Ljacks&Longnecks said:
Will be watching replay tomorrow as missed it live flying home. Want to see the dropped passes and defense lapses mentioned in thread.
By far, best SFA season in mucho years.
As I explained to my wife--Montana, Montana St, North Dakota St, South Dakota St are perineal powerhouses in FCS--playoffs yearly etc.
SFA still has a good distance to go in that regard.
This season and results were great, now can SFA continue to produce a great football product season to season. Thats the next test.
As for comments about the defense lack of performance in the playoffs, I would offer that ACU and Montana St were easily the 2 best teams we played this season. I would say that their coaching staffs did a great job of studying film and finding the holes or weaker spots in our defense. We hear several comments on here about great coaching that others have, so take these as 2 examples.
One can take nothing away from what our defense did all regular season regardless. Having our DC here for a full second season helped SFA grow tremendously on defense. However, will we get to keep him another season before bigger schools come calling.
Next season will be a big test. In conference we will have the target on back as defending champs.
The work of this season was excellent but the work of maintaining a champs status is just beginning.
Now for some solid recruiting and to continue to actually build us into our own perineal status as conference and playoff contenders year in and year out.
On the note of ACU and MSU being the best teams we faced all year, they absolutely were, but I think another part of it is just playoff football is different man. You're gonna get everyone's best shot because if you lose, there is no tomorrow. ACU and MSU both also had some do the best offenses in the entire FCS, so they were just plain gonna be tougher to slow down. I still would put our defense against anyone in the country, too many mistakes just put us in bad spots unfortunately. Missing 2 starting DBs including the best defensive back in the FCS hurts as well.
Mike Mutz is on the top of the hiring list for Georgia Southern and Texas State. I feel like this was his last game as the Lumberjack DC. But I do feel like the way the defenses have been playing SFA has become a very attractive landing spot for both coaches and players.
We should kill it in the transfer portal once it opens after the success this year. I expect us to get some big names to compliment the young guys we have coming back and reload our roster.
We will be back next year. We will just be back with experience in this situation.