It’s that special, brief time of year again when UConn football is undefeated and we can hang on to a little bit of hope. The Huskies open up the 2018 season Thursday night at Rentschler Field against defending fake national champions UCF (#conFLiCT), and while they will almost certainly lose that game by several touchdowns, Year Two of the Randy Edsall 2.0 Era will hopefully be the next step in a years-long program rebuild.
If you haven’t paid much attention since the last time UConn took the field, there’s not a ton to report. Gone are multi-year starters Bryant Shirreffs at quarterback, Arkeel Newsome at running back, Foley Fatukasi at nose tackle and Jamar Summers at corner. Also departed is our beautiful boy, offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, who jumped ship to take the same gig at SMU.
UConn enters 2018 still very much in transition from the disastrous Diaco years. The Week 1 depth chart is worryingly full of freshmen, and nearly the entire defense is a giant question mark. As a result, a bowl game is probably a long shot this year, but there are some decent building blocks for the future.
In part one of our season preview, we’ll examine a few of those building blocks, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll all talk ourselves into seven wins. (We’ll get super negative tomorrow, don’t worry.)
1) This might be UConn’s best offensive line in years
UConn has been – slowly – improving on the offensive line for a couple years now. My favorite quick-and-dirty metrics are yards-per-carry and sacks allowed; the Huskies were at 3.6 ypc in 2017 (their best mark since the Fiesta Bowl year), and their 35 sacks allowed were a slight improvement over Bob Diaco’s final two seasons. Neither of those numbers are what you’d call “good,” but given Edsall’s track record of building up solid offensive lines here, the trend should be for more improvement in 2018.
The line features four returning starters and a couple other guys with game experience, only one of whom is a senior. Reports out of camp this summer indicate that Edsall thinks fairly highly of this group, so despite replacing growly OL coach J.B. Grimes with Frank Giufre (a former offensive line assistant with the Indianapolis Colts) I’m feeling bullish enough to predict that this will be UConn’s best offensive line in eight years.
That being said, it could all depend on the health of center Ryan Crozier, the lone senior starter, who has somehow been a starter since late 2014. Crozier has been good-to-very-good when he’s been in, but he’s dealt with injuries in two of the last three seasons. In the Huskies’ first three games last season, they averaged 4.8 yards per carry and allowed just 3 total sacks (granted, those games were against Holy Cross, Virginia and East Carolina). After Crozier went down injured against ECU, the team ran for just 3.2 yards per carry and gave up 4.5 sacks per game. Crozier could be the rock of this offensive line, and if you told me that he played all 12 games this season, I’d bet UConn had a fairly productive offense.
The two tackles should be very solid. Junior Matt Peart shifts to the right side this year, and is UConn’s top returning player per Pro Football Focus. Sophomore Ryan Van Demark showed some promise as a freshman, and impressed the coaching staff enough to be charged with protecting David Pindell’s blind side.
The guards are a bit more unproven; sophomore left guard Cam DeGeorge started 11 games last year with decent results and was the highest-touted OL recruit to commit to UConn, according to guru Phil Steele. The other starter is 295-pound true freshman Christian Haynes, who has decent athleticism for his size and good footwork, but who is also a true freshman, which is not what you want. But if he can translate his skills to this level immediately while not being physically overwhelmed, that’s a huge plus.
Long-term, the future should be solid. After this season, they’ll only lose Crozier from their current two-deep (barring something like Peart entering the NFL Draft early). And the second-string line has some decent frosh/sophomore prospects between center Stanley Hubbard, guard Nino Leone and tackle James Tunstall (and guard Robert “Big Rob” Holmes, though he worryingly did not make the depth chart for UCF.) I’m optimistic that at least one, if not two or three, of those guys turn into cornerstones of the line as soon as next year.
2) David Pindell should be better, and there’s depth at QB
Pindell was the No. 1 quarterback entering last season and led one really nice drive early against Holy Cross, only to be rendered ineffective and replaced by Bryant Shirreffs. Pindell then stayed on the bench, making only cameo appearances until Shirreffs was sidelined for good due to injuries in November. Given a second chance, the junior college transfer performed….okay. He threw for at least 200 yards in the final three games with middling accuracy, and he was extremely willing to move outside of the pocket, averaging 18 non-sack carries per game at better than 5 yards a clip.
Pindell was clearly UConn’s second-most-productive quarterback last year, and there’s no more Shirreffs safety net. The numbers don’t blow you away at all, and there’s nothing really statistically standing out that makes you think Pindell can even come close to cracking the top half of AAC quarterbacks, even though improvement should be expected in his second year in the program.
However, this is the positives column, and Pindell capped the 2017 season with one of the most positive moments in recent UConn history, leading a 93-yard touchdown drive in just over a minute to pull the Huskies within a point of Cincinnati. (Ignore what happened next.) Pindell wasn’t perfectly accurate, but he showed poise and situational awareness, consistently made good decisions, and showed off his ability to make plays with his feet throughout the drive. Those are decent tools for new offensive coordinator John Dunn to work with, and I think Pindell’s ceiling is a little higher than Shirreffs’ was. The accuracy is my big question.
If it doesn’t work out, I really like redshirt freshman backup Marvin Washington, who picked UConn over UCF and might be the best athlete UConn’s ever had at QB. Fellow redshirt freshman Jordan McAfee is in the mix, and true freshman Steven Krajewski comes in highly touted from Georgia. Even if Pindell does well and maintains his position all year, there should be a good competition for the starting job next season. (Krajewski could also theoretically play this year and keep his redshirt, thanks to the good rule change that allows players to play in up to four games and maintain their redshirt.)
3) Edsall loves his incoming defensive linemen, and you should too
Remember Travis Jones’ name. The 6-foot-4, 350-pound true freshman from New Haven (a former Rutgers commit) has received a tremendous amount of hype during camp, and I think I’m buying in. Jones is an explosive athlete for his size, and could be the anchor of UConn’s three-man front for the entirety of his time at UConn. That’s bold talk for a player who’s never played a collegiate snap and was in high school three months ago, but it’s hard not to hear the chatter without getting enormously excited. Those kinds of players don’t show up at UConn very often.
Jones’ athleticism makes him a versatile player at both tackle and end in a 3-3-5; he’ll start on Thursday as the nose tackle, backed up by junior Kevin Murphy, the team’s most experienced returning D-lineman. Jones will almost certainly go through the normal ups-and-downs of a freshman, but I’m hoping to see a handful of “wow” plays and a full, healthy season as he grows into the college game.
Fellow freshmen Caleb Thomas (one of the team’s strongest players), Jonathan Pace and Lwal Uguak look primed to play a bunch of snaps out of the gate, with Thomas likely to start opposite sophomore James Atkins at defensive end. All four of those guys, along with junior Ryan Fines, a 300-pound graduate transfer from Miami (FL), have a ton to prove.
Edsall has said during camp that this might be the best group of freshmen D-linemen he’s brought in, and for a position that looked to be a weakness after the graduation of all three starters (including NFL draft pick Foley Fatukasi), UConn could be in shockingly decent shape sooner than later.
4) The offensive skill players should be solid!
Seven of UConn’s top eight pass-catchers from a year ago are back — the other was Newsome — meaning there should be quite a competition for playing time in what figures to be a 3-wide base offense. The starters are senior Hergy Mayala, the leading receiver from a year ago (43 catches, 815 yards, 7 TD), and either senior big-play threat Tyraiq Beals or sophomore speedster Keyion Dixon, along with senior Kyle Buss in the slot. Former QB Donovan Williams is listed as the backup for Mayala, and true freshman/all-name team candidate Heron Maurisseau is the backup slot. A bunch of familiar names did not even crack the two-deep, which bodes really well for this unit — the lightning-quick Quayvon Skanes and Julian Edelman Approximation Mason Donaldson should also factor in here. The tight ends are not great blockers, but both Tyler Davis and Aaron McLean are viable threats to stretch the field. This could be UConn’s best, deepest receiver corps ever, and if Pindell improves, the passing game should be very competent.
The RB situation is a bit more tenuous. While Newsome was never quite a complete every-down back, he was extremely dynamic in space, and a weapon in the short passing game. In addition to his graduation, the Huskies will also be without Nate Hopkins, who had seven rushing TDs last year but decided to transfer after expressing unhappiness with a short-yardage/goal-line role, and Donevin O’Reilly, a walk-on who had a nice spring and worked his way into the starting lineup before tearing his ACL during camp.
However, there’s still some talent here, and again, more youth. Freshman Zavier Scott could be that every-down back; he impressed in the spring game with his speed and vision and earned a favorable comparison to Donald Brown from Edsall. Sophomore Kevin Mensah had a very solid freshman year, leading the team in rushing yards (592, 4.5 per carry) and should produce again. Freshmen Dante Black and Khyon Gillespie are probably going to have to get some carries at some point, unless Edsall decides to move/convert a receiver (Dixon, maybe?) into a running back.
Given all that, I think UConn’s ceiling this season is a league-average AAC offense, which would be an enormous step up from the last [checks notes] 250 seasons of UConn football.
5) Meet your 2019 and 2020 Huskies
UConn’s recruiting is consistently at the bottom of the AAC, but a good way to overcome that (at least partially) is to take those raw 18-year-olds and develop their skills so that they can be big, mean 22-year-olds who succeed at football.
If you want to compare the 2018 team to any of the UConn teams of Edsall’s first stint here, it’s probably the 2001 squad, which didn’t have the quality or depth to be competitive at the FBS level, but which did throw a ton of young kids into the fire with an eye to the future. The Huskies took their lumps and went 2-9 that season, but they found a number of answers, including a quarterback destined to play in the NFL. The following season, Edsall built on those setbacks and led UConn to six wins and several competitive losses against power-conference teams.
It’s not a perfect comparison, and it’s going to be harder for Edsall to repeat that timeline in the AAC. But Edsall’s ability to coach up unheralded recruits is the number one thing to cling to if you’re hoping for UConn football to be relevant again.
We’re gonna get a chance to see that play out over the next two, even three seasons. Of the 46 players named on the offensive and defensive two-deep for the UCF game, just seven are seniors, while 30 are true freshmen, redshirt freshmen or sophomores. That fact alone means it’s going to be difficult to win in 2018, but if and when any of those young players break out, Edsall will get to build something with them for multiple seasons. That’s the hope, at least.
