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Had Luke Skipper started last year at the beginning

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TulsaRising1

All-Conference
Jun 21, 2017
5,124
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We could have very well had wins against Toledo, New Mexico, Navy, and Temple.
That puts us at 6 wins for a rebuilding year. I will not be surprised if we don't pop out 8 wins this year. I could be wrong, but there is no reason why we can't have a good season this year.
 
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Babe the Blue Ox_rivals

All-Conference
Oct 3, 2001
3,582
3,279
0
I was in Fayetteville on Friday. Those people are more excited for football then they’ve been in a few years. Morris seems to be. saying all the right things.

The stadium expansion looks pretty nice too.
 
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rusty-c

All-Conference
Dec 28, 2009
3,973
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We're more likely to have a game that's officiated straight up in Austin than Fayettnam where I always expect a loss. They seem to be creative in how they make it impossible over there. Regardless of money, I don't know how in good conscience we can continue to schedule games with those d-bags. Texas, should just be flat out better than they have been in a number of years.
 
L

lawpoke87

Heisman
Dec 17, 2002
166,552
20,604
82
Arkansas doesn’t currently have an SEC like roster. They’re going to struggle this season. We will have a chance if we play a clean game

Texas will be very talented. Austin isn’t an overly tough place to play but we will be outmanned athletically. Tough game to win. If they can get above average QB play they could be very good.
 
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rusty-c

All-Conference
Dec 28, 2009
3,973
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lawpoke87 said:
Arkansas doesn’t currently have an SEC like roster. They’re going to struggle this season. We will have a chance if we play a clean game

Texas will be very talented. Austin isn’t an overly tough place to play but we will be outmanned athletically. Tough game to win. If they can get above average QB play they could be very good.
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I agree with your assessment regarding their talent level. The issue has always been that we never get a fairly called game over there.
 
TU_BLA

TU_BLA

Heisman
Mar 8, 2012
29,659
13,895
113
lawpoke87 said:
Arkansas doesn’t currently have an SEC like roster. They’re going to struggle this season. We will have a chance if we play a clean game

Texas will be very talented. Austin isn’t an overly tough place to play but we will be outmanned athletically. Tough game to win. If they can get above average QB play they could be very good.
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We'll have a chance to matchup with Arkansas, at least for this year. I am not sure Morris really knows what he's in for.

Texas is a different beast altogether. We will struggle to move the ball against their defense. At the same time, their offense is a train wreck. The revolving door of players on that side of the ball holds them back. They have not had any continuity on that side of the ball since Mack Brown left. I don't expect this year to be any different. I know people have a lot of love for that team because of the high level talent they have, but they've had that level talent forever and they still can't seem to quite put it together consistently. It wouldn't surprise me if they beat OU in the Red River Rivalry game and then blew a tire against OSU regardless of where the game is played. To me, Texas and Notre Dame have the same high expectations every year and every year they disappoint because of the lack of continuity, lack of consistency, and the ego of the coach.
 
H

HuffyCane

Heisman
Dec 25, 2004
28,488
14,605
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The University of Texas is the most over rated and under achieving sports program in America. Can you think of any team in any sport that has done less with an equal or larger budget compared to their competition? I’m talking about the last 45 years ....
 
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A

astonmartin708_rivals

All-American
Apr 17, 2012
19,249
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HuffyCane said:
The University of Texas is the most over rated and under achieving sports program in America. Can you think of any team in any sport that has done less with an equal or larger budget compared to their competition? I’m talking about the last 45 years ....
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Vince Young seemed to do Ok... but I get what you're sayin.
 
L

lawpoke87

Heisman
Dec 17, 2002
166,552
20,604
82
HuffyCane said:
The University of Texas is the most over rated and under achieving sports program in America. Can you think of any team in any sport that has done less with an equal or larger budget compared to their competition? I’m talking about the last 45 years ....
Click to expand...

Texas would be my #1 choice. Their neighbor and old rival might be my second choice (Texas A&M).
 
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TU Sepp

All-Conference
Feb 8, 2004
22,043
1,184
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There is no way on God's green earth that arkie officials are going to let TU come out of that game with a victory.
 
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TU 1978

TU 1978

All-American
Jan 30, 2009
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You give Pee Wee Hermann too much credit. Fexas sucks and as usual this is a winnable game for us.
 
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JesseTU

All-Conference
Jan 8, 2007
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I'm dubious on 8 wins. Texas is always so talented that they can beat anyone, but so manic they can lose to anyone also. I'm not confident we come out swinging hard enough to be the team to knock them on their butts before they realize it and get back in the game. We'd have to be crisp to overcome our significant athletic/size disadvantage.

Arkansas' biggest weakness this year is probably going to be passing defense. If we were slinging the ball around like we used to, this game would be circled on my calendar and I'd go back to the place I have sworn never to return. But last year did not give me great confidence in our offenses ability to keep up in a shootout. Plus, if I ever go back to Fayettnam and I see Tulsa run the wildcat, even once, I'm going to have a meltdown. I don't want to take that chance.

Damn, the more I think about it, the more I still have a 2017 football hangover. It's nearly August, my vision usually turns blue and gold about now.
 
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M

mcane

All-Conference
Dec 3, 2003
8,476
2,703
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I was another fan that swore never to return to Pigville, but I caved. If TU were to win, I couldn't live with myself for not having been there to see it and celebrate with the team after the game.
 
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R

Raisin_Cane

Senior
Aug 19, 2014
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TULSARISING said:
We could have very well had wins against Toledo, New Mexico, Navy, and Temple.
That puts us at 6 wins for a rebuilding year. I will not be surprised if we don't pop out 8 wins this year. I could be wrong, but there is no reason why we can't have a good season this year.
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Wow. I don’t know about all this. I’ll go to my grave saying that Coach Mo tgomery picked the right QB to start the season. Maybe Skipper gets it done this year.

But you really feel that good about a guy who didn’t get the nod last season (I’ve been very vocal about why)? This guy is in a three way competition with a redshirt freshman and a guy who couldn’t even throw this spring. And they don’t bring Zach Smith if they’re that sure. I wish all the best to whoever gets the nod, but I’m not that confident he could have done enough to get us to a bowl.
 
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T

TulsaRising1

All-Conference
Jun 21, 2017
5,124
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Raisin_Cane said:
Wow. I don’t know about all this. I’ll go to my grave saying that Coach Mo tgomery picked the right QB to start the season. Maybe Skipper gets it done this year.

But you really feel that good about a guy who didn’t get the nod last season (I’ve been very vocal about why)? This guy is in a three way competition with a redshirt freshman and a guy who couldn’t even throw this spring. And they don’t bring Zach Smith if they’re that sure. I wish all the best to whoever gets the nod, but I’m not that confident he could have done enough to get us to a bowl.
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I see your point, and you may be right. For as many close games that we lost, had we had an average qb, I feel like we would have won most of those games
 
TU_BLA

TU_BLA

Heisman
Mar 8, 2012
29,659
13,895
113
TULSARISING said:
I see your point, and you may be right. For as many close games that we lost, had we had an average qb, I feel like we would have won most of those games
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I agree...at the very least we should have won the games against New Mexico and Navy last year. The Toledo game wasn't an issue of our offense not performing. That game was lost by the defense. The Tulane game was a trainwreck...and every team has them. The SMU game and the UCONN games were also games that were winnable with any sort of defense whatsoever.
 
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astonmartin708_rivals

All-American
Apr 17, 2012
19,249
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TU_BLA said:
I agree...at the very least we should have won the games against New Mexico and Navy last year. The Toledo game wasn't an issue of our offense not performing. That game was lost by the defense. The Tulane game was a trainwreck...and every team has them. The SMU game and the UCONN games were also games that were winnable with any sort of defense whatsoever.
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UConn was winnable without a defense lol. The offense didn't do quite as well as you remember at Toledo either. They had 3 punts, a field goal, and a turnover on downs in a shootout. That's not going to cut it. If we get a TD instead of a FG early in the second half it's a W instead of an L.
 
L

lawpoke87

Heisman
Dec 17, 2002
166,552
20,604
82
Our defense gave up 679 yards against Toledo. I can't blame the offense when the D gives up that kind of yardage...oh and 54 points. I believe our offense had its best day scoring wise and yardage wise of the season against Toledo also.

I'm not sure where all the 2017 Skipper love is coming from. He completed just under 56% of his passes and threw for 3TDs and 4 Ints. Averaged 2 yards per rush as well. We signed the kid from Baylor a reason.
 
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astonmartin708_rivals

All-American
Apr 17, 2012
19,249
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lawpoke87 said:
Our defense gave up 679 yards against Toledo. I can't blame the offense when the D gives up that kind of yardage...oh and 54 points. I believe our offense had its best day scoring wise and yardage wise of the season against Toledo also.

I'm not sure where all the 2017 Skipper love is coming from. He completed just under 56% of his passes and threw for 3TDs and 4 Ints. Averaged 2 yards per rush as well. We signed the kid from Baylor or a reason.
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You can say Toledo's offense was better than ours, and you can say that our defense had a pick 6 that should have helped us win that game. There was blame to go around there.

As for Skipper, those were freshman numbers where he hadn't been getting first team reps for half the season. Even with those mediocre numbers, his passing efficiency was near that of Ben Hicks from SMU, who is pretty highly touted in the conference. I think our system last season was (mistakenly) set up to be ultra run heavy due to President and it really hurt our passing game. We never quite got away from that, even when Skipper started. I expect that to change some this season and we'll see more TD's and better efficiency from Skipper as we'll open the playbook up vertically, rather than needing to complete a bunch of slants, hitches, etc... to keep moving the chains when you've run 75% of the time in the drive and you need a 1st down on 3rd down. It's easier to have completions when you're throwing into an open area downfield on 1st or 2nd down and they're not expecting it.
 
L

lawpoke87

Heisman
Dec 17, 2002
166,552
20,604
82
Wasn't Skipper a Soph last season?

All I'm saying is that when you give up 679 and 54 the defense is the first place one should look.
 
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L

lawpoke87

Heisman
Dec 17, 2002
166,552
20,604
82
We rushed for 423 yards and passed for 125. That game was anything but an air raid shoot out on our part. Very few teams (sans the service academies) rush for over 400 yards and lose.
 
A

astonmartin708_rivals

All-American
Apr 17, 2012
19,249
6,806
73
lawpoke87 said:
We rushed for 423 yards and passed for 125. That game was anything but an air raid shoot out on our part. Very few teams (sans the service academies) rush for over 400 yards and lose.
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True. Although, when we had an average rushing vs passing ratio of ~2:1... that can be expected.

We were closer to being a triple option team last season than we were a spread offense. Our Pass vs. Run statistic was 49% (3rd lowest in the conference next to triple option teams in Navy at 12% and Tulane at 42%) The next lowest was South Florida (same offense as us and much more successful) at 58%.

Completions vs. Rushing Attempts was telling too. Same order but we only had 26% as many completions as rushing attempts. Tulane, a triple option team, had 24%. South Florida who ran a better version of our offense last season was up at 31%.

Basically, we were passing 1/5th of the time while USF was passing 1/4th of the time. It made our offense much more predictable and defensible while theirs was tough to defend and tougher to guess if they were going to run or pass. With Chad out of the lineup, and a slightly sparser stable of running backs, I expect that number to creep back upwards and our entire offense to benefit from it.
 
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C

chito_and_leon

All-Conference
Dec 5, 2003
6,511
2,765
0
TULSARISING said:
We could have very well had wins against Toledo, New Mexico, Navy, and Temple.
That puts us at 6 wins for a rebuilding year. I will not be surprised if we don't pop out 8 wins this year. I could be wrong, but there is no reason why we can't have a good season this year.
Click to expand...
Beaver accounted for more than 250 yards against both Toledo and Navy. I don’t think you’d get much more from Skipper than that. He didn’t show anything suggesting he’d have done more.
 
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astonmartin708_rivals

All-American
Apr 17, 2012
19,249
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73
A live look in at Chad's reaction:
 
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C

chito_and_leon

All-Conference
Dec 5, 2003
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astonmartin708 said:
The fact that you called him Beaver explains why the offense wasn't running correctly despite his yardage.
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Lol when you follow TU sports as long as I have, the overhyped dual threat QBs all blend together. The best part is I looked up his stats right before I posted, it said President right there but I typed Beaver anyway.
 
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H

HuffyCane

Heisman
Dec 25, 2004
28,488
14,605
0
astonmartin708 said:
You can say Toledo's offense was better than ours, and you can say that our defense had a pick 6 that should have helped us win that game. There was blame to go around there.

As for Skipper, those were freshman numbers where he hadn't been getting first team reps for half the season. Even with those mediocre numbers, his passing efficiency was near that of Ben Hicks from SMU, who is pretty highly touted in the conference. I think our system last season was (mistakenly) set up to be ultra run heavy due to President and it really hurt our passing game. We never quite got away from that, even when Skipper started. I expect that to change some this season and we'll see more TD's and better efficiency from Skipper as we'll open the playbook up vertically, rather than needing to complete a bunch of slants, hitches, etc... to keep moving the chains when you've run 75% of the time in the drive and you need a 1st down on 3rd down. It's easier to have completions when you're throwing into an open area downfield on 1st or 2nd down and they're not expecting it.
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This reads like the thoughts of an 8th grade math champ thinking about what will happen next when he tries to talk to the prettiest girl at school for the fourth or fifth time.
 
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