lester out at WMU after 6 years and no MAC titles…overall record last 6 years otherwise almost identical to Chuck’s…more discussion and analysis on Coaching carousel thread. A mention here as it is likely to catch Sayler’s attention.
