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with reggie carrington being our second best player and best pro prospect on defense. not saying much but...wish he was comin back

jkflamebo wrote:with reggie carrington being our second best player and best pro prospect on defense. not saying much but...wish he was comin back

I'm glad Justin Willis is coming back.

This is one of the best, most accurate and even handed preseason reports (actually 4 articles-make sure and read them all) on SMU I have ever read by a national magazine. Who wrote this? I agree with what he said. Actually a very nice scouting report on SMU's strengths and weaknesses. For example, rightly praising the outstanding redshirt freshman year of Justin Willis but hitting the nail on the fact that SMU needs to improve its vertical passing game with more elusiveness in the WR corp which must improve the per completion average of 11.48 yards per completion which was 10th in CUSA. Another good point was the analysis of the cornerbacks who were riddled last year but who now have to improve despite the loss of the two best pass rushers on the team. SMU's corners should improve-although they struggled last year they are talented, have experience and couple were very highly recruited-however they have their work cut out for them especially if SMU can't put pressure on the QB.

So i picked up the Phil Steele guide, and he said we're #4 in the West AND, Memphis will pull a UCF from '05, meaning they'll go from worst to first overnight. Wtf? Memphis? We'll show they when we beat the [deleted] out of them.

didn't Memphis lose something like 6 games by 17 points. When things suddenly spiral down the record is often an anomyly as to the true talent on the team. TCU's 1995 team was another good example of a team that suddenly underachieved in going 1-10 (beating SMU in the last game) but rebounding to a bowl the next year. In this league there are 9 mediocre teams you could throw in a hat and come closer to predicting the final standings than on paper. I'm no expert on Memphis but I'd be surprised if their talent level is really as low as they showed last year considering they won 7, 8 and 9 games including 3 bowl games and 2 bowl victories in the 3 prior years. Perusing Rivals rankings' over the last 5 years Rivals would probably give Memphis' talent level a slight edge over SMU. I'd expect a tough game at Memphis.

Stallion wrote:This is one of the best, most accurate and even handed preseason reports (actually 4 articles-make sure and read them all) on SMU I have ever read by a national magazine. Who wrote this? I agree with what he said. Actually a very nice scouting report on SMU's strengths and weaknesses. For example, rightly praising the outstanding redshirt freshman year of Justin Willis but hitting the nail on the fact that SMU needs to improve its vertical passing game with more elusiveness in the WR corp which must improve the per completion average of 11.48 yards per completion which was 10th in CUSA. Another good point was the analysis of the cornerbacks who were riddled last year but who now have to improve despite the loss of the two best pass rushers on the team. SMU's corners should improve-although they struggled last year they are talented, have experience and couple were very highly recruited-however they have their work cut out for them especially if SMU can't put pressure on the QB.

they are now apart of the Scout network and get input from every scout page supporting their local team. DCTF, Athlon's, Lindy's, etc., get their info from newspaper hacks or each other. CFN.com is easily the best source of college football info.

Phil Steele does a good job of getting and analyzing data.

The Houston and Tulsa previews are up today.

-CoS

The link for the Houston offensive preview was busted, but this one works.

http://cfn.scout.com/2/653058.html

So far they have previews for Houston, Tulsa and Rice as well as SMU. I'm hoping they'll wrap up the west soon.

-CoS

Stallion wrote:.... I'm no expert on Memphis but I'd be surprised if their talent level is really as low as they showed last year considering they won 7, 8 and 9 games including 3 bowl games and 2 bowl victories in the 3 prior years....

I would tend to agree with you -- I can't believe Memphis was as untalented last season as the record would indicate. But on the other hand, those win totals might have been better than their overall talent should have provided, considering their game plan was to give the ball to Superman (a.k.a. DeAngelo Williams) and let him run wild.
Talent level probably falls somewhere in between.