2006: UL-6 FAU-0

[Kal]

I think you are right on, Express! Sometimes you have to tip your hat to the opposition for their play rather than just bash your own team. Those guys are on scholarship, too, and didn't want to look bad on national TV. I was somewhat impressed with the talent FAU has. I think they'll give a few SBC teams some problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they win more than they lose in conference.

That's what I believe too. FAU gave us their best shot I think. We didn't give ours. That says alot about us that we can not play as well as we are capable of and still come out with a win.

[Kal]

Yeh that's something that I noticed this week. We had some stupid penalties. Some of the penalties were questionable. But we had some mistiming on coverage that cost us a few yards and we had a couple of false starts. I have found that this year our lines are very well disciplined and usually don't make those mistakes, so it was a little disheartening to see those mistakes happen.

[AstroCajun]

I was interested in finding out more about FAU and I found a crazy stat about them...

Class Breakdown
Freshmen 54
Sophomores 37
Juniors 15
Seniors 11

That is incredible to be that young. Everyone thinks Howard schellenburger (spelling?) is crazy for the scheduling but maybe he knows what he is doing to have his team ready for bigger things in the future. I think he is crazy lol but he has a national title in his past so who am I to judge.

I look for us to win this game and I think we will win by a sizable margin but we have seen in the past the Sunbelt can be very hard to pick. My prediction UL 31 FAU 13

Does this class breakdown look famililar?

This was FAU circa 2006

[NewCajunDad]

UL-L has had as many as 38 - 39 freshman / sophomores travel and dress / participate in games this year. I count atleast seven true freshmen playing and 3 of these have atleast one start on defense. That coupled with injuries, we are very young! We have very little experienced "depth" anywhere. Defensive line has three seniors with true freshmen seeing action behind them. Same in O-line. Tough to be consistent.

Still believe there is room for improvement on the offensive and defensive schemes we are implementing, but with the given youth factor, they are having difficulties adjusting to the speed of the college game not to mention a new system where the guy next to them is also unfamiliar.

I know it is difficult to be understanding of the season but we had depth last year in the offensive and defensive lines. While we struggled at times (maybe this was why we changed coordinators!!), the seniors you see now were backing up last year's seniors in the line. We have only 14 juniors that play and a couple are strictly special teams. With the exception of Seth Adams and Erik Jones (TE), this group does not have lineman who play or provide depth.

Next year's team will still be young by today's standards due to the 14 only juniors. But, there will be 17 juniors to back that up including significant parts of your starting offensive and defensive lines.