Ragin' Dave's Buffalo Breakdown

BUFFALO Preview

Buffalo is coming off a 7-6 2022 campaign, but it was a strange season, they started the season 0-3 with expected losses to Maryland and Coastal, but also losing to FCS Holy Cross. When they got into MAC conference games, they got hot, winning 5 straight over Eastern Michigan, Miami (OH), Bowling Green, UMASS (non-conference), and Toledo. But then lost 3 straight vs Ohio, Central Michigan, and Kent State, before having to win the last game of the season vs Akron 23-22 to get bowl eligible. The bright spot of the season was a bowl win in the Camellia Bowl 23-21 over SBC Georgia Southern. This is the 2nd straight Camellia Bowl win vs an SBC team, as they beat Marshall the previous season 17-10. Buffalo is led by Maurice Linguist in his 3rd season at Buffalo. Linquist started his career at UB going 6-1 in his first season during the Covid 2020 season, then having a down year going 4-8, but coming back the following year with a 7-6 season. Linquist has been coaching as an assistant since 2007 but has never been more than a DB coach at any level but was a DB coach in the NFL for one season. DJ Mangas begins his first season as offensive coordinator and tight ends coach. He brings over 11 years of coaching experience at both the collegiate and NFL levels. Mangas had two stints at LSU where he served as an offensive analyst in 2019 and the team's pass game coordinator in 2021. As offensive analyst, he helped put together the most prolific offensive in SEC history, averaging 48.4 points and 568.4 total yards per game in 2019. That year, LSU won the national championship, scoring 50 or more points seven times and winning all but two games by double-digits. Robert Wright is in his first season as UB's defensive coordinator. Wright came to Buffalo from Duke where he served as a senior defensive analyst in 2022. Working with defensive coordinator Robb Smith, he helped lead the Blue Devils to a 9-4 record and a victory over UCF in the 2022 Military Bowl.
This year has been tough for Buffalo as they have started the season rough for UB, with 3 straight losses, a road loss vs Wisconsin, a home loss vs Fordham and a home loss vs Liberty and they have not looked great in any of them. They lost 38-17 to Wisconsin, then 40-37 to Fordham and then last weekend lost 55-27 to Liberty. The problem is they have not looked good offensively, they are only averaging 347 yards per game offensively only 245 yards through the air and only 102 yards per game on the ground. But it gets worse than that, they are only averaging 27 ppg, but a terrible 27% on 3rd conversions. While the defense has not looked good either. They are giving up almost 510 yards on defense, and they are equal opportunity offenders. Giving up 280 through the air and 230 on the ground and 39 ppg against. While teams are converting nearly 43% of 3rd down conversions. I would say that offense is a problem, but so is defense. This team has been outscored in the 2nd half 75-35 in three games this season, which to me looks like a team that is not in great condition.

QB—QB has been a little bit of a bright spot for them. They return last year’s starter Cole Snyder (6’2 208) who had decent numbers last year. He completed 60% of his passes with 18 TD’s and 8 INT’s. This year he has been much better, including completing 65% of his passes with 9 TD’s and 2 INT’s. But like last week’s UAB team, this is not a vertical threat team, it is more of a team that is trying to get players in space to make plays. Snyder started his career at Rutgers and was there for most of his career. He is a graduate transfer who only played 6 games at Rutgers his entire time there with very limited stats. Snyder can run the ball as shown by being the 3rd leading rusher for the Bulls last year, but this year has not shown that he is a threat at all.

RB—While this team returns both of their 2 top leading rushers from last year the running game has been nothing short of horrendous this year. Outside of Snyder, the QB, only two guys have carried the ball this season, Mike Washington (6’2 215) and Ron Cook (5’9 190). While neither has been terrible, neither has been good either. Washington has 36 carries for 146 yards and 2 TD’s, while Cook is 30 for 120 and 0 TD’s. Cook has been much more of a threat catching the ball then Washington, Cook has 8 catches for 70 yards and a TD, while Washington has 7 catches, but only for 19 yards. Most of the problem is the running game has not been able to get going because they have been playing from behind most of the season. This team would like to establish the run, but unfortunately, they fall behind badly in the 2nd half of games and that forces them to have to throw the ball and become one dimensional.

WR/TE—The 3 top receivers from last year are gone, so they are starting from scratch at receiver. Cole Harrity (6’0 205) is their leading returning WR, but only had 13 catches last year. He is leading them this year with 13 catches for 111 yards and 2 TD’s. Harrity started his career at NMSU where he had a pretty good 2021 campaign catching 30 in 10 games. Marlin Johnson (6’4 200) is also putting up some good numbers with 13 catches as well for 144 yards and 3 TD’s. Unfortunately, it is a big drop off from there, Boobie Curry (6’2 205) has also begun to come on, he started his career at Arizona where he played a good amount with 1 good season there. 3 different TE’s have combined for 12 catches for 79 yards and no TD’s. Up until last week, they were not involved in the offense at all, but they did get them more involved vs Liberty. Jake Orlando (6’5 245) has the most yards with 28 on 4 catches, Cameron Ball (6’6 235) has 4 catches for 18 yards and Zion Carter (6’6 265) has 4 catches for 33 yards. The guy that I am surprised that has not had a better season is DJ Harding who is a deep threat as a transfer from Duke. At Duke he had 5 starts there and caught over 400 yards while there. But has not shown much at UB in the first 2 weeks but did get more involved in week 3 vs Liberty. I would assume we will see more and more of him as the season progresses. He is probably the best deep threat they have on offense.

OL— The leader on the OL is Gabe Wallace (6’6 318) a Senior at LG. He is projected as an All-MAC guy from Ontario, Canada. He was the #1 ranked HS OL in Canada his senior year. Dom Polizzi (6’1 284) is the Center who played a decent amount for them last year. RG is Tyler Doty (6’5 320) who is a returning starter from last year and a young guy with big potential, for our Saints fans, Doty won the Jim Dombroski award in HS, this is given the best OL in Western NY. RT is Caelan Shepard (6’6 315) is a new starter at RT this year and Isaiah Wright (6’4 300) who is a transfer from Rutgers who did not play there but had 13 starts at Buffalo last year. Sydney Walker (6’2 285) is probably the first guy off the bench for them who played 10 games at UCONN in 2021 but missed all of 2022 with an injury. One thing this team can hang their hat on is that they have only given up 2 sacks in the first 3 games, so they are doing a good job of protecting the QB. But has not been very good in the run game.

DL—This is a defense that runs mostly a 4-2-5 defense and coming into the season the defense was expected to be the strength of this team. This was a team in 2022 that had one of the best defensive pass efficiency ratings in the nation, which is not the case this year. DT Daymond Williams (6’3 285) is the best player on the DL. He has not gotten off to a great year so far but is expected to be an All-MAC performer. He only has 6 tackles in the season and 1 TFL. Next to him will be Jaylon Bass (6’3 305). The two edge rushers are CJ Bazile (6’3 250) and Max Michel (6’2 235). Bazile has put up the best numbers so far this season from this group with 10 total tackles in 3 games with 1 sack on the season, while Max Michel has been right behind him with 9 tackles and 2 TFL’s including 1 sack. This team only has 4 sacks in the entire season, so this group has not performed well by any stretch of the imagination.

LB—The two LB’s are veterans, with Joe Andreessen (6’1 232) at the Will LB, who is a Grad transfer from Bryant University, Andreessen was an FCS All American at Bryant and Shaun Dolac (6’1 225) at the Mike. Dolac is a projected All MAC LB and is leading the team in tackles on the young season. He has twenty-one total tackles on the year with 1 TFL, he also has 1 of their 2 INTs on the season. Andreessen is good as well, as he is third on the team in tackles with 13 on the season and 1 TFL. These two guys are both very good and very active. But it is not a deep group, Two Freshman backup the starters RS Freshman Red Murdock (6’3 220) and true Freshman Dion Crawford (6’1 225). Murdock seems to be a guy they like long term but is still growing into a player for them.

DB/S— This is a position with some stability and some veteran leadership. At CB they are led by Caleb Offord (6’1 192) who started his career at Notre Dame, he is a good one at one corner. He leads the team in pass breakups in the season with 4. Opposite of him is JC transfer Clevester Hines (6’2 190) from the College of San Mateo. Hines has 2 TFL’s on the season to go with ten tackles, he has been a nice addition to this team and was a highly rated JUCO transfer but is transitioning from WR to DB. On small change from early in the season is that Jalen McNair (5’9 195) will be the nickelback/3rd corner on the field has been dropped down and the new Nickelback has been Amonte Strothers (6’1 195) 5th year player transfer who played a bunch at the University of Delaware. Strothers is an interesting player, he is in his 6 year of college football, playing 4 years at Delaware plus a Redshirt year. At free safety, they really like Marcus ___ua (6’0 195) who was a first team ALL-MAC performer for them last year and 3rd Team AP All American. ___ua is second on the team in tackles with 20 and 1 TFL. At strong safety will be Demetrius Harris (6’2 191) graduate transfer from Cornell who was a starter there. Youngster Devin Grant (6’4 190) is a tall lanky young man who has played quite a bit at safety and is going to be a pretty good player for them. Not that this has anything to do with them, but one interesting player is the only player from Louisiana on their roster, D’Andre Greeley (6’0 180), who started his career at Colorado State and played sparingly there is from Monroe, La.

Defensively this was a team that gave up way too many explosive plays vs Liberty specifically in the pass game. Most of that is because the QB for Liberty was able to extend plays and the Buffalo defense did a terrible job of putting pressure on the QB. This is good news for Zeon Chriss, who has similar abilities to the Liberty QB from what I can see of the game they played on Saturday. The other issue with this team, from what I see, is conditioning, as I stated before they seem to where down as the game goes on as they have been outscored in all three games in the second half.

Special Teams—This team returns both of their specialists from last year. Anthony Venneri, who is a good one, is their punter. Last year Venneri averaged 43 yards per punt and this year he is averaging almost 45 yards per punt, including 4 of his 15 for over 50 yards. Also be careful about him, he was a very good RB and LB in HS. Alex McNulty is their returner at field goal kicker. McNulty has been at UB for a long time including 34 starts. He is 25 of 41 in his career coming into the season and 122-125 on extra points. This year he is only 1-4 on the season, but that 1 is over 50 yards, big strong leg, but inconsistent, coach continues to claim he has all the trust in him, but 26 of 45 does not instill a ton of confidence to me. I would not be surprised if at some point this season you see Freshman Nick Reed, or they just decide to go for it more often. McNulty is also their kickoff guy, 9-14 have been touchbacks. Again, he has a huge leg so I do not know if we will get a chance to return much. They have bounced 3 different guys for punt returners, none have great. Ron Cook has 2 returns for 4 yards, leading the group. As far as kick returners go, Ron Cook is the main guy as well, with 6 returns for 136 yards, but one of those was for 48 yards, he is an explosive guy that is why he returns both punts and kickoffs. While he has not busted many, he is capable.


Prediction

Cajuns 38
Bulls 17

I do not want to say discouraging things about this UB team, but the more I investigate them the more I think this team might have a chance to be bad this year. Outside of a couple of positions, I do not see a lot to hang their hat on this year. Coming off a bowl appearance and win, I think the expectations for the Bulls were high, in fact most magazines had them in the Top 3 of the MAC East behind Ohio and possibly Miami (Oh). This team might have a chance to win some games in conference against some subpar MAC teams, but I really do not see a ton of wins this year on the schedule. Most people suspected this team to finish with between 6-9 wins, I just do not know how they will get there.