2025: South Florida Preview

Perfection on the line in Denton After Dark

Football is a primal. To succeed in this game you need strength, speed, endurance, and toughness. You will get hurt. You will suffer and to steal a line from a women’s baseball movie: the hard is what makes it great. It’s why we love it. If it was not difficult and anyone could do this, it wouldn’t be worth doing, let alone watching or obsessing over.

South Florida approach the game by recruiting big, strong, fast guys to run the ball. they get big, strong, fast guys to catch it. And they do the same on the defense. It is a sound, classic strategy. The current head coach is Alex Golesh, a branch of the Art Briles tree who likes a power-run game mixed with the vertical pass game. In year three you can see the plan coming to fruition. The backs are big and powerful, the receivers are tall and fast. The QB is also a runner. The offensive game plan is to put maximum pressure on your defense. The splits are wiiiiide. The run game is aggressive, and Byrum Brown a threat with speed and physicality. The tempo is quick.

A defense needs to be sound, know how they will defend various scenarios, and good enough to win individual matchups.

When it works, it is a yards and points machine. Tennessee of the last few years, UCF under the same Heupel staff , SMU under Kid Briles, FAU under Lane Kiffin/Briles. You are familiar with this offense and its devastating qualities.

When it is bad? Well, those long balls don’t hit. The run game isn’t creating pressure. The tempo means the ball is quickly back in the opposition hands. North Texas under the latter half of the Littrell years ran this offense and we saw first hand the good and bad. Powerful run game mixed with vertical passing. We also saw that it sometimes meant some silly, frustrating drives.

USF as a program has always had potential. I remember the Jim Leavitt days. I also remember the Willie Taggart, Charlie Strong, Skip Holtz days as well. You can build a good program in Tampa. The city is underrated (I hear, I’ve never been but I’ve had family that liked it), and they play in an NFL stadium. We should respect and fear the USF program because they can easily build into something great.

Then again, that is the entirety of the American Conference. Each program in the league has a similar story. With one or two breaks, this place can be amazing!

This week we have a genuinely good football matchup. The advanced numbers guys, and content creators are all over this one. “A surprisingly good matchup” they say. As if we, the knowers, didn’t already know. USF has slayed two top-25 programs (Boise, Florida) even if they were absolutely mauled by Miami. North Texas hasn’t played anyone of note, and USF has been dancing with the big boys. Why do the oddsmakers call it a pick ‘em? Well we’ll talk about it.

Defending USF

Most casual observers of USF have seen the highlights of Byrum Brown, 6’3” 231lb, QB who has run through and over some good defenses. He has big stats — this offense has QBs that put up big stats. Remember Aune? — but a close watch reveals a guy that is missing some wide open options. He hasn’t always thrown interceptions, but is missing what could be touchdowns. He looks to run quickly after going through a read, and Miami made him pay. Others? Well he made them pay, by being big and strong and tough to deal with.

That’s par for the course, however. Most athletes aren’t forced into counters early. Your speed and strength are sufficient to get you wins so why would you try something else? The Miami program had the same kind of speed and strength and so he was forced to look to his counters and didn’t have enough to change the game. This is how it always is, and will be. The question is then Can North Texas make Brown play ‘left handed’? That is, can Cassity force him to make reads and check the ball down instead of running for daylight with success? That will involve executing the game plan, stopping the “regular” runs, and staying over the top of the vertical routes.

We should expect some open underneath passes as NT prioritizes capping the vertical routes and keeping everything in front of them. The Veer and Shoot is about pushing the ball down field, and running with power and physicality to keep the defenses honest. Again, when it works it is a yardage machine and points factory.

USF has a thunder-and-lighting approach. Norton is a big back and Isaac is a speedster who also is on special teams. The receivers are big and physical, with the recruiting team focusing on guys who can get vertical, and win deep. Chas Nimrod is a baller, but the whole depth chart is full of physical specimens. As we said on the podcast this week, however, this isn’t a track meet, or a powerlifting competition. It is a football game. Sure, being big, fast, and strong helps a ton in this game, but you still have to work within the team dynamic. Getting behind the safeties is useless if the QB can’t see you because he’s looking at the sky after being put on his back by a linebacker.

The matchup in a line: USF has a physical, talented offense that is a little sloppy as they look for big plays, while North Texas is a well-coached unit that has caused turnovers and bent but not broken.

Attacking USF

The Mean Green have a preternatural talent in Drew Mestemaker, who has yet to throw an interception this season. He will be facing a physical, tough USF defense that is physically better than any squad faced thus far. What does that mean? Well the passing lanes will close quicker. Receivers will not be as open. Run lanes will not be as wide. The hits will be harder, and the yards will be tougher to gain.

The head coach, Eric Morris, is at the forefront of offense. He has yet to produce a poor offensive season despite having three different QBs in three years, losing his top receivers and running backs each year, and an offensive line that has been piecemeal. It isn’t surprising that the most efficient season (in 3rd downs, and red zone success) in his three seasons is happening now because of the stability along the line, the steady play from the QB, and the depth in running back room. Combine that with a defense giving the offense the ball back often, and in favorable conditions. Short fields? Well that hurts the total offensive yards accumulation but you don’t win games by out-gaining teams. You win by scoring points. It is easier to score points when you are close to the endzone more often.

We believe in this offense, but it will be tougher. The USF squad will present challenges this group hasn’t faced thus far. South Alabama was a good preview, as they have some tough defenders. That said, their depth was tested and NT was able to move the ball well on the ground. That was the most poor that this offense has looked. It is good then that Morris and Jordan Davis have been able to prepare the squad for two weeks to fix some issues.

As good as the offense has been, it hasn’t been great. There were drops vs WMU, there were penalties and miscues vs South Alabama. Mestemaker has been sacked a few too many times. The pass game hasn’t been as explosive as it could be when Mestemaker is missing Coleman up the seams. It could be better.

The challenge in this game will be in matching the physicality mentally. No one expects this team to get bigger and stronger overnight, so what do they do when USF’s guys hit harder than they’ve been hit so far? Well they need to be mentally strong. Teams with precision offenses are usually tested by teams that like to simply hit you harder and make you unwilling to execute. Now instead of thinking of what you need to do, you hesitate or move slower. They did it to the 49ers teams of the 80s, the Rams of the 2000s, and to every pass-happy team during and since.

This NT team is not overly pass-happy. We have seen Morris focus on the run game, and be physical. We’ve seen the benefit of having a specimen at running back in Caleb Hawkins. He has made himself be un-benchable. McGill is having a good season, but Hawkins is simply playing better.

The idea is that the NT run game will keep USF honest and prevent them from focusing on Mestemaker too much. Drew is still young, and while he has played well we still don’t want him to have to throw 70 passes in a game.

We want a little more from the wideouts. They have been good, but no one has been great. What does that look like? Turning short throws into touchdowns. Turning routine catches into big gains, and turning shouldn’t into amazing. We saw how Hawkins turned a short screen into a 68-yard score last game. We saw last year that DT Sheffield made plays from short crossers. The passing game is designed to get the ball to playmakers in space. Thus far it has been to solid players in space, but no one has put any magic on tape.

When that happens, if that happens, it creates a gravity that opens the game up for everyone else.

The matchup in a line: North Texas’ efficient, high-scoring offense against the most physical, talented defense seen thus far.

Everything Else

The atmosphere will be great. It will be a Friday, with that something special in the air. The stadium will be sold out, and NT will be in all-black. USF has played in bigger games already this season and so will be unfazed. There’s a potential that the NT squad starts getting too caught up in the moment. That said, it is difficult to imagine cool, calm, collected Drew Mestemaker getting too hyped up. Playing away at Army West Point is a little intimidating, and having a “name” program in WSU come to town was also a little preparation. It isn’t not quite the Swamp on the road, so we can give the advantage to USF in this respect.

That said, NT has not beaten themselves this season. While the fanbase feels like a kicked dog sometimes in that it is seemingly always flinching at the very idea of getting hurt again, we can also say that for every American team. USF’s fanbase online has been talking about USF always seemingly disappoints and this and that to the point where it is difficult to see which fanbase is complaining. It all is the same story.

This is the biggest game of the season until the next one, and that is how we want it. We want a never-ending stream of Biggest Game In Program History because that is how you build the program. The thing about big football is that you will win some and lose some but a sign of a good program is that you continue to have big football games in which to play.

NT hasn’t had too many big games recently because the teams haven’t been great. A lot of fans keep talking about the La Tech game in 2018 because that was such a great atmosphere — nearly packed stadium, two good CUSA teams playing for the top of the division. The real tragedy wasn’t that NT lost (on a blocked field goal) but that that very good team (didn’t trail for like three games, beat Arkansas, and was good offensively and defensively) didn’t complete the season the way they could have. There were opportunities to make up for the loss and they didn’t. Think about how the 2013 team lost to UTSA — with an undefeated home season on the line, conference title berth in play at home — and made up for it by winning a bowl. That team is remembered fondly while the 2018 team is not.

What does that mean? That winning or losing this game is just a step. This is a long season. It means everything. Until next week. That’s how it should be.

GMG

Now let’s see these boys go win on Friday.

MGN prediction: NT 44 - USF 20

It is late in the week and I’ve had all the green Kool-Aid, folks.

A blowout because these teams are too evenly matched. USF turns the ball over and NT takes advantage. USF scores as they unmoor their offense, but it is too little too late.