Time to put the Tulane game, and the season, in perspective

[JasonB]

Going into the season, I think everyone here assumed 3-1 non-conference. If that happened, you look at the next two games and say, hey, it would suck to be 0-2 in conference, but we have to play both games on the road, one against a good UTEP team, and another against a team who beat an SEC team on the road. At worst, we come out of it 3-3 and we have a lot of home games left.

Instead, the UNT loss essentially made either the Tulane or UTEP game a must win. If SMU doesn't split the road trip, they fall to 2-4, 0-2, and it is a long, probably impossible, road back to a bowl game.

The SMU win against Tulane basically negates the UNT loss. SMU is now going to come back home at worst 3-3, 1-1, with a lot of home games left. And I will take that position.

Some other things to note about the game:

- By all accounts, Willis was off. Missed some open receivers, short armed some passes, just a bit off. ONe thing, however: How many times over the last 5 years has an SMU QB completed over 50% of his passes, and accounted for over 300 yards of offense? Romo against UAB last year... and going back through 2003 I can't find another incident. Point is, the guy struggled a little and was still better than any QB SMU has had for the last 5 years in his first conference road game. Wow.

- We are missing 3 of our top 5 RBs. In fact, we are missing our only bruising, up the middle backs, Fitz and Martin. To win a game against a team that suseptable to a power running game without being able to bring one to the table, that is impressive.

- Our secondary is struggling right now, but at least we have the atheletes now. The guy we really, really miss on the field right now is Harper, because I don't think Goode is doing much in pass coverage.

- The difference between this SMU team and teams in the past is that even if our secondary struggles, our offense can generate over 30 points on a night where we have no running game, our young QB is off his game and making young mistakes, our best RBs are out, and our stud kicker is having a bad game.

In summary, it was an ugly win, but an extremely important win. It makes up for the North Texas game and shows how far the program has come. Go out, play hard against UTEP (we are definately underdogs on the road, but their defense and our offense make it "winnable"), and then lets come home and make a run of it.

Marshall is a bad passing team, and bad on defense. ECU is tough, but struggle on defense so it is 50/50. UAB struggleson offense, we can win that game. Houston is tough offensively, but are bad on defense and don't pressure the QB at all, so Willis will be able to run around and do his thing. Tulsa is another team with a good offense, but a bad defense. Rice is just not that good on offense or defense. All of these teams we can stuff on the ground, which gives us a huge advantage because we have more balance on offense than they do. We should win UAB, Marshall, and yes, Rice. That would give us 6 wins, meaning we only need to beat 1 out of UTEP, ECU, Houston, Tulsa for a winning season, and possibly a bowl - all games that we have a shot at winning even though we have a bad pass defense, we can shut down their struggling running games, we have a good offense, and they play just as bad or worse pass defense than we do, with a much less effective defensive line.