Southern Miss Golden Eagles:
A big season begins for Southern Miss head coach Will Hall with a new starting QB and a new starting RB. The Golden Eagles are just 13-24 on Hall’s watch with two 3-9 seasons and one 7-6 year that ended with a LendingTree Bowl victory. Expectations aren’t terribly high in Hattiesburg, but they are obviously higher than going 3-9, so it’ll be interesting to see if Hall’s seat starts to warm as the season goes along.
Hall has surrendered OC duties to Chip Long, who is at his fifth school as the OC, even though he is only 41 years old. Clay Bignell is the new DC after the Golden Eagles ranked among the worst units in the nation. The athletic department has committed some money to the program in hopes of turning it around, so now it is up to Hall and his new staff to get it done.
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Offense
Some of that money went to Tate Rodemaker, the Florida State transfer who took over when Jordan Travis went down before he suffered his own injury. He’s played sparingly over four years of college football, but was good enough to get recruited to FSU, so we’ll see if it’s him or Ethan Crawford at the helm. Crawford was 17-of-36 last season for 240 yards and a 3/0 TD/INT ratio. The QB play was quite bad here last season and has been for a while, so the bar is low.
Frank Gore Jr. is out, but Rodrigues “Dreke” Clark had 5.6 yards per carry on his 76 tries. It was just that Gore was a true workhorse back with 231 carries. We never fully saw Dreke’s potential, but we might now. The WR room is in shambles, though, and the offensive line has to make some changes. This was a group that was 113th in yards per play last season and I’m not expecting a big leap.
Defense
And if there’s no big leap on offense, the defense is under the microscope again. Southern Miss was 131st in yards per play allowed, finishing better than only UMass and Nevada. The scoring defense rank was almost as bad as 128th, allowing nearly 36 points per game. The crazy thing is that the Golden Eagles were 58th in third-down defense, so their complete lack of early-down success was evident. They only faced 145 third downs, the third-fewest in the nation.
They also ranked 119th in red-zone TD% against, allowing 33 TDs in 47 trips. So, those are the tasks at hand for Bignell, whose defense will be littered with transfers, especially in the back seven. This was also a defense that should have benefitted from an offense that finished sixth in time of possession, but it did not.
Outlook
The Golden Eagles are only favored twice by my numbers, including only one of their 11 games against FBS opponents. Maybe the coordinator changes will spark something and Hall was a rapid riser in the coaching ranks, but it continues to be a question of talent. Most importantly, the QB position. The Under vig looks right to me with a projection of 3.82 wins.
Pick: Under 4.5 Wins
