Doering: “This is a team that’s going to surprise a lot of folks.”

yeah yeah, and you won’t be missed

 

For sure. But we all have anticipation of needing to see it on the field, and I have faith we will. Cheers to those who are mature anough not to wring their hands each and every day publicly.

What this team needs more than anything is confidence. I hope we start fast on both sides of the ball.

 

Players have to believe or they failed already. I kinda think that about fans too. I’ll be there with my feather in my nose next week.

 

Well, okay, but last season our HC was smugly confident about our Defense. Since we cannot be much worse, have better coaching, a year better players, and some new experienced talent, we should be better.

 

Year end description of competent, dependable, cohesive, solid, detailed, locked in, tenacious would all be a relief. Top 50 and we'll really have something to build on.

 

Please show this interview because you would be a dumbass

 

I wouldn't call him smugly confident but he did give an endorsement of the defense before the season when he said something like "people don't know what we know" referencing how the defense was looking in practice. It is was of the more disconcerting things I took away from the season truthfully but I also believe that's why he got Robert's on board. I moved on from it...

 

“smugly confident”? link?

Kickoff is less than 2 weeks away and you’re still sniping at Napier? SMH

 

I take cold comfort in the fact that the Gators scored more points on Nebraska that year than any other team.

 

24?

 

Sorry, I take it back. I just checked and Arizona State scored 28 on them and Kansas State 25. So much for cold comfort

 

We were obviosly bad and there was a disconnect within the defensive staff. Somebody possi needed to be fired during the season. When attitude problems are obvious to outsiders, I’d have shaken things up sooner.

 

If he was confident, he was way off base. You have to support your staff but damn.

 

His preseason comment just resonated with me the worse the defense performed over the year. I have a couple questions I will never get answers to but again, I've moved on from it.

My optimism/hope for Napier has been his willingness to evolve with NIL, the portal and his staff. Sure it would have been better if he had more continuity of staff and experience but it didn't work out like that so here we are. Better than watching Mac or Mullen keep plodding the same dead beats out year after year.

I'm putting a lot, maybe too much into the addition of Roberts along with the added talent and experience this year which is why I'm tired about hearing how hard our schedule is. If we don't show significant improvement this year then all the adaptation in the world doesn't matter because 3 years is reasonable time to see tangible results.

 

As far as seeing tangible results, I am more concerned about seeing a step up in the defense and efficiency in the offense. I am not looking at the win total. I expect that some of the toughest games on our schedule are teams who will have a minimum of 2 losses: UTn, UTx, Sip, LSU, and we simply have 3 to 4 more games we can stumble at regardless of how much we improved compared to the schedule of those tough matchups. I think we forget how much a struggle some of those games in the state of Mississippi were under Spurrier and Meyer. Outside Samford, every game is a lovable game, and I would be saying the same if Miami or FSU were playing our schedule.

 

I mostly agree about how you gauge improvement, I just don't see the schedule as set in stone daunting as everyone is making it to be. I agree almost every game has potential for a loss outside of Samford. Some of that is parity in today's game but some of that is because we are still thinking in terms of last year's team. That's fine because the current team hasn't proven anything yet but the makeup of this team IS significantly different than last year's and we can believe one of three different things at this point. We are the same,better or worse. I just base my optomism on the fact that as thin as we were and as poor as our defense was along with a pretty bad offensive line, we still could/should won several more games last year. People might say we won a couple close ones as well like the south carolina game but is that game even close if we have a competent defense? An even Decent offensive line? Almost all of our opponents have some major roster issues to deal with. Just seems like there is very little consideration to that when talking about our schedule.

I may be setting myself up for disappointment and I'm way more optimistic than I have been but I see tangible upgrades all over the program this year whereas people the past two years have just believed we couldn't be worse. Just my take.