Is Charlotte good? No. In just about every aspect of footballing PFF grades North Texas better. There is plenty of reason to think North Texas will win this going away and that may not be super enticing as a viewing option but Head Coach Neal Brown says. “We have a good football team. We are exciting to watch. I think we have to of the better individual players in all of college football.”
I agree. This should be a big win, but Brown obviously respects Tim Albin, Charlotte coach. He won at Ohio and it seemed that the riches and location of Charlotte, NC would be conducive to winning. It has not been the case. “I know those coaches” says Neal Brown. Yes, but we also see the film.
Coach Brown isn’t lying to us. Tayven Jackson saying “We see a good team, we look at the film.” isn’t gaslighting. It is a mindset required for winning. On the Sunday MGN show we said that North Texas should beat Charlotte by 40, and to do that they have to prepare for the 49ers as if they were the best team in the nation.
Because we are saying that North Texas at full strength and full focus is good, and Charlotte isn’t. But a half-speed Mean Green? Well anything can happen to them.
Every team has a couple of guys who can beat you. They are on scholarship, have a competitive spirit, and have a new opportunity to win when the game starts. The key to beating a poor team is to win early, kill the hope and let the bad vibes take over. “Same shii different day” they’ll be saying. You win, they have the sads. It’s how it should be. If you let them hang around you get a situation where they have nothing to lose. They start throwing passes that should not be caught. They think they can win. The pressure flips, and you start getting the yips. “We should be killing this team!” The fans start yelling “What are we doing?!” and that’s how you get upset.
Charlotte has a good plan, although there are some questions about who should be the starter. The Charlotte media (sidenote: they have a good blogosphere) has been questioning the play-calling, the depth chart, and lots of things. As you do when you are a consistent loser.
What is the problem? Well in the modern version of this game, you need a good quarterback. Charlotte doesn’t really have one. They have talent at the skill spots, but no one to get them the ball (WR) or no one to take any pressure off (RB). Said differently, the QB play has been bad.
Anyway you slice it, Charlotte have been poor throwing the ball. Seven interceptions thrown is the worst in the American. Their yards-per-attempt is only above Rice and Tulsa. They don’t throw for big yards (just 6.0 yards per attempt) even if they throw it 6th most.
When we watched the film from the Memphis game, we saw a QB that couldn’t make the simple throws consistently, couldn’t make the big time throws at all, and also didn’t diagnose the defense quickly. There may be a quarterback change coming this week.
The run game is a lot of outside zone, and Rutledge got free for 75-yards and a score vs Memphis. If you were around for the Lance Dunbar era, it smells of that. A poor offense hoping for a big run from your best player. The Charlotte media have wondered why Rutledge doesn’t get more touches and from what I’ve seen it simply is that the offense can’t get enough first downs to earn him more touches.
A closer examination shows a guy that is not exactly lighting it up when he gets the ball outside of that one highlight. Still, North Texas was sliced open by Texas State and should treat every run the rest of the way as penance for that awfulness.
Defensively, they are solid even if Memphis dominated them easily. There’s a question if Memphis’ Veer-N-Shoot style, with the tempo and wide splits was just too foreign for Charlotte and contributed to the blowout. Here is the defense’s performance thus far.
vs FCS Citadel L 41–42 | 400 yards allowed 6.35 yards per play
at 9 Ole Miss L 9–41 | 420 yards 7.24 ypp
at App State L 21–26 | 435 yards 5.72 ypp
vs Louisiana L 7–24 | 292 yards 3.74 ypp
vs Memphis L 8–59 | 674 yards 7.57 ypp
The most impressive performance was against Louisiana, one of the worst offensive teams in the Sun Belt. App State is quality, and the 49er defensive outing was respectable. Memphis’ OL bullied Charlotte all day and there was nothing much they could do. The 49ers tried a lot of three-down looks to deal with the wide splits, but that was mostly handled easily. Charlotte tried scrapes and stunts and everything and nothing was successful. Memphis went heavier later with two H-Backs and walked the ball in with plenty of gap runs.
I like to think of these kinds of games as having wide margin for error. North Texas has to play and practice and prepare as if there was zero margin for error, to maintain sharpness and blow this team out. In reality, Charlotte will not pose much of a threat. They can certainly upset this Mean Green squad, but it will be with a lot of help.
Best Case Scenario: North Texas puts up 600+ yards as Tayven Jackson and Jahiem White do what they have done for the last two months. The defense is not challenged by the Charlotte pass game and gives the ball back to the potent offense.
Worst Case Scenario: North Texas is burned by the wide zone and lets Tim Albin’s offense find itself. They broke a 75-yarder last week because of missed fits, and NT is vulnerable to something like that on occasion. The Mean Green offense reverts to its UNLV version, where there were missed opportunities and an over-reliance on Jahiem White. The problem is that he is just coming off of 32 carries and not as fresh.
Prediction and Other Thoughts
I think NT blows this one open 50-10. Charlotte is feeling real awful and will be playing with a little pride to start. The key is to kill that notion quickly and thoroughly. I think Neal Brown knows it — he talked up those coaches and the program — and so he knows what he needs from his guys. This needs to be something like the HCU game, but for the fact that Charlotte presumably has more talent.
I believe that we should see a little more depth in the running back room for this one and a much-needed bye for the squad to recover. This North Texas team is good enough to win the league in its current state, and to do so they will need to win these gimme games.
You cannot win the American in October but you can certainly lose it. Too many talented teams have lost the league with silly losses — I think about Memphis and USF losing with better talent the last couple of seasons — and if Neal Brown wants to achieve what Eric Morris never did? Well that starts with taking care of business on Saturday.