We should be happy we don’t open with a decent to good team like 2024; that posed a problem this year. I’m hoping our team comes out of the chute aggressive and with energy, unlike this year -I expect they will. A healthy Lagway with good receivers and our strong running game will define us, not to mention our vastly improved defense from early this year. The schedule is and will always be tough but I’m excited.
If you look at who our opponents play the week before facing UF, you'll see how badly the SEC schedule makers screwed us. At LSU - week before vs Louisiana Tech Texas - week before vs Sam Houston St At A&M - week before vs Miss St Miss St - bye the week before UGA - bye the week before At UK - week before at Auburn (the only quasi-tough one) At Ole Miss - week before vs The Citadel Tennessee - week before vs New Mexico St The odds of this are miniscule.
Hoping that CBN learned something during that magical bye-week that was the start of our turnaround, and can incorporate whatever he learned into that HUGE bye-week called the Off Season. We definitely should start 2-0. We better at worst split the LSU and Miami games. If we're 3-1 going into our first bye week, and then we have another epiphany or whatever you want to call it, the season could turn out well.
I don't like the "conspiracy theories" that the SEC is out to get us, but seriously... at this point it's almost ridiculous to think otherwise. Every SEC team plays 8/12 SEC Games, so roughly 2/3rds of the SEC teams we play should have played an SEC team right before us. That would be 5 or 6 teams. But it's only 2. And the two teams that are played before us happen to both be in the bottom 3 of the SEC. Thinking about it a little deeper and to be fair, you have to count bye-weeks. So really it should be 8/14 or 4/7. That would still mean it should be about 5 SEC teams and 1 bye week. Either way, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to look at that and make you think something is up. I mean, it's gonna happen, but it seems like it happens to us every season. Has anyone ever done the same analysis for other SEC teams to compare?
And now that I'm thinking about even more (damn you brain!), it should be noted that most every teams first SEC game will have both teams playing a non-SEC team beforehand. So I would imagine it's not quite as bad as it appears to be relative to other SEC teams.
Smooty if you look at who we have before each SEC game many of them are also either patsys or byes. (Not all.) We do have a bye before TX and UGA, and an easy game before LSU. But still- our opponents do seem to have an advantage here. I don't think it's planned by the SEC though.
100% People saying a 3 loss team can’t make the playoffs are crazy! There has to be some sort of grace given to the teams with top schedules, especially with a high number quality wins. That was my biggest issue with Indiana this year. They have 11 wins that are against bad teams. That 1 loss to Ohio State should have decimated them outside the top 15. Quality wins should outweigh a loss
Quality wins vs quality lisses. 24-3 to oklahoma at the end of the year is way different than osu barely losing to Oregon early. Indiana has to prove themselves aa they have beat noone. South Carolina and Ol Miss looked formidable. We took ol miss out but i still think tgey are better than some playoff teams. There's only two power conferences and no other auto bids should exist. Tv money that pays those other inferior conferences bought those other spots. I hope their auto bids go away. I have no problem with Boise or ASU getting in on their ranking but hell no to a one seed.
So weird seeing LSU in September and Tennessee in November, but this is our new world now. In my annual “try to make it to 1-2 home games”, I definitely have Texas and Tennessee circled hard. Have seen some epic Tennessee home games the last many years in person.
I dont recall one but has Napier won a road game at UF vs a quality opponent? I think we were fortunate to have LSU and Ole Miss at home this year. I doubt we would have won either if on the road, especially a night game in BR.
The only decent road wins I can recall are 22 vs TAMU. Not a world-beater and I think they had the flu. Also 23 vs USCe. I was there. It was a pretty cool come-from-behind win but USCe was not good that year, winning 5 games. Perhaps there are more but I can't recall them.
Those 2 games were Napier's only road wins before this season, now we can add wins at 2-win MSU and 2-win fsu. It's kind of concerning.
Same here, a couple of games a year and Tennessee ive been to a few. Bama, auburn, Utah... anything good or out of the ordinary and then fsu most years. I only hit up the good ones, make it count. No interest in our first couple next year, catch it at home. I tnink Texas Tennessee next year .
