2025 Football: South Alabama Preview

An opportunity is presented

If you peruse LinkedIn, or certain aspects of Twitter/X, you will find acolytes of Grind Culture. For these people, everything is a learning opportunity, a challenge, a chance to improve. At worst, it can be a bit cringe-inducing to see people talk about breakfast as away to gain an edge, but the overall idea is one that has a lot of value. We are only presented with so many days in a human life. Life is fairly long, but the stages are short. You are only a child for about 10 years. You are only a teenager for the same, and so on and so forth.

This week is an Opportunity. It has been a very long time since North Texas had an chance to go 5-0, and this is about as good of a chance as they will ever have. South Alabama is not a good football team, but they must be respected. This is being written and published on Friday and so the real opportunity is past. What do I mean? Well the time to prepare was during the week. The weekend is about execution.

The week likely was about recovery, with some preparation. Army is a tough team and takes a lot out of you. NT has some depth along the defensive line but that depth is tested. This week both the head coach and the starting QB were chatting it up on interviews. People are excited, but as we said on the podcast, the question becomes “Are you still doing the work that got you here?”

South Alabama is 1-3 on the season, having lost to Tulane, Auburn, and Coastal Carolina. The only win was against Morgan State. Major Applewhite’s offense is struggling, and the latest loss to Coastal (allowing 38 against a bad offensive team) was very unimpressive.

So the oddsmakers are heavily favoring North Texas in this one. South ‘Bama has pride, however, and will have been using the hype around North Texas and the criticism of their program as fuel for a good practice week. They could also fold like a pretzel. That’s why we play the games. 

North Texas Offense vs South Alabama Defense

North Texas has been explosive on offense, especially at home. The yards are not as big and gaudy as they have been, but that largely is because of the short fields provided by the defense. The interesting thing is the effectiveness, and efficiency of the attack. Drew Mestemaker has yet to throw an interception this season. Credit to the offensive line, run game, his receivers, and the staff for giving him good looks. But most of that is Mestemaker making good decisions within the framework of the offense.

South Alabama has bee solid defensively, in that they only allowed 33 to Tulane and 31 to Auburn. The real head-scratcher was allowing 38 to Coastal, which had only scored 20 points up to that point all season. They were gashed, and picked apart in the second half, giving up a 7-point lead in a game at home.

For North Texas, the emergence of Caleb Hawkins is exciting and adds to the stable of talented backs already performing. Hawkins in particular is a physical runner (not saying McGill isn’t) to complement Sibley and Becks who have been speedsters.

Eric Morris has had the benefit of leading in most of the four games thus far (Western Michigan being the exception) and being able to make aggressive calls to keep the opposition on their heels. It has nearly been a perfect result. With the exception of an overthrow here, a holding there, and whathaveyou, the Mean Green have been able to dial up scores against anyone.

In fact, we haven’t been concerned about the offense scoring for three seasons, usually the question is if they can score enough. The team is averaging 47 per game, however, the most in the three seasons of Morris’ tenure. There is little concern about that. Again, that is thanks to the defense. We’ll get to them later.

We should note that the offensive line has been molding into a unit. We had week one concerns that the run game was not as powerful, but we’ve seen tremendous execution in the last three weeks. They moved Army wherever they want and paved the way for Hawkins to get four scores last week. We should expect more of the same, with the caveat that South Alabama has bigger, more talented guys up front. The Chanticleers were killing them up front, and I imagine NT will be licking their chops to do the same.

Wyatt Young, Cam Dorner, and Landon Sides have been tremendous in recent weeks. Add to that Miles Coleman seemingly on the verge of breaking something every time he catches a short pass, and we get the feeling that NT is on the verge of a 400-yard passing day soon. The circumstances just haven’t presented themselves to do so thus far.

South Alabama was getting turned around by an anemic passing attack and this is a group that has struggled defensively since last season. Last year NT put up 52 on them. They’ll want some revenge, but I don’t know that they have the tools to do much about it.

North Texas Defense vs South Alabama Offense

Kentrel Bullock is 205 lbs and runs like a mean summabeesh. He looked like he could break a couple vs Coastal Carolina, but the real concern for South Alabama was that they simply made too many mistakes. Bishop Davenport was 22/36 197 yards and 2 interceptions. The first was awful, as he stared down his guy on an RPO and killed a drive.

Later a bad snap stopped a South Alabama in the red zone.

The gameplan will be RPOs all day. Major Applewhite has been a big RPO guy, and will try to influence the defense to get favorable one-on-one matchups outside. Voisin is a guy we have seen previously. He’s smallish, but can fly.

This will be an interesting matchup for Cassity, as it is a team that has an accomplished offensive mind, but probably not as many tools as they had last year. Gio Lopez transferred to be with Bill Belichick in Carolina. Davenport is good player but has struggled in the last two weeks, throwing three interceptions.

North Texas has been stout vs the run and pass, and has particularly been great at grabbing turnovers. Army was Army vs NT late, but I don’t know that South has the same kind of offensive discipline to execute. It is always possible that they click, especially after a week in which fans and boosters are complaining.

I don’t think NT should simply wait around for a turnover, but I am suggesting that South Alabama might help the North Texas cause by making self-inflicted mistakes. North Texas’ defense has been good and not making mistakes (the Army 68-yard bomb notwithstanding) and so that puts the onus on the opposition offense to execute. Again, we can understand an Army team playing at home coming off a bye being able to do so. I can’t see that happening with this squad.

A North Texas Win Looks Like:

More of the same: turnovers, forced punts by the NT defense, set up short fields and efficient, ruthless offense from the Mean Green.

A North Texas Loss Looks Like:

The defense cannot get off the field, and we have some self-inflicted mistakes. Things like drops (vs WMU), penalties (vs Army) and the like.

On the podcast we predicted a NT win, and I also said as much in the season preview. GMG.

See you at 11am.