Ragin' Dave's App State Preivew
App State Preview
The standard bearer in the SBC, App is always great and when they are not great, they are good. Last year they were just good, and it was disappointing, this year they might be great again. The more I see them and CCU, the more I believe they are the best team in the East. They are good on offense and on defense and special teams, other than that they aren’t that good. I think I expected them to be good, but not this good. This is a team that has had a coaching carousel over the past few years, but I think they have their guy now. Shawn Clark is an App guy, he played there, he coached there as an assistant and now he is the HC. As good as App has been in the past, this could be one of their best teams we have seen in the SBC. So far this season they started off defeating a common peer conference team in East Carolina in neutral site game, they then lost a really close on to Miami (Fl) in Miami, then beat an overmatched Elon team at home and then beat a pretty good Marshall team at home last week.
QB—Chase Brice is a grad transfer from Duke, but this is a high-end recruit. Brice was a high level 3 star recruit out of HS that signed originally with Clemson. Brice started his career at Clemson behind Kelly Bryant and Trevor Lawrence, when Bryant decided to transfer, he was promoted to 2nd string. Brice’s claim to fame was the fact that while the backup for Lawrence early in the season of 2018, Lawrence got hurt vs Syracuse and Clemson was down by 10 points late in the game. Brice came in and led a comeback to win, Clemson went on to win a National Championship that year. Without that win, this never happens. Brice was at Clemson in 2019 but decided in 2020 to transfer to Duke to work with David Cutcliff. Brice played the 2020 season at Duke, but was a turnover machine, throwing 15 INT’s to only 10 TD’s. After the 2020 season, Brice announced he would be transferring to App to play the 2021 season there. Brice has started the season very good; he is completing 68% of his passes with 8 TD’s and only 3 INT’s. This is by far his best season to date. He is also averaging 272 yards per game through the air. And while Brice is like Jake Bentley in the fact that he is not an accomplished runner, the does have the athletic skills to move in the pocket and by time to make a pass down field.
RB—While QB is a strength of this team, it is not the best position, that could be argued between RB and WR. At RB, they have 2 good ones. Cam Peoples (who seemingly has been there for 100 years) and the younger Nate Noel. They are both good, but Noel has been special this year. Noel is averaging 6.2 yards a carry as well as 102 yards per game. And by the way, the 2nd guy is Peoples, and he is averaging 5.3 yards per carry and 82 yards per game. Neither are really doing much in the passing game, but we will get to that shortly. Noel is 5’10 190 and Peoples is 6’2 220. They are different types of backs, but they are both good. Noel has become the main guy, but Cam Peoples could start for almost every team in the SBC and probably most if not all G5 teams around.
WR/TE—Remember when I said QB was good, but not the best position on the team, well RB is not that either. It is possibly WR, where they have 5 guys that are weapons. Last week, I stated that USA did not have the deepest WR corps in the SBC, but they had some good ones at the top and possibly the best. Well, App has by far the deepest WR corps in the SBC and if Jalen Tolbert from USA is the best WR in the conference, APP might arguably have 3 guys in the Top 10 if not better and the guys behind them are good to. We will start with the big 3, Corey Sutton, Malik Williams, and Thomas Henigan. Those 3 have combined for 76 receptions 1103 yards and 7 TD’s. All 3 of these guys are Super Seniors. Hennigan feels like he has been killing us for a long time. Jalen Virgil and Christian Wells are behind these 3 and they are good to. They don’t get a ton of production from the TE position, but they don’t need to when you have 3 top notch WR’s and 2 pretty good ones behind them. Their starter at TE is Henry Pearson who only has 3 catches on the season.
OL—They are a veteran group on the OL, with their starters being only 1 underclassman. They have a couple of transfers including Right Guard Isiah Wells, who is a transfer from Western Carolina and only a sophomore, the other transfer is from Colorado State and is Left Guard Damion Daley. The rest of that group is Left Tackle Redshirt Junior Anderson Hardy, Redshirt Senior Center Hunter Baer, and Redshirt Junior Right Tackle Cooper Hodges. They are very young behind this group with mostly Freshman and Sophomores as their backups, but the guys who start have been doing an incredible job for them as seen by the offensive numbers above.
DL—The are pretty good on the D-Line, but they have one special player and we saw him a couple years ago really dominate on defense and that player is Demetrious Taylor. While Taylor has not put up the numbers he has in the past, he is still a disruptor behind the line. He has 5 QB hurries and 2 sacks on the season. On the other side of Taylor is Caleb Spurlin and he is a pretty good one. At NT you have Jordan Earle. They are experienced at D Line, with 5 of the 6 on the 2 deep are either Juniors or Seniors. Off the bench they Tommy Dawkins and Deandre Dingle Prince off the bench. Slowing Taylor and Spurlin down are key vs App State.
LB—App plays a 3-4 Defense and just like on the D-Line they have a bunch of good players, but one special player, they are the same at LB. D’Marco Jackson is the leader on Defense in the middle. He has 54 tackles through 5 games. He is good. He has 10 TFL and 4 sacks and leads the team in both categories. Next to him is Trey Cobb and on the outside, they have Brendan Harrington and Nick Hampton. All 4 of their LB’s are in the top 7 of their tacklers. Hampton is 2nd on the team in tackles and 2nd on the team in TFL with 5.5. Trey Cobb is 4th on the team in tackles and Harrington is 7th. They are strong in the middle 4. Off the bench one to watch out for is Grad Transfer TD Roof, from Ga Tech. He gives them some quality depth at LB.
DB—This team is a veteran team all over the field, the starting defense is full of Juniors and Seniors. In the back half, they have another special player and a handful of good ones. Shawn Jolley at CB is a special player. But opposite of him is another good one in Steven Jones Jr. At safety they have Nick Ross and Ryan Huff. Jolley and Jones are in the top 10 in tackles. Huff has missed a couple of games but did play against Georgia State last weekend. Where they might struggle is depth in the defensive backfield. Two of their backups are either a freshman or RS Freshman in Ronald Clarke and Travis McNicholl. At Corner they have a transfer from Morgan State in Donte Small and a Safety from Wisconsin in Madison Cone. Both are pretty good players.
ST—At Punter they start Xavier Subotsoh, he has not been great, he is only averaging 39 yards per punt, but is effective as 13 of his 19 punts have been within the 20-yard line, so part of his punting average could because he is punting on short fields and trying to knock it down inside the 20. Their PK has been another senior in Chandler Staton and he is good. He is perfect on the season on FG, 8-8 including 5 of them between 40-49 yards. They do utilize a Freshman for Kickoffs in Michael Hughes. Hughes has 14 of his 35 kickoffs have been for touchbacks. Punt Returner is WR Thomas Hennigan and while his numbers have not been great on Punt returns, he is a good one and capable of breaking a return. Their Kickoff guy is Jalen Virgil, Virgl is averaging 36 yards per return including a 100-yard return for a TD. Virgil is good and explosive.
As stated above they are good on Offense and Defense, on offense they are averaging 36 ppg and on defense they are only giving up 20 ppg. On offense they are balanced averaging almost 200 yards per game on the ground and 284 through the air. On defense they do struggle a little vs the pass and that is where they have been a little vulnerable. They are only giving up 117 yards on the ground, but 247 yards per game through the air. This is a team that is fundamentally sound, they don’t give up a bunch of penalties, sacks, or turnovers. They also like to control the clock on offense as they are averaging about 32 minutes per game in TOP.
They are good in all phases of the football game. Shawn Clark has been there for a couple of seasons and again he is an App guy. They are proving that they make good choices at coach as they just move on with plug and play coaches, but I think we might see Clark there for a little while as he loves Boone, NC.
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Re: Ragin' Dave's App State Preivew
Originally Posted by fanof71
