Ragin' Dave's Arkansas State Preview
Arkansas State Preview
2nd week in a row that we play a team with ASU as their initials, but this ASU is not last weeks ASU, the reality is they are not what Arkansas State expects to see year in and year out. Last year was a huge disappointment at 4-7, but this year is even worse at 1-5. And this team has not looked good in many games. Their lone win is a 40-21 win over a 2-3 FCS Central Arkansas after that they lost 55-50 to Memphis, 52-3 to Washington, 41-34 to Tulsa, 59-33 to Georgia Southern and 52-20 to Covid Carolina. By looking at these scores there is one thing that is really noticeable, this team is, as Charles Barkley would say….”TURRIBLE”. Not just bad, they are awful. But they also have issues on offense as well and we will get into that later.
QB—When the season started the expectation was that they were going to have a serious QB competition between last year’s part time starter in Layne Hatcher (formally on the Alabama roster) and Florida State transfer James Blackman, what we did not expect was for them to employ a 2 QB system which was the norm under former HC Blake Anderson, but they did. They did that until James Blackman was forced out with a shoulder injury vs Coastal last weekend. So, this is Layne Hatcher’s team and Hatcher is good, he can throw the ball around the field. So far in partial duty as the QB Hatcher is 62 of 108 for 806 yards and 9 TD’s vs 3 INT’s. Hatcher is good, you don’t make Alabama’s roster even as a way down the depth chart without being pretty good. Hatcher is only completing about 57% of his passes, but this team is so pass heavy that is still a bunch of passes per game. They are completing about 29 passes per game and throwing the ball about almost 50 times a game. That is vs only 27 rushes per game. To put that in perspective we only throw the ball about 26 times per game. Hatcher is not a big guy at only 5’11” 211 lbs and is not a guy who likes to run the ball very often either. He will run it every now and again, but he is very similar to the last couple of QB’s we have faced in Jake Bentley of USA and Chase Brice of App State. He would much rather throw than run on every play. Don’t get me wrong, he is capable as he did it in HS, but that is not what he wants to do.
RB—Where to start here, this team has not, can not or chooses not to run the ball and when they do it is not good. And it is not like they don’t have some talent there. They have 3 guys who have over 30 carries on the season, but none have been great and most have been average. Their main guy has been Lincoln Pare, Pare ate us up last season for 123 yards, this year on 30 carries he only has 156 yards with 1 TD. They also have Johnnie Lang, who has 34 carries for 132 yards and 0 TD’s and then finally they have Alan Lamar, a transfer from Yale, with 36 carries for 125 yards and 1 TD. The X Factor might be the best one of the bunch who has only played in 3 games, but only has had 13 carries and that Marcel Murray. I remember when Murray first got to A-State, he looked like he might be special, but this year he has 13 carries for 97 yards and no TD’s. As a team they are only averaging, get this, 2.9 yards per carry, with only 1 of the 3 main guys with an average of 4+ yards per carry. Murray is averaging 7 yards per carry, but again he has only played in 3 games and only 13 carries and 7 of them came in 1 game. Lincoln Pare is a little bit of a threat out of the backfield with 15 receptions on the year for 133 yards in 1 TD as well as Alan Lamar who has 12 receptions, so they do use the passing game as a run as well.
WR/TE—This is a team that has had some ridiculous WR’s in the pasts and this year is no exception, they are good at WR again this year. Freshman Corey Rucker is the best of the bunch. Rucker has 32 receptions for 492 yards and 7 TD’s. Sophomore Jeff Foreman has 22 receptions for 360 yards and 2 TD’s, while TeVallance Hunt, a transfer from TCU has 24 receptions for 360 yards and 2 TD’s. The other guy is Dahu Green, Green is an enigma. Green originally committed to Louisville, before flipping to Washington State and then ultimately signed with Oklahoma where he played in 9 games as a sophomore and 7 as a freshman there, then transferred to the Red Wolves and was expected to be a big piece of their offense, but injuries have forced him to struggle. He sat out the 2017 season due to transfer rules, then suffered a season ending injury in 2018 in the first game of the year. In 19 he only saw action in 5 games due to injury and in 20 he only played in 6. This year he has played in 5 games with only 9 receptions for 151 yards and 2 TD’s. None of Arkansas State’s big 3 are tall guys, they are all around 6’0. Green is 6’4” and has potential to be good and very hard to cover, when healthy. They do have a pretty good TE in Emmanuel Stevenson who is 6’3” 225 Freshman who has 9 catches for 93 yards and no TD’s, he missed the opening game of the season but has played in each of the next 5.
OL—As bad as their RB’s have been, their OL has been just as bad. This makes allot of sense. They have given up 24 sacks on the season and are only 36% on 3rd down and 20% (1 of 5) on 4th down. Their OL has been a hodge podge of young guys, veterans, and transfers. Ethan Miner is a Redshirt Freshman at LG, their best O-Lineman is probably LT Andre Harris a RS Junior. At RT they have Wyatt Luebke a RS Junior, at RG is Ivory Scott a Senior Transfer from Pearl River CC and finally at Center is Jacob Still, a RS Senior who was originally listed by Phil Steele and by Ourlads.com as the backup Center, the expectation was that, that position would be Ernesto Ramirez a JUCO transfer. They have struggled quite a bit on the OL, the original starting group had 2 different players in it at RT and RG, those were Justin Dutton and Robert Holmes. They have started a total of 9 different players on the OL trying to mix and match the best group, but to no avail. This is a huge weakness of this team.
Offense—All this team can really do well is throw the ball, but they are great at it. They are averaging 359 yards a game in the air, most of that is playing catchup. They only run for about 75 yards per game. They are averaging about 2.9 yards per play on the ground, while averaging about 7.5 yards per play through the air. They don’t protect their QB well and they don’t convert a lot of 3rd and 4th downs, mostly because the lack of a running game puts them in allot of 3rd and long situations, especially when you are only connecting on less than 60% of your pass attempts. Makes sense that if you run and get 2-3 yards on first down, then throw an incompletion, now it is 3rd and long and defenses can come after you and as you can see, they are giving up 4 sacks a game, puts your QB in bad situations. They still have weapons on offense and this team can use their RB’s out of the backfield, drawing up screens and short passes to mimic a rushing attack.
Defense—Where to start, they are bad and really bad. But the good news is that they are equal opportunity offenders on defense. They are giving up 584 yards per game 268 on the ground and 315 in the air. They are giving up 7 yards per play on the ground and 10+ yards per play through the air. It gets worse, they only have 9 sacks all year, and while they are pretty good on stopping teams on third down, only giving up 39%, they have giving up 100% of the 4th down conversions against them. That changes the percentage to around 43%. They do have the ability to turn teams over as they have picked off 5 passes and recovered 3 fumbles. But as a team they are -3 in the turnover battle as a team since they have thrown 7 INT and lost 4 fumbles.
DL—State plays a traditional 4-3 defense; the best guy up front is Kivon Bennett, and he is pretty good. He is a transfer from Tennessee. On the season Bennett is their 3rd leading tackler but has a total of 10 TFL and 3.5 sacks, leading the team in both categories. The other DE is a transfer from UNT, in Joe Ozougwu is 7th on the team in tackles but has 6 TFL and 3.5 sacks on the season as well, so they will try to get after the QB from the DE position, this makes up 7 of their 9 total sacks on the year. The two in the middle are Terry Hampton, who is now listed as out for the season, this is a big loss. Hampton had 11 tackles on the season and 2.5 TFL, I am not sure who will replace him, it will probably be Quay Mays who is a transfer from WVU or John Mincey a transfer from Tennessee and finally Sosaia Tuitavake. Mays has only appeared in 1 game this year while Mincey has appeared in 3. Scott has 10 tackles on the season and 1 sack.
LB—Their best LB by far is Anthony Switzer, he is 2nd on the team in tackles with 33 on the season with 1 TFL. They had to replace a machine in Justin Rice this year and it is showing. Caleb Bonner is in the middle and he has 31 tackles on the season, the other LB is Dane Motley, Motley has 13 tackles on the season. Caleb Bonner is the only upper classmen at LB, the other guys are a RS Freshman and a Sophomore. Jeffmario Brown is a RS Senior off the bench who gets a lot of playing time.
DB—This is another team that tells the tale with who their leading tacklers are. You can usually tell allot about a team when you see that CB and Safeties are high up in the tackling group. It usually means teams are gashing their defense and Arkansas State is no exception. 5 of their top 10 tacklers are in the defensive backfield. Leading that group is Elery Alexander a Safety who is leading the team in tackles with 34 and has a sack on the season, behind him at #5 is Safety Taylon Doss with 27 and #6 Jarius Reimonenq a CB with 25 tackles. Antonio Fletcher is at #8 and a Safety with 17 tackles and finally #9 a CB in Samy Johnson with 16. Johnson is a pretty good CB but is listed as questionable with a head injury for our game, he was injured in the CCU game. He is a converted RB, if he can’t go it will either be Denzel Blackwell a freshman transfer from Boston College or Leon Jones a Juco transfer. They do have 5 INT’s on the season but no one has more than 1 each.
ST—Their punter, Ryan Hanson gets allot of work, he has 38 punts on the season and averaging 42 yards per punt, with 13 FC and 14 inside the 20, he also has 7 punts over 50 yards. Their FG guy is Blake Grupe, he is 9-12 on the season but is 1-1 from 50 yards and 2-3 from 40 plus, so he has a big leg and is pretty accurtate. Tristan Mattson is their Kickoff guy and has 14 of his 24 kickoffs have been TB’s. So, we might get a chance to return some, but he is going to try to kick it away from Chris Smith and through the end zone. Their punt returner is Johnnie Lang, one of their RB’s. He has returned 6 punts for 115 yards and a TD, he has a 19-yard average, with a long of 63, he is pretty good, we will have to contain him. On kickoffs is their other RB Alan Lamar, he has 27 returns for 627 yards for a 23.22-yard average as well as a TD of 93 yards. They are explosive on punt and kickoffs, so we need to stay in our lanes and make sure we tackle them.
Coaching—Long time ASU coach Blake Anderson quit and moved to Utah State last year, he was replaced by Butch Jones who has been around for a long time. Jones was the HC at Tennessee, Cincinnati and Central Michigan and most recently was an offensive analyst for Nick Saban at Alabama. Couple of other interesting things on their coaching staff, former ASU QB Ryan Aplin is the Running backs coach, we should all remember him from his days playing against us, he was a good one. Also on the staff is Dalton Hillard as the Secondary Coach but is not related to the Dalton Hilliard of the New Orleans Saints.
That is all……. I think this will be a good game for us to keep our offense on track, we will however have to keep their receivers in front of us and make tackles. That is their strength. I don’t see an issue in this game for the Cajuns we should come out with a convincing win.
Geaux Cajuns!!!!!!
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