What Should We Expect From Wofford Football This Year?

Hey folks, I realized in the last couple of days I hadn’t posted anything about Football season (We kick off the season today!). That’s because it’s been a weird offseason for reasons so obvious I don’t need to elaborate on. So I’m just going to give a few random thoughts, and all of them sound like Cliches:

We’re Probably Underrated

So, for some weird reason Wofford has had it’s lowest preseason SoCon ranking by the media and coaches in quite literally 20 years. I don’t understand it. To be clear, these predictions are themselves pretty meaningless, but I have no idea where they’re coming from.

Granted, Wofford struggled in the Spring, with most of our problems deriving from inconsistency and being depleted on the defensive line. We led all the games we played, but the ones we lost were a collapse due to inconsistent offensive play or because we could not get adequate pressure on the Quarterback or stop the run (you know, the things a healthy defensive line is usually good at stopping).

If you’re someone who does not actually watch FCS football (like your typical STATS voter) and sees that Wofford was 1-4 in the Spring, your first reaction would be “oh no, they aren’t good.” But I would argue that the spring season in a pandemic year is probably the worst season to draw a strong judgment on future outcomes. Everyone was bad and inconsistent, except for maybe the FCS quarterfinalists (but even they had their embarrassing moments).

Meanwhile, we forget that Wofford has pretty much run the conference for the last three non-Spring seasons and many of the flaws of the spring aren’t going to be replicated in the fall (more on that in a moment). Granted, Wofford has a new offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator hasn’t had the position for more than 7 months or so, but it still has many of the players and coaches of a SoCon championship squad.

Many SoCon teams can’t say that. I honestly think the media and coaches ranking a team like Mercer or even VMI (who lost a lot on defense from the Spring and was this close to falling below .500) ahead of Wofford is indicative of laziness and wishful thinking more than it is insightful analysis.

I’m not saying these teams won’t be successful or can’t/won’t beat Wofford. I’m just saying the counter-evidence to Wofford being a bottom-three team in the SoCon is probably much higher than the evidence that suggests these other teams are middle-or-top tier (VMI, I will give the benefit of the doubt, given they actually won the conference last year).

The Coaching Staff And Roster Looks Good

A Wade Lang Digression

Our weakness on offense in the Spring was that it was the first year we were 100% not running the option outside of a few design plays. Wade Lang, who retired this offseason, was probably not the best person to preside over the new offense.

To be clear, I’m not saying Wade Lang is a bad coach. Quite the opposite -he’s a great coach. I’m just saying, for the same reasons you wouldn’t want Mike Leach coaching a run-heavy triple option offense, or even a middle-of-the-road balanced offense, you wouldn’t want Lang coaching an offense that passes a decent amount as a QB coach and offensive coordinator.

Football is a game of philosophy. There’s no such thing as a game where your team wins every snap. To move the ball down field, you have to accept certain risks and costs to create certain outcomes (or improve their likelihood of happening). The air raid, the option, and a traditional offense each have different costs, benefits, and risks, and the coaches that run or prefer those offenses each have their own biases. Wade Lang, again, is a great coach, but his biases and expertise were centered on a triple option offensive, and having someone with different expertise is likely what Wofford needed.

I’m actually glad Lang is not the offensive coordinator now and that he went out on his terms (or I hope the press clippings are true at least?). Because I think if he stuck around longer, we would continue to have these problems, and it would be awkward for people to criticize because, again, Wade Lang is a great coach who has coached Wofford to great heights. No one wanted to trash that and I really do think the mismatched fit would have made for some bad outcomes and awkward conversations ongoing.

The Romero-Carlton Era

I’m excited to see how no co-offensive coordinator and QB coach Tyler Carlton, who replaced Lang, coaches the quarterbacks.  Ever since Conklin came in and we committed to be a “normal” offense, I thought we needed a pass game coordinator, because under Lang (for reasons I’ve already described), we looked lost at times, even if we looked great at other times.

Carlton is a good change of pace because he comes from a completely different background. He’s part of Chad Morris’s coaching tree and coached at Western Carolina for a few seasons, and as far as I can tell, he did a good job.

With Dane Romero still as co-OC, from the outside it looks like the two will share responsibilities, with Carlton is valued for his passing and quarterback insights and Romero for the running game insights.  If we can maintain the strength of our running game from previous seasons, and build on our passing game, we’ll be okay.

What The Offense Brings Back

Wofford brings back five senior offensive linemen this year. We lost a few good receivers, so to be successful this year, whatever production we lost from them, we will have to gain from improved QB play. I’m optimistic we can do this because our offense, for all of it inconsistencies and quirkiness in the Spring was actually pretty okay from a statistical standpoint. The real problem was the defense.

The Defense Looks Experienced And Finally Healthy

The biggest problem for Wofford football last spring was that our defensive line was depleted. It was the reason we had to cancel many games. And you could tell that it was a weakness because in many games we just couldn’t get off the field on defense (I’m thinking primarily of Chattanooga and VMI). We had to bring in a linebacker to play a hybrid DE/LB position. It didn’t work out too well.

But this year, we did the right thing and (finally) brought in some junior college players (we should have been doing this for years). These players seem to be making an immediate impact (in one of the first press releases for the preseason, Conklin mentioned how impressed he was with the the DL in the first scrimmage…that signals something good!). If you look at the depth chart, the DL looks deep, and that’s what you want.

As for the linebacking corp, it’s an experienced bunch with lots of seniors and familiar faces. Traditionally, in our 3-4 defense, we rely on strong LB play, and that’s going to continue. And the secondary may have struggled last year, but they also bring lots of good players and a transfer that I think will provide a spark. It’ll help that the defensive line will probably be able to get consistent pressure too.

In all of this, one other thing to remember is that Coach Conklin is a defensive minded coach, and the Terriers have not had a fully healthy defensive line since 2018…his first year. At the time, most of our secondary could probably count on one hand how many times they were asked to play man coverage in a game situation as a Terrier (that may be a slight exaggeration, but only slight-for some reason we hated running man coverage). So, I think there’s a lot of potential on the defensive side of the ball, even if the offense has a few glitches.

I think this is the true year one of the defense that Conklin wants to run. Hopefully it’ll be his best.

There’s So Much Uncertainty And Potential

As I write this post, I’m a little more confident about where Wofford is as a team. But it’s also important to remember this is what every fan is thinking right now. Most people are thinking their team will build on the success of the spring or they conveniently forget the awfulness of the spring (you could argue I’m doing that). There’s been graduations, transfers, recruits, and easily less continuity from the last full season, and given how awful the last 18 months have been off the field , we’re all being irrationally positive.

So, even when I write down all the reasons I think we’ll improve, I’m not particularly confident just because of all these changes, some of which may not work out.

But I still think Wofford is in a unique position psychologically. There are two teams on our schedule that we have either never beaten or haven’t beaten in a very long time (Kennesaw State and Samford). But  we have beaten everyone else rather convincingly and consistently over the last few years. As a long time fan, my mindset has always been kind of anxious going into many games because there were always 1-2 teams that it felt near impossible to beat some years (Georgia Southern and App State). It was like Wofford was always fighting for our status.

But now I don’t really feel that way. I’m not cocky or arrogant that we will win every game, but I know that because we can win every game, there’s no reason to look ahead. And even if we lost a game, given history, that’s fine too. We can move on to the next one and just get better. No need to fret about a failure. We know it doesn’t require a Herculean effort to win any of the FCS games on our schedule. We just need to play well and avoid mistakes.

The rest of the conference may wishcast that we are not the big dog any more. That may be true. But if you’re a Wofford fan or player, you have lots of reason to think it’s not. And I have to reiterate: I’m pretty sure the last time we were picked this low in the preseason, it was something like 2002. That year, we would have easily made the playoffs if the bracket was 24 teams like it is today. Arguably, we should have made the playoffs that year, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I think this asymmetry between how other people perceive us and how we perceive ourselves helps us psychologically. We have a confidence that many other teams probably don’t have. And it’s not cockiness – we’ve just “been there before” more than any other team in the conference, Spring or no Spring.

So…Elon?

So, I honestly don’t know much about Elon. I’m looking at their stats from last year and the year before and there’s not much to take away from them. I think their QB, Davis Cheek, sat out in the spring, and that explains a lot of their struggles.

Unless something crazy has happened (and there doesn’t seem to be evidence that this is the case), Elon likes to run the ball to set up an efficient passing game. Cheek is the efficient passer. If you’re an Elon fan, you’d probably be concerned from the Spring that they couldn’t run the ball as effectively.

But as I’ve already said, given the weirdness of the spring, I don’t think you can count on that being the same in the fall. With Cheek back, Wofford’s defense is going to have to anticipate a better passing game and adjust accordingly. That may open the run.

It’s worth remembering that Furman played Elon in the first week of 2018 (or so) and absolutely pulverized them. Now, Wofford came back around and beat Elon in the playoffs that year too (Wofford controlled the game and got into scoring territory a few times, but couldn’t get into the endzone on multiple occasions – to the Phoenix’s credit), but it’s also worth mentioning that Cheek didn’t play in that game.

I don’t like making predictions, because football is a pretty chaotic sport, especially with out of conference competition, so this is more me elaborating on my (likely common) expectations. So here’s my general thoughts, given the inconsistent data we get from the spring:

My intuition is that Elon isn’t as good as they were in 2017-2018, when Curt Cignetti was the coach (he’s now the coach at James Madison and doing  a good job) and that Wofford has more potential than they did when the two met in 2018 (because we’re going to pass the ball better).

Cignetti’s short tenure seems to be the most successful run since Pete Limbo was the coach when Elon played in the SoCon. Elon’s had about seven or so winning seasons since they went Division I around the turn of the century, and only two in the past decade (both under Cignetti).

Now, whoever won game x y or z in 2014 is pretty meaningless in terms of what’s going to happen (history implied Wofford should beat SC State in 2019, for instance).  But if Wofford is a playoff team, given this history, we more than likely win this game. If we lose this game, it very likely hurts our playoff chances.

Obviously, I could be wrong about this – and I hope Elon is a playoff caliber team and that we beat them. But I’m not convinced they are, and if Wofford can’t beat them, we’re probably not either.