South Alabama Preview

Program History:

The Jaguars have only had a football program since 2009 and have been in the FBS since 2012.  They have had zero winning seasons.  Their most recent coach, Steve Campbell, was 9-26 in his three seasons, before being relieved.

Their new coach is Kane Wommack, who was DC at Indiana.  It will be his 2nd game at the helm.  

There have been horrors in Mobile

They are picked to be 4th in the Sun Belt West by Phil Steele.  

And they are 14 point favorites on the road.

This is the team BG beat in the Camilla Bowl in 2014 (Babers 1), with the late bomb from James Knapke to Roger Lewis.

They beat Southern Miss to open the season, which they also did last year as well.  They fell behind 7-0 and scored the next 31 points to win the game.  It was a pretty convincing win..  USA was a 2-point favorite.

Offense

They clearly had a big game on offense to open up.  They are highlighted by Jalen Tolbert, who Loeffler thinks is a first round draft pick.  He was all-Sun Belt last year and was pre-season All-Sun Belt from a number of publications.  USM held him to 5 catches and no scores.  Their local media says he is probably the best player in program history, which isn't that long, but still.

They are also well quarterbacked.  Jake Bently is a Utah transfer who was a highly recruited HS player.  He had a very efficient in the opener, going 17 of 22 for 269 yards, 2 TD/0 INT.  Actually those aren't incredible numbers for a team that won 31-7.  Truth be told, USM turned the ball over 4 times.  One of USA's TDs was a pick 6 and another game after USM fumbled inside their own 25.  So maybe a misleading offensive performance.

They didn't run the ball effectively at all.  Steele had their RBs ranked 9th in the SBC.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  The backs ran the ball 28 times for 38 yards.

Their line returns 69 starts, which is 78th in FBS.  In addition to the poor running they gave up 3 sacks on 25 pass attempts in the opener.  Phil Steele ranked them last in the SBC.

Miss Pawla and SouthPaw

Defense

They shut USM down pretty effectively.  USM had only 133 yards passing, plus 2 INT and 4 sacks...if you pull the sacks out USM did move the ball on the ground.  They had only 3.5 yards per play.

Phil Steele ranked their Dline #3 in the SBC, with LB #8 and DBs #6.  The Head Coach is a DC and played the "Swarm" defense when he was at USA previously.

Their top DB is Devin Rockette.  He had a head injury in the 2ndQ of the opener, but is back at practice this week.

Special teams

They were OK last year.  Their K was 13 of 17 last season with a long of 54 and 8-8 inside 40.  They were #6 in the Sun Belt in net punting last year.  Their return game was supposed to be improved but they had 0 opportunities in the opener.  They did a solid job defending returns from USM.

Eddie "The Brat" Stanky, won 71% of games as Jags coach

Overall Outlook

On the plus side, they don't run the ball especially well, which is good for BG.  They aren't as good as those 31 points would seem to indicate.  BG has a shot at keeping USA from a bunch of points.

On the negative side, they have a good defensive line, which has to be licking its chops to face the very young Falcon offensive line.

A path to BG winning is to keep the offense on the field and hopefully establish a running game, though that might be unlikely.  BG will also need to take care of the ball. 

On defense, if they can avoid the big plays and keep Tolbert in front of them, they have a shot to stay in the game and who knows from there?

The Waterman Globe, Mobile AL