From AGS SoCon thread
“…
Since folks in the CAA thread are picking Richmond without much commentary, I will give the bull case for Wofford and the bear case against Richmond, starting with the latter.
First of all, Richmond wasn’t an obvious playoff team for me last year. Maybe this is a hindsight is 20-20 thing, but hear me out. They finished the regular season 8-3, but played no team in the regular season that ended up winning more than 6 games. 4 of the teams they played combined for a record of 4-39 (all wins). They lost to 2 teams who finished the season below .500. They didn’t play, let alone beat, any of the top CAA teams during the regular season, and when they did, they were routed by Albany.
If you take an average team and gave them this schedule (beat 4 bad teams, and 6 teams sitting at 5-6 or 6-5), that average team would finish no worse than 7-3 on average 50% of the time (beating the 4 bad teams and splitting the average teams), so richmond finishing 8-2 isn’t indicative of being super good.
They didn’t even break the top 25 in STATS until playoff time, which tells me had they lost to either of elon or w&m they probably wouldn’t have made the playoffs. And before someone says “and W&M/elon would have taken their place”….no. Just no. Elon would have been on the bubble and maybe gotten in on SOS OOC quality losses, but if william and mary converted their 2 point conversion on rivalry weekend, both would have sat home.
And then when I look at the stats from last season or the UVA game (with lots of salt, though UVA isn’t a powerhouse) there’s nothing on either side of the ball that screams dominance. Their QBs are a step down from Reece Udinski, and though a Russ Huesman team will feature a running QB prominently, this team doesn’t appear to light up the rush stats like those Chattanooga teams a decade ago. Huesman is a defensive guy at heart and i see the spiders running a lot of 4 man fronts this year (noticing a lot more of this at the fcs level recently with GW and Samford this weekend too), and I guess you could say overall the defense isn’t bad. But the last 4-6 games the Spiders haven’t been all that good on defense statistically, especially compared to the 4ish games where they played those awful 1-10 teams.
Obviously, all of this is caveated with the fact that it’s a brand new year and last year isn’t this year. But I feel confident in saying, regardless of the outcome this week, I’m not confident Richmond is a top 15 team.
The bull case for Wofford is pretty simple. We’re just better Our defense was pretty stellar last year, and will have less of a learning curve in year 2 of the system. We brought back most of our 2 deeps and got better in the portal. Against GW, we looked pretty good against the run, and only gave up 20 when we spotted the running bulldogs field position at the 40 or better for 3 of their scores (13 points).
And, to be frank, I don’t like taking high stakes bets personally (anything greater than $50 for me), but I would bet a lot of money that our offense this year will be much better this year as long as Odom is running the show and staying healthy. Last year our offense was pathetic, and we could really only score points if we got lucky or the other team got unlucky. On Thursday, it was the inverse, as we left anywhere from 13 to 17 points on the field by making mistakes like penalties and dropped passes (which will happen in August). That stuff is going to get cleaned up.
In the last month of the season last year, Wofford struggled, but without much of an offense, the last 4 games we beat Furman, won another game, pushed a top 20 Western team, and though i won’t pretend the mercer game was super competitive, we only lost by 2 TDs (and non-offensive touchdowns were the difference). Odom only played against Furman.
All of that said, believing in Wofford after the last 4 years is a gamble. There’s no conclusive reason to think we can win 2 straight. The safe pick is Richmond, for sure. But if you really think this will be a blowout, I don’t think you’ve paid enough attention to either team...”
