Yesterday, we kicked off our 2018 UConn football season preview by telling you several reasons why you should be excited about the program and hopeful for the future. I sincerely believe those things! But I also sincerely believe that UConn is not going to be very good in 2018, and today we’ll go into why.
1) The schedule
This year’s schedule is not ideally designed for a young team with a ton of question marks. The Huskies will be thrown right into the fire in weeks one and two, hosting a talented UCF team and then traveling out west to take on Boise State Sept. 8. Those are among the best non-power-conference teams in the country, one of whom may play in a New Year’s Six bowl. UConn is a three-touchdown underdog in both games; if they’re even competitive in either one of them, that’s a win.
But the schedule doesn’t really ease up from there, apart from what will hopefully be an easy win Sept. 15 against Rhode Island. (Friendly reminder that UConn hasn’t beaten an FCS opponent by more than a touchdown since 2011, and good lord it would be nice to just overpower a team for once.)
The schedule is front-loaded with the Huskies’ toughest opponents, including road trips to a decent Syracuse team (Sept. 22), a Memphis team that dropped 70 on the Huskies last year (Oct. 6) and a strong USF team (Oct. 20). Of UConn’s first seven games this season, Rhody and the Sept. 29 home game against Cincinnati are the only games you’d expect to even be winnable, barring Randy Edsall infusing this young team with magic powers. A 2-5 start with a couple competitive losses would be thoroughly decent and a promising sign for the future, even though it’d also understandably inspire no enthusiasm among our downtrodden fanbase.
But it’s probably equally likely that UConn stands 1-6 with a couple horrifying blowouts by the time Dan Hurley kicks off preseason practice in mid-October.
The back end of the schedule offers some more opportunity, as the Huskies host a not-as-bad-as-you-think UMass team, SMU and Temple, and visit shaky Tulsa and East Carolina. While UConn would currently be underdogs to all five of those teams – and lord help those of us who don’t want to end the program if UMass comes into the Rent and wins – I could definitely see the Huskies roll up a few victories, gain some late-season momentum and head into 2019 with reasonable goals of reaching a bowl game and maybe mounting a darkhorse run at the AAC East title. Or they’ll go 1-11 and I never write another football thing as long as I live. This is the negatives column, remember.
2) Can the secondary be a thing?
I did not watch all 130 FBS teams last year, but I feel comfortable anointing the UConn secondary the worst in the country in 2017. Almost nothing defensive coordinator Billy Crocker tried worked, and the constant 10-yard cushion the Husky corners gave opposing receivers was particularly maddening, though it was exacerbated by poor pursuit angles and constant missed tackles in open space, which I assume were not called for in the game plan.
The Huskies allowed 333 passing yards per game, worst in the nation, and 8.5 yards per attempt, good for 12th-worst. They allowed 34 touchdown passes, worst in the nation. They intercepted just six passes all season. The average opposing quarterback put up Tom Brady’s stat line against the Huskies every single week (and that’s factoring in Boston College only needing to throw for 55 yards in a lopsided win). The unit has a long way to go just to get to a normal level of badness; it’s probably at least a year away from being merely below-average.
It was a young group last year, featuring several true freshman, but somehow the 2018 secondary will be younger after the graduation or transfer of six regulars from last year. Sophomore safety Tyler Coyle is probably UConn’s best returning defensive player; he had 67 tackles (which is: a lot for a safety) and intercepted a couple passes last year, including this one in the win over Temple:
He and Omar Fortt make for a decent pair of safeties with experience and upside, and they should be staples of the secondary for the next three seasons; the backups are both true freshman, Jalon Ferrell and Oneil Robinson.
The corners are a complete unknown. Edsall announced that Tahj Herring-Wilson, who played eight games before suffering an injury last year, and true freshman Keyshawn Paul will start against UCF. Perhaps freshman Shamel Lazarus or Ryan Carroll will impress? If UConn gets decent production from this group, then it means something’s gone very right, but I expect the cornerback position to be the weakest unit on the squad this year.
3) Who steps up at linebacker?
Right now, the second-weakest unit appears to be the linebackers, and that’s a major problem because of how active the linebackers need to be in Crocker’s 3-3-5. Most of UConn’s pass rush and play disruption needs to come from this group (three linebackers and a “Husky backer” safety/linebacker hybrid), and last year was a struggle to say the least. All three starting linebackers graduated, including an all-conference performer in Junior Joseph, and it’s unclear if the Huskies have anyone on the roster ready to take a big-enough step forward.
If there is one, it’s sophomore OLB Darrian Beavers, an excellent athlete who showed flashes last year with 3 sacks in limited playing time. He boasts probably the highest upside of any of the linebackers on the roster, although true freshman Kevon Jones, of East Hartford, might be right there with him. Jones will start at middle linebacker, while Eli Thomas, a JUCO transfer who missed all of last season with a torn ACL, appears set to start at the outside linebacker.
Backups Eddie Hahn, Ryan Gilmartin and Santana Sterling all played a bit last year and were adequate (Gilmartin playing a nice game in the season finale, particularly), but this is a crucial position without many known quantities.
The hybrid “Husky” backer/safety will be redshirt freshman Ian Swenson, who was one of Bob Diaco’s bigger recruiting wins, and stuck with the program through the coaching change. He was solid in a little bit of playing time before suffering a season-ending injury. Junior Marshe Terry is the backup and the more experienced player here, showing some effectiveness last year (although also a propensity to get burnt).
4) Can the special teams avoid losing games?
It’s far from the program’s biggest issue, but it sure would be nice to see UConn find some marginal production on special teams, which haven’t been above average since 2012 or so.
UConn wasn’t far from winning four or five games last year if it had gotten some more more consistency from kicker Michael Tarbutt, who missed a couple of last-second game-tying kicks. Now a junior, Tarbutt clearly has the physical tools to be a good college kicker, but he’s still working on the mental aspect. Note that in the loss to Cincinnati that ended with his missed PAT, Tarbutt also drilled a 53-yard field goal with room to spare. He also looked solid in the spring game, for what that’s worth. The Huskies will hopefully be involved in several games that come down to a kick here and there, and I think Tarbutt can be a real asset. He’s already one on kickoffs, ranking 22nd in the nation in touchback percentage (36 of 58), which is good because of the whole missed-tackles-in-open-space problems I mentioned earlier.
The punt game was dire last year; Brett Graham had a rough freshman season, ranking in the bottom 10 nationally with an average of just 38.8 yards per punt. He should improve on that, but he’s also been challenged by Aussie rugby-style punter Luke Magliozzi; there doesn’t appear to be a definite starter here yet.
Kyle Buss showed some ability as a kick returner last year, and will be the primary punt returner, while Keyion Dixon and freshman Heron Maurisseau will return kicks. The baseline expectation here is “don’t fumble the ball”; UConn has a plethora of skill players with good speed and vision who can do a nice job in the return game, but I’m not sure there are enough resources (both in practice time and in good blockers who can be spared special teams) to prioritize it. One day!
5) The recruiting just isn’t good enough, yet
Edsall’s history of developing under-the-radar recruits (and winning with them) is one of the reasons it made sense for UConn to bring him back, and he’s certainly proved the pundits wrong before. But I just can’t wrap my head around UConn being a competitive football program until they are regularly competing with and beating their AAC rivals for players.
Bob Diaco’s recruiting was catastrophic for the program, I think we can all agree. By and large, Diaco tended to recruit players who were perhaps the right size, but who lacked the mobility, explosiveness and strength to succeed at this level. (If it seemed like half the roster was made up of guys who should be playing tight end somewhere, well…) It felt like more of his recruits picked UConn over Lehigh and Monmouth, instead of Temple or Cincinnati. The upperclassmen who survived to make it to 2018 are solid, but Diaco is the reason why the Huskies are going to rely on two dozen freshmen to start the season.
Edsall’s first two classes have been an improvement — a useful post on The-Boneyard dot com broke down the very noticeable uptick in recruits who chose the Huskies over Group of 5 peers — but they’ve still ranked just 10th and 12th in the AAC. Stars do matter, even if recruiting is not an exact science: the margin for error is almost nil when you recruit slower and less explosive athletes than your opponents, and UConn finishing .500 or below in conference 13 of the last 15 years bears that out. This shouldn’t be controversial.
Yet Edsall’s first stint here would seem to be the counterpoint; he did win the Big East and went to five bowl games in seven years, after all. But the circumstances are completely different now than they were in 2008, as should be obvious.
UConn ranked at the bottom of the Big East recruiting rankings regularly, too, but because the Big East was an actual power conference with access to a BCS bowl and the money that came with it, that meant the Huskies ended up ranked in the 60s and 70s nationally. That is an enormous difference compared to recent classes, which have settled in the 90s and low 100s, and meant UConn was at least rated within shouting distance of the top of the league. To pick one year at random, the Big East’s highest-rated recruiting class in 2005 was Louisville’s at 36th overall; UConn was 69th that year (nice). Compare that to the AAC in 2017, when UCF led the league with a 55th-ranked class; UConn was 101st, with eight other AAC programs ranked in between the two.
Secondly, we now live in an era where every above-average high school football player has their highlights uploaded on Hudl for on-demand consumption. It’s a lot harder to find overlooked, unknown prospects than it used to be.
Finally, those two conference championships are to Edsall’s eternal credit as a program-builder. But we can also be frank and note that UConn was masterful at scheduling their way into bowl games. UConn’s recruiting, as middling as it was in the 2000s, still gave the Huskies a talent advantage over most programs in the MAC or Conference USA, and an equal-or-better footing with the bad BCS programs of the time, like Duke and Indiana. And Edsall’s 2004-2010 teams just mashed the hell out of those teams, going 19-2 against non-BCS out-of-conference opponents (and 4-0 against the aforementioned Duke and Indiana). There’s nothing wrong with constantly beating teams you should beat, but certainly we can agree it’s easier to make a bowl game when you only need to win three conference games to get eligible.
UConn can’t schedule that way anymore. Those MAC teams we used to schedule are now recruiting at the same level as UConn, or better. And the financial situation, and the season ticket situation, being what it is, David Benedict can’t load up the home schedule with true dregs like Liberty, Charlotte and San Jose State, because the conference schedule is bringing Tulsa, East Carolina and SMU to East Hartford every year. There’s a need to play Power 5 or regional rivals in home-and-homes, and there’s also a need to take the occasional million-dollar buy game at Clemson. If the program continues to trail the rest of the conference in the league and finish at or below .500 in conference play most years, there just is not a large-enough pool of out-of-conference opponents that David Benedict can realistically schedule to entice season ticket holders AND regularly win the three or four games required to reach a bowl game.
I want so badly for UConn football to be relevant and good and awesome and sustainable. For that to happen, UConn must recruit better athletes, they need to take advantage of Connecticut suddenly producing a dozen legit FBS prospects a year and keep most of them home, and they must compete for recruits (and win) against peer AAC schools.
But hey, maybe we’ll look back in four years and laugh about how wrong those rankings were when Kevon Jones is a first-round NFL Draft pick. For what it’s worth, Edsall has called his 2018 recruiting class one of the best he’s ever had here. I too love coach speak, but for the future of the program’s sake, I hope it’s true.
