2024 Football: Stephen F. Austin Preview

Also Yeti cups

Sep 04, 2024

September 7, 2024 ・6:30pm CT ・ESPN+ ・MGRN ・Denton, Tx - DATCU

The hardest thing to do is follow up success. Usually the grind building up to something great is done anonymously. You can tinker, fail, and pursue your idea until it is time to perform the thing. In this case, NT was in an offseason in relative quiet. The hype died down. People wanted to know about the defense, figured the offense would be good but were waiting until the game was played.

It is funny how actual football changes attitudes. Nothing really is different. NT still has a powerful offense, as predicted. Without squinting, you see the defense allowed 582 yards of offense and 38 points. So what is different? Well, wins. It is all about the win-loss column, which is a subset of it being all about ‘touchdown North Texas’ which is a subset of ‘first down NT.’ Defensively it follows the same pattern.

So NT had success. They won. All week we have had memes, gifs, statistics and highlights to consume as we prepare for the home opener against SFA. How does the team follow this up? Well, I suggest an encore. Another 50+ point effort, please. This time with a little more oomph on the defensive side please. Put up some numbers, make the people happy. People like touchdowns. The die hards who listen to pregame breakdowns and podcasts will analyze the how. The casuals who don’t know that SFA is not an FBS school, or what an FBS school is will enjoy that they saw the home team score, do some tik toks about it, and everyone will be happy.

Am I looking past SFA? No. I simply am raising the fogging estandards.

Good teams beat bad teams by a lot of points. Your attention to detail, the depth chart, the preparation from the staff all show when it is time to play a smaller team. SFA is not a particularly good FCS program right now — unlike, say, ACU. North Texas’ offense should, if properly prepared1, overwhelm the SFA defense. I mean, last year NT beat ACU 45-31. ACU scored late to make it slightly closer than the game actually was. We want something at least as good.

MGN is on the record as suggesting that this version of the offense is superior than last year simply for the fact that we have an upgrade at QB. The weapons are young (Wyatt Young, Sides, et al) or untested outside of Damon Ward but we saw last week that this thing can get up to Fully Operational and looks very dangerous. They sliced-and-diced up the South defense fairly easily and only messed up when being too aggressive.

Fun facts:

Morris is coaching his 56th game and is 30-25, including 6-7 at NT. He is 2-1 vs SFA (Incarnate Word)
Colby Carthel is in his 12th season and has won a DII national championship. He is 85-48, and 27-30 at SFA in six years.
30th all time meeting between programs. NT leads 22-4-3, but in 1994 they drew in Denton. The last time NT won in Denton was 1991 at Fouts.

North Texas Attacking SFA’s Defense

Be physical. SFA is fairly light. They run a 4-2-5 defense with size and strength through the middle. The ends are light, and smallish for college football. The anchor end is Sneed, at 280lbs and Austin is the rush end at 210. Like all 4-2-5s they are very much like a 3-3-5 as well. You’ll notice Austin is similar in size to the linebackers, who are also in the low 200lbs range. Cotton is the biggest dude at 232. At Nickle2 they start a smallish guy at 5-9, 160. That doesn’t mean anything as we have said with Ridge Texada.

The secondary is experienced and they have big corners. I imagine we will see some attempts at press coverage and rerouting releases. It is hard to get a sense of what they will do against NT as they beat up on an NAIA school last week.

The key to this is just being aggressive. I don’t expect we have too much to worry about as Eric Morris is very good and preparing his offenses. Teams that lose to FCS squads usually come in unprepared or over-thinking. Making the routine, correct reads is better than forcing the ball somewhere. FCS squads usually have talent, it isn’t just as evenly distributed. The depth is where you show the difference.

That is to say, do not force the ball downfield or into tight windows and be happy to take 4-5 yards if it is there. Eventually, the windows will get bigger and those 4-5 yard gains will turn into bigger YAC stuff later. That is the idea, anyway.

The defense is coordinated by new DC Mike Mutz, a guy from San Antonio and formerly of Tulane as a Linebacker coach. He also has coached at Sam Houston St.

North Texas Defending SFA

Kylon Harris is the returning WR with nearly 700 yards last year. They sport two backs — Wimbley and Williams — who do the main damage for them. They combined for 1200 yards and 10 scores. The offensive line is huge. Brian Maurer was their returning QB — a guy who had played at U of Tennessee — but he retired from football before the season. I really do not know what to expect here. The offense is new, led by former Lovejoy HS head football coach Chris Ross.

I did not watch that first game vs North American, so I do not really have a sense of what they like to do. The QB is new, the backs are experienced and the line has good size. I figure they’ll run the ball and throw some play-action stuff to their big wide outs. The head coach is a former middle linebacker — you know he loves him some run game.

Special

We glossed over the special teams last week. Not because they aren’t important, but because we had nothing insightful here. It is not a glorious aspect of the game. You do well? Routine. You mess up? People call for your head. The kick game started a little shaky but again we do not want the kicker doing much other than banging in XPs. The punter should also be set decoration.

Beyond that, we are excited about what Juwaun Price brings. Depth is really evident on special teams which is why you see big plays in this area when there is a big program vs a smaller one. Have a 4-star guy who can’t sniff the two-deep but has wheels? He’s the kick returner against your walk-on-heavy kick coverage.

Here, it is the OR on the depth chart against the SFA guys who are trying to make good. Happens.

I also loved the block kick last week. I will take “free” points whenever. More of this please.

Overall

We want NT to win big here. I do not see a betting line as of press time, but let me say 20.5. That is my spread I am giving you. I will not bet you, so stop.

I think NT has enough to win big while also looking bad. We want to win and also look good. I want to see Cash McCollum get reps. Or the other kid with the ‘M’ name. I want to see freshman by the middle of the third quarter. The people deserve it. Let them spend their worry on the Yeti cup availability and not the outcome of this game.

Let’s go Mean Green.

I mean this in the way that both the staff and the players prepare themselves.

That’s how they spell it!