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Lets face the fact guys. The navy game was lost because of our head coaches pride in his offensive philosphy. McNeal was picking up 8 yards a pop and we stopped running the ball. On a couple of occassions he got 7 or 8 yards on 1st down and Coach Jones would pass the next 2 plays.

Once McNeal gets going he is hard to stop. He is a Rythmn player..he gets better as the game goes on. Same happened on the 2nd drive at Houston he got 8 on 1st and we passed on 2nd and 3rd.

Against Navy in overtime McNeal got a carry on the first play and tripped up losing a yard. SMU had to pass on the next two plays with 11 yards to go. unfortently both passes were incomplete leading to the loss. But I felt like June Jones made a effort to run the ball in the Navy game.

Houston is literally one of the very few worst teams in NCAA in Rushing Defense. TCU, ECU and Navy are not. That's why McNeal looks better in certain games and struggling against better competition.

justice2009 wrote:Lets face the fact guys. The navy game was lost because of our head coaches pride in his offensive philosphy. McNeal was picking up 8 yards a pop and we stopped running the ball. On a couple of occassions he got 7 or 8 yards on 1st down and Coach Jones would pass the next 2 plays.

Once McNeal gets going he is hard to stop. He is a Rythmn player..he gets better as the game goes on. Same happened on the 2nd drive at Houston he got 8 on 1st and we passed on 2nd and 3rd.

Your comment would be better used when referring to the Washington St game. We played very well against Navy and that was definitely a hard loss.

Will he break 1000 this year? I say yes.

Stallion wrote:Houston is literally one of the very few worst teams in NCAA in Rushing Defense. TCU, ECU and Navy are not. That's why McNeal looks better in certain games and struggling against better competition.

Frankly I think he's held up pretty well against everybody this season, with the notable exception of TCU. But then, nobody held up well in that game on offense.

Yeah, he'll break 1,000 — a great talent.
He already has outrushed the 2008 team, isn't it?

I wonder if justice2009 is related to justice2010.

McNeal is the Most Valuable player on the team this year in my opinion.

McNeal = under utilized
Screens, draws, shuttle passes, direct snaps.
Put the ball in his hands as many x's a possible.

McNeal and UH's Charles Sims basically matched each other. McNeal averaged 6.3 ypc with 15 carries while Sims had 7.0 ypc with 15 carries. Both had three receptions.

Here's a wild stat: SMU had 34 carries and just 30 passes. The Ponies obviously watched the UTEP, MSU and other games where the UH run defense was exploited. If not for the drops and some untimely penalties/turnovers, this would have been a very tight game.

UH fans also got on to #1 Dugat for a drop behind the SMU defense as well.

Beat Tulsa!!

now here's the other side of the story-hard to believe-but each and every leading rusher for a UH opponent this year has averaged OVER 6 yards per carry this year against the Cougars-several averaged well over 6 yards per carry-McNeal's performance was nothing unusal for a UH opponent. In short, the UH rushing defense SUCKS.

I love McNeal-without him any significant improvement in this team would be negligible. But it should be remembered that in this offense with the very mediocre offensive line SMU has you can't expect SMU to connsistently run the ball out of this offense successfully against a quality defense. That's why we are No. 106th in the country in rushing. Where were all the points Saturday Nite if the running game is now our bread and butter.

Luckily there aren't many quality defenses left on our schedule. Tulsa ain't bad. McNeal probably will get a 1,000 yards. But I don't think its a great idea to over use him because in the long run this ain't a running offense. I think in this offense you get declining results with over use of the RB.

Get him the ball for 15-17 rushes and hopefully get him the ball 3-4 or more times in passes out of the backfield. Do what Tech does-get him the ball in space by throwing to your RBs 60-80-100 times a season. SMU has gotten the ball to RBS 25 times this year(McNeal 18), Texas Tech has gotten the ball to RBs 63 times. Houston has gotten the ball to RBs 62 times. Tech has consistently used the RBs out of the backfield as a significant component of its passing game each and every year of the Leach era. It keeps the ball moving forward, forces teams to cover the entire field, opens up routes to other receivers since somebody has to account for RB, reduces turnovers and sacks and takes pressure off the QB.

At least we are not 119 in the country in rushing like we were last year! Didn't we average 51 yards a game or something awful like that last year?

SMU21TCU10 wrote:At least we are not 119 in the country in rushing like we were last year! Didn't we average 51 yards a game or something awful like that last year?

41.4 yards

If Bo Levi misses any major time, I'd like to see McNeal run some version of a Wildcat look ... just to give defenses something else to worry about.