I realize that there's a limited relevance of the two games in question, but it was still interesting to me to see how the teams in those two games stacked up. I do think that there was some significance to what can be learned from the USF Game.
I was a bit surprised when it didn't look to me like ECU had improved all that much since last year. Granted, JMU is the defending FCS champion, and their coach has publicly said that the championship last year was "ahead of schedule" (by which I assume he thinks that his team is even better this year). So it wasn't altogether surprising to see ECU lose this game even though it was a home game for them. Nonetheless, I was surprised that they were thoroughly dominated the way they were, particularly in the second half.
It was a much bigger surprise how close USF's Game with Stony Brook turned out to be. If you didn't watch that game, but only saw the final score, you might not get that. In fact, Stony Brook was playing even with USF until late in the fourth quarter, when their punt returner inexplicably called for a fair catch on his own 2 yard line instead of letting the ball go into the end zone. This put Stony Brook into a deep hole while 7 points down. With Stony Brook playing out of their own end zone, the USF defense pinned its ears back and forced a quick interception, getting the ball back on the short field, and quickly scoring to stretch out their lead.
Quinton Flowers played his usual game, but his receivers seemed rather uninspired for long stretches of play (drops and sloppy route running), and the USF running game didn't really get productive until midway through the fourth quarter. Yes, Stony Brook had a highly-ranked FCS defense last year (though with an average-at-best offense), but all the predictions I saw for this year did not consider them to be a factor for the CAA title, let alone the FCS playoffs. That a ranked FBS team would allow them to stay in the game for as long as they did was quite amazing, and should raise a lot of eyebrows about USF, in my opinion.
I was a bit surprised when it didn't look to me like ECU had improved all that much since last year. Granted, JMU is the defending FCS champion, and their coach has publicly said that the championship last year was "ahead of schedule" (by which I assume he thinks that his team is even better this year). So it wasn't altogether surprising to see ECU lose this game even though it was a home game for them. Nonetheless, I was surprised that they were thoroughly dominated the way they were, particularly in the second half.
It was a much bigger surprise how close USF's Game with Stony Brook turned out to be. If you didn't watch that game, but only saw the final score, you might not get that. In fact, Stony Brook was playing even with USF until late in the fourth quarter, when their punt returner inexplicably called for a fair catch on his own 2 yard line instead of letting the ball go into the end zone. This put Stony Brook into a deep hole while 7 points down. With Stony Brook playing out of their own end zone, the USF defense pinned its ears back and forced a quick interception, getting the ball back on the short field, and quickly scoring to stretch out their lead.
Quinton Flowers played his usual game, but his receivers seemed rather uninspired for long stretches of play (drops and sloppy route running), and the USF running game didn't really get productive until midway through the fourth quarter. Yes, Stony Brook had a highly-ranked FCS defense last year (though with an average-at-best offense), but all the predictions I saw for this year did not consider them to be a factor for the CAA title, let alone the FCS playoffs. That a ranked FBS team would allow them to stay in the game for as long as they did was quite amazing, and should raise a lot of eyebrows about USF, in my opinion.
