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Lots of coaches use tempo to exploit the same things in opposing defense. It usually doesn’t result in reaching the pinnacle of the sport because top tier defenses can shut it down and it relies too much on lower percentage explosive plays rather than methodical drives. Think the Briles Baylor system. If you look at some of the Tennessee games this year against Bama and Georgia they jump out to a lead by catching the defense off guard with tempo. But a team with good a good secondary can eventually shut it down. If you don’t have a good secondary you can get run out of the building though.
wait 2 more years for hippo to wreck Tenn.Not a good grade for Gus. Heupel they gave a good grade to.
College football first-year coach grades: Steve Sarkisian fails at Texas, Josh Heupel impresses at Tennessee
How did the FBS college football coaches who took new jobs perform during their debut campaigns in 2021?
We should give him some time. But also consider he brought in a QB and multiple WR and RB in the portal. Some that he previously recruited and coached. It’s not automatic that the “next round“ of his guys moves the needle considerably from what we saw. Part of the problem is the play of the O line. Tempo masked some of the size issues we have as a G5 school. They were exposed this year. He will have to recruit bigger linemen going into the B12 to run his offense successfully. Historically that type of player had been difficult for UCF to get.
As weak as our opponents were this year outside of Cincinnati and SMU, I don’t think 8 wins (even with all the injuries) is anything to write home about. We didn’t beat anyone we weren’t supposed to, and lost one (Navy) that we definitely shouldn’t have. The W-L record is pretty inflated this year, looks better than it really was.
We were favored in 10 games and won 8 of them. We were underdogs in 2 and lost them both by considerably more than the spread.
Cincy was up 35-0 before we made a first down or attempted a pass beyond 5 yards from the LoS. We played conservatively and got blown out anyway.
Amazing? No. Passable, maybe. UCF was favored by a touchdown or more in 9 of 12 games and went 7-2 in those. And some of the games we were favored by double digits at home like ECU, Tulane, and usf we needed late defensive stands to hold these teams off. In the 2 games we were underdogs we we 2 and 3 touchdowns on the wrong side of the spread. Not even competitive.
To further confirm this. Cincinnati highest scoring game was against UCF. SMU only scored higher against an FCS team, and Louisville only put up more points against Duke.
It works both ways. We also held Memphis and Tulane to their lowest scoring output of the season. Held the cows and ECU to their second lowest scoring outputs (Cows were shut out by NC State in the opener and ECU scored only 13 against #4 Cincinnati).
The Memphis game there is clear caveat that they were starting their 3rd string QB playing in his first (and to this point only) game and he was terrible.
The facts are what they are. The defense played well and won us 5 games and they also played poorly in other games.
