Head coach : Philip Montgomery (21-29, fifth year)
2018 record and S&P+ ranking : 3-9 (107th)
Projected 2019 record and S&P+ ranking : 5-7 (95th)
Five key points :
1. Winning at Tulsa is pretty easy. Continuing to win has proven difficult for plenty of good coaches. 2. Montgomery is coaching for his job after five wins in two years, and keeping a QB healthy for once might help significantly. 3. Between Seth Boomer and Baylor transfer Zach Smith, it seems TU has some exciting QB options. Now to keep them upright. 4. Tulsa moved to a 3-3-5 defense with encouraging results last year, and it seems there are enough returning play-makers to continue that improvement. 5. The schedule is unforgiving. Tulsa is at least a 15-point underdog in five games, meaning it’ll have to nearly sweep the others to go bowling.
“I thought it was really good give and take on both sides of it. Our defense has been really, really good all spring. It was good to see offensively us come out and hit a couple of explosive plays,” said Montgomery. “We’ve got to be more consistent on both sides of it, but I did see us eliminate some of the mistakes we had last weekend. It was good to see those guys come out and compete like that. Coming out and being healthy, that was the No. 1 goal and I feel like we accomplished that today.”
_ _ The Tulsa defense forced punts on the first two drives of the spring game before Zach Smith connected with Keylon Stokes on a 60-yard touchdown pass that capped a 4-play, 70-yard drive.
Outlook: As Montgomery faces challenges on the field, off it the schools continues to deal with the fallout from an athletics department suffering through budgetary shortfalls. To his credit, Montgomery took a voluntary pay cut to help the school address the deficit.
Back on the gridiron, Tulsa returns a wealth of experience, but the biggest unknown facing this team is at quarterback. The program enters the 2019 season riding a 12-game road losing streak — the longest in the AAC — that dates to 2016.
Tulsa is joined by Arkansas, Duke, Georgia Tech, Louisiana -Lafayette, Minnesota, Notre Dame and Oregon as the eight teams with a tandem of running backs named to this year’s Doak Walker preseason list. There is a total of six running backs from the American Athletic Conference on the list.
Brooks, who stands 5-9, from Tulsa Union High School, rushed for a team-high 967 yards and seven touchdowns last year in 11 games
A two-year letterwinner and returning starter, Brooks has played in 20 career games and has 1,654 total rushing yards and 17 TDs. He has eight career 100+ rushing games, including four in each of his first two seasons. Brooks rushed for a season-best 151 yards on 17 carries vs. UConn, averaging 8.9 yards per carry, a year ago.
The 5-10 Taylor, from Tulsa’s Holland Hall High School, had 846 yards and 11 TDs on the ground in 11 contests last season.
A two-year letterwinner, Taylor has 1,029 career rushing yards and 16 touchdowns in 19 career games. He has five 100-yard rushing games and five multiple rushing TD games in his career. Last year, Taylor had career-highs of 152 yards and 33 carries in his lone career starting assignment at Houston. Tulsa players will report on to fall camp on July 31 with the first day of practice set for August 1.
“We’re looking to push the ball again,” he said Wednesday. “We’re looking to have the ability to spread it out sideline to sideline and vertically. That’s the plan going in. Now we’ve got to execute it and make those things happen.
“The only time you know you can do that consistently is doing it under the lights. We were showing some signs of that later in the year as we were on the practice field. Some of that started translating late in games, with some big throws in the SMU game that Seth made. He continued to grow.
“If you look at the spring game, there were some chances for some of those to happen and they did (Smith hit Keylon Stokes for a pair of 60-yard touchdowns).
“We’ve got to continue to keep pressing the envelope when it comes to that and getting back to who we really want to be and be fast and explosive in making those plays down the field.”
As nine starters and several key backups have returned, Montgomery justifiably expects his defense to be among the four best in the American Athletic Conference.
There are talented veterans at each of the three levels of the defense. Having evolved from a 205-pound recruit to a 260-pound force, Gipson totaled four sacks last season. He’ll get at least 10 this year.
“I think he’s fixing to have a great season,” Montgomery said. “We can’t block him.”
“With the offensive line that we have, those are great guys, so 100 yards apiece (for Taylor and fellow junior tailback [Shamari Brooks]), at least, and five (yards) per carry is pretty reasonable,” he said. (Corey Taylor - Tulsa RB)
Montgomery said Thursday he was “close” to naming a starting quarterback, but would not say who it would be. The battle in Tulsa’s fall camp has been between incumbent [Seth Boomer], who started the final eight games of the 2018 season, and junior Baylor transfer [Zach Smith], who started 10 games for Baylor in two seasons.