If you're wanting (as do I) to see more long balls

Huge testament of our offensive line! He’s had time to scan both sides of the field.

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^^^^This. Tech gave up 494 yards to Arizona State; 326 passing and 168 rushing. Not a ton of rushing yards but 3.8 yards a rush isn’t very good either.

People who are making that proclamation could be just looking at numbers. Tech will be tougher on defense due to overall talent, but they are not coached very well on that side of the ball. They haven’t been “coached up” for some time.

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Take that back, David Gibbs is a god around here. But I get it, nobody cares about D at Tech.
Hey is that guy from Last Chance U playing, Dakota Allen?

Actually I’m not kidding at all. TT has played Eastern Washington and Arizona State. EWU is an FCS school, but the Tech game is their only game this year so we don’t have a comparison. Even so, EWU was able to throw for 220 against TT. But let’s look at ASU.

To ASU, Tech gave up 45 points and 494 total yards (326 of which were through the air, since we’re looking at pass rush abilities).

ASU’s other two games:

New Mexico State (who has 10 total wins in the last 4 years coming into this year) - Allowed ASU 37 points, 400 total yards of which 321 was through the air.

San Diego State (a legitimately good team) - Allowed ASU 20 points, 342 total yards of which 298 was through the air.

So as far as passing defense (which would include pass rush to a certain extent), TT performed worse against ASU than New Mexico State and SDSU. Let me repeat, TT was worse defensively against ASU than New Mexico State!

Is Tech more physically talented on defense than Rice? I haven’t researched it, but probably so. Does that make them automatically better than Rice on defense? Absolutely not. If talent automatically makes you better, then let’s just create a formula around star rankings to decide games. Our Peach Bowl win against Florida State is pretty solid evidence talent is less important than coaching and heart.

TT is objectively terrible on defense and I honestly don’t think they’ll put up much more resistance against us than Rice did. There simply isn’t any objective evidence so far this year to suggest otherwise.

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After seeing that Florida/Tennessee finish, God would it be nice to have Tyrie Cleveland on this team. He’s exactly the kind of WR we could use for deep threat and in the return game.

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It seems as though you subscribe to the transitive property for college football predictions. I hope your prediction is correct, but your reasoning is faulty.

Every single game between different opponents plays out in different ways. Sure, you can look at trends and patterns, and doing so would leave anyone to believe that Tech is a bad defensive team until they prove otherwise.

But pulling a game or two from the beginning of the season that doesn’t even include a common opponent is just silly to base anything more than speculation on. The results from 2016 and 2017 show that Tech was better against ASU this season than they were last season. ASU may not end up being a very good team, but that’s at least something to consider.

If UH scores 38 by halftime on Saturday, I’ll gladly meet you at the concourse and buy you the drink of your choosing. I just don’t see that happening unless they implode on offense which I suppose is possible.

That’s fair, but if it’s too early to compare Rice to Tech, then that goes both ways. My point was not that Rice’s defense is better than Tech’s, but that there’s no objective evidence (yet) that says Tech’s defense is any better than Rice’s, except for the assumption that Tech has better talent.

I don’t think we’ll have 38 points at the half against Tech, but that has nothing to do with Tech’s defensive prowess. It’s only because Tech’s offense is a billion times better than Rice’s. There’s plenty of objective evidence for that. For that reason alone, we’ll have fewer chances to score, and therefore, it’s extremely unlikely we’ll score as much in the first half as we did against Rice unless Tech commits a ton of turnovers that we convert into TDs.

But, if we do have 38 at the half, I’ll shoot you a DM and take you up on that drink. However, you’ll probably never get it because cell and wifi coverage sucks in the stadium.

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Very good logic.
My concern on the bubble screen is the 0-gain or lost yardage.
Then if you have a penalty (like we did versus AZ), the O is waaaaay behind the chains. And 2nd and 15 or 2nd and 18 is a bad position in which to be. It usually leads to punting.

Rice was very short on athleticism. AZ was not. We did not get those easy short middle passes that went for 10-15 yards after catch.

We are 2-0 so nor a lot of complaints. But we need to use the WR deep more often. They are big, adjust well, and have good hands. I would take Dunbar or Bonner in man coverage against 90% of the DBs.

The long ball is nice on occasion; but a steady, sustained drive repeated over and over keeps our defense fresh and wears down the opposition. Remember the game against Oregon in Reliant Stadium some years back under Briles? We started out gang busters and scored quickly. Then Oregon would have long drives whether they scored or not. We were up big early; but our defense only had a couple of plays off and back in they went. Our D wore down and Oregon ended up passing us by and beat us 38-24.

I love to have the ball going steadily down the field on 10 to 15 play scoring drives. It keeps the other offense off rhythm and their defense gassed. Perfect key to victory.

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His aunt ended up being right about Herman.

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I thought her issue was she thought he was too good for Houston. Didn’t know it had anything to do with Herman.

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She wanted better academically for him, but she also said that Herman would be gone and she didn’t want Tyrie to be left behind. Didn’t trust Herman at all.

UH academic rating is the same as Tennessee so he is not getting better academics but he is in SEC.

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I agree. Those were her words, not mine.

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He’s at Florida. Florida has an excellent academic rating (#42 US News) and a pretty good defense. Their offense is god awful though, which does nothing for a stud WR.

There is also this. I’m not sure if he would have been a problem here or not, but our culture has been pretty clean, certainly compared to Florida’s.

http://247sports.com/Bolt/Two-Florida-players-arrested-charged-with-criminal-mischief-46293282

Yep, saw that last year. That was also something the aunt had mentioned about not going to Houston; she was afraid he’d get in trouble here. Of course, she wasn’t happy he went to Florida either; believed she wanted him at Arkansas.

Cleveland would have been a star anywhere; too bad some don’t understand that. Ed Oliver did.

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