(10-06-2013 12:01 PM)Yosef84 Wrote:  

(10-05-2013 10:09 PM)Louisianafanrcajun90 Wrote:  

(10-05-2013 05:52 PM)GaSoEagle Wrote:  App. loses again, falling to Citadel 31-28 in OT and Ga. Southern plays terrible in the 2nd half and loses to Samford 44-34.


Not very happy today as a Eagle fan but there is always tomorrow.

Hard to say if this has anything to do with it or not but this season with no postseason to play for certainly has not brought out the best in either of our teams.

I had wondered what happened to all the Appy fans that descended upon this board like a plague of locusts this summer. Then I checked out the win loss record.

I'm sure we are still here. I'm just not posting a lot the past couple of weeks because my mother taught me that "if you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all."

Seriously, this year has most of us stunned. As an unapologetic homer, I was expecting a much smoother coaching transition than we have had. App has plenty of athletes at the "skill" positions, but our big men are getting shoved around. Most are blaming recruiting, but honestly I think the S&C program is the biggest issue. We've recruited some big boys with great frames and it just doesn't seem that we have put the muscle on them and maximized their strength. That is compounded with youth (on D) and a pre-season all American QB who obviously wasn't ready to carry the load.

Bottom line is that we still show flashes of excellence, but it is punctuated with mental errors, penalties and general failure to execute. I have trouble understanding the motivation issue. Please don't try to explain it...I KNOW what everyone writes. I see what I see. I just don't get how a team can be emotionally flat. I will continue expecting the turnaround to start immediately. As a fan, that's my job. Soooo....GO Apps!!!

Yosef84 - I'd say this is a pretty good summary.

(10-06-2013 02:52 PM)trueblue21 Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 12:28 PM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  Question for GSU and App fans, are yall allowing any true freshmen to play this year, or are yall just redshirting all of them? I was just thinking about this, if I were a coach in a season with no post-season, I would likely redshirt every single young player possible. If that's the case, it might be a depth issue that both teams are having right now. I'm just throwing out ideas right now.

We have a redshirt freshman getting some playing time at QB. He seems to get better every game and should come into his own next year. Believe we redshirted a number of people we thought we could do with out, but I believe they said we have 12 full scholarship players out with injuries which is killing us. One is our best Back, Swope who we luckily got a medical redshirt so we have him for 2 more years. So yes we have a few playing because we need them to but I rather them have experience for next year then none at all.

Say what you will but I'm convinced that the transition and the lack of a postseason has everything to do with the average play by App and GS. We've never had so many "12" scholy players out at one time. Impact players. Swope out for the season but get's another year. We will likely start a true freshman while our number one, who's taken us to the semis and completely healthy, plays utility.

Excellent 2nd quarter to only change things up in the second half to lay an egg. Many new sets and formations with an experienced QB.

It's almost looking as though whoever plays worse this year is the one who'll be the most ready next. These two teams are too consistently good to both play so poorly at the same time.

Look for App's best defensive player, Blair DE, to get redshirted.

(10-06-2013 01:18 PM)GoApps70 Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 09:47 AM)ga southern eagles Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 09:43 AM)ga southern eagles Wrote:  Very disappointing season thus far for sure. Several reasons for it but in sum we just aren't as good as we expected to be. I still think we will be around .500 next year. We will be fine..just tough watching us struggle when we expected to roll this year.

could be worse..we could be App! Let me get that in before we meet for this years battle of the most disappointed! LOL

Yet you guys still trail us in conference play this year.

that's because you haven't played as many conference games as we have.

(10-07-2013 05:20 AM)gseagle Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 01:18 PM)GoApps70 Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 09:47 AM)ga southern eagles Wrote:  

(10-06-2013 09:43 AM)ga southern eagles Wrote:  Very disappointing season thus far for sure. Several reasons for it but in sum we just aren't as good as we expected to be. I still think we will be around .500 next year. We will be fine..just tough watching us struggle when we expected to roll this year.

could be worse..we could be App! Let me get that in before we meet for this years battle of the most disappointed! LOL

Yet you guys still trail us in conference play this year.

that's because you haven't played as many conference games as we have.

Ha,ha - you may be right in a way, but is actually because you have more conference losses. Don't worry, we seemed destined to catch up.

(10-06-2013 12:28 PM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  Question for GSU and App fans, are yall allowing any true freshmen to play this year, or are yall just redshirting all of them? I was just thinking about this, if I were a coach in a season with no post-season, I would likely redshirt every single young player possible. If that's the case, it might be a depth issue that both teams are having right now. I'm just throwing out ideas right now.

7 of the 17 true freshmen have played so far. RB Cox, LB's Gilchrist, Norwood, Thomas & Townes, DB Covington & OL Collins. The punter is a true freshman walk on.

At The Citadel on Saturday App played 15 freshmen, 16 sophomores, 8 juniors and 11 seniors (including specialists). A lack of recruiting 3 and 4 years ago really hurt. Only 11 of the 19 Jr's & Sr's who played Saturday came into the program as recruited scholarship players.

(10-06-2013 12:28 PM)Tuffguy21 Wrote:  Question for GSU and App fans, are yall allowing any true freshmen to play this year, or are yall just redshirting all of them? I was just thinking about this, if I were a coach in a season with no post-season, I would likely redshirt every single young player possible. If that's the case, it might be a depth issue that both teams are having right now. I'm just throwing out ideas right now.

On offense our starting RB is a true freshman, and we have played 2 others on OL. One of those is pushing for a starting position. On defense we've had 2 guys start at LB for some games, and also 2 other playing quite a bit on DL and LB. Our punter is also a true freshman. Add to that 11 redshirt freshman that either start or have played meaningful snaps and you start to see just how young we are.

Regardless of who is playing or not playing, neither Georgia Southern nor App should be struggling like this. It doesn't bode well for either program at a supposed higher level of play if both aren't winning at their current level.

As I recall heading into this season (at least from a GS standpoint), the general consensus was this was supposed to be a win-out year in which we left FCS with a bang, knocked off (or at least scared hell out of) Florida and showed the FBS and the SunBelt just what kind of almighty super cool great football power they were getting. The S-belt being just a temporary stop, of course, on the way to the ACC or SEC in five years or so after everyone bowed to the greatest football team ever and therefore by proxy the greatest fans ever. Because, as we all know, one GS fan is worth any 10 fans of any other school.

Instead, well, it's a good thing we're ineligible for the FCS playoffs because there's a likely possibility we won't get picked anyway.


I, along with a good number of others, am no fan of the move up, thinking FCS was plenty competitive for the Eagles, and I now suspect this may be a sort of corollary of Oliver's Woofing Theorem come home to roost -- namely, our esteemed president basically dismissing FCS as something not worthy of Georgia Southern. Hubris, karma, or maybe he's right. So far it's looking like we might be better suited for D2 than the Sunbelt.

It seems like once the games started being played in the fall the GSU and APP St. talk from this past summer has been shut off completely of coming in and dominating conf. from Day 1...probably a smart move by both fanbases.......You guys will have your struggles, trust me...

(10-07-2013 12:45 PM)gsu95 Wrote:  I, along with a good number of others, am no fan of the move up, thinking FCS was plenty competitive for the Eagles, and I now suspect this may be a sort of corollary of Oliver's Woofing Theorem come home to roost -- namely, our esteemed president basically dismissing FCS as something not worthy of Georgia Southern. Hubris, karma, or maybe he's right. So far it's looking like we might be better suited for D2 than the Sunbelt.

Have you stopped being a fan yet? Or are you just figuring out something to keep you occupied until South Carolina's next game? I'm sure Spurrier is humble enough for you.

I guess you've forgotten that even the best teams in history have had problems. We are in no way lacking in talent. We may be lacking in effort this year. We have definitely made some questionable coaching decisions and we have some personnel issues due to injury/inexperience, but we do have talent that is pretty productive when used properly.

For all of our offensive woes, we put up 34 points. That would win plenty of ball games. Unfortunately we gave up 5 TD plays of 50+ yards due to poor defensive performance. Make them drive the field like we did the rest of the game and their chance of scoring a TD went down dramatically, but we were caught out of position and in bad angles all game. However, if we had kept going on offense, I would have been fine with trading scores for the rest of the game while up 11 points to start the half.

(10-07-2013 12:58 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  It seems like once the games started being played in the fall the GSU and APP St. talk from this past summer has been shut off completely of coming in and dominating conf. from Day 1...probably a smart move by both fanbases.......You guys will have your struggles, trust me...

It's a perfect storm of a bunch of crap hitting us all at the same time. This is not what any of us expected this year. I expected the offense to be able to produce better than it has. I knew the defense would have some issues due to the players we graduated, but I figured the offense would be able to score enough to keep us out of trouble. However, we seem to be forcing a lot of things on offense that just aren't working. The only part of our team that has definitely improved has been special teams. We're making field goals, and for the first time in forever we have a kicker who can consistently put kickoffs in the endzone. So that's a positive I guess.

(10-07-2013 12:45 PM)gsu95 Wrote:  our esteemed president basically dismissing FCS as something not worthy of Georgia Southern.

Having traveled to Furman, Samford, Woffrd, and Citadel, I can tell you that Southern does not fit in the SoCon or the FCS anymore. We fit in the Sun Belt. Its that simple.

It shocked me this past weekend when I traveled to Samford for the first time and realized how my high school stadium was larger than Samford's stadium.

What does it matter to you anyway? Aren't you too busy in Columbia SC to even attend a game?

(10-07-2013 12:58 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  It seems like once the games started being played in the fall the GSU and APP St. talk from this past summer has been shut off completely of coming in and dominating conf. from Day 1...probably a smart move by both fanbases.......You guys will have your struggles, trust me...

There may have been a few knucklehead comments by some of our more intelligent fans I can assure you a big majority of App fans realize what the deal is. Most have not come over here because App is still not technically in the SunBelt.

(10-07-2013 12:45 PM)gsu95 Wrote:  Regardless of who is playing or not playing, neither Georgia Southern nor App should be struggling like this. It doesn't bode well for either program at a supposed higher level of play if both aren't winning at their current level.

As I recall heading into this season (at least from a GS standpoint), the general consensus was this was supposed to be a win-out year in which we left FCS with a bang, knocked off (or at least scared hell out of) Florida and showed the FBS and the SunBelt just what kind of almighty super cool great football power they were getting. The S-belt being just a temporary stop, of course, on the way to the ACC or SEC in five years or so after everyone bowed to the greatest football team ever and therefore by proxy the greatest fans ever. Because, as we all know, one GS fan is worth any 10 fans of any other school.

Instead, well, it's a good thing we're ineligible for the FCS playoffs because there's a likely possibility we won't get picked anyway.


I, along with a good number of others, am no fan of the move up, thinking FCS was plenty competitive for the Eagles, and I now suspect this may be a sort of corollary of Oliver's Woofing Theorem come home to roost -- namely, our esteemed president basically dismissing FCS as something not worthy of Georgia Southern. Hubris, karma, or maybe he's right. So far it's looking like we might be better suited for D2 than the Sunbelt.

You are certainly in the minority by far! My guess (playing the statistics ) is that you also love uga (or some other current FBS team) and that you hate having to choose now. Could be off base with that on you, but this is the general situation with those against the move in my experience. Nobody ever said that the Samford and Wofford couldn't play football. Wofford dang near beat Clemson a year ago.

The problem with the FCS isn't that some teams cant compete (see NDSU and others versus FBS) - it is that it isn't staying the same and it isn't what it used to be. The division is losing what ever relevancy it might have once had and the teams that we used to beat on recruiting during the glory days are now kicking our behind at it because of the even more limited exposure and rep of the division. Well, that and the fact that more and more FBS teams are coming into existence. The next generation is going to know less and less about FCS programs and so we either seek to improve our exposure and in turn our recruiting power or we accept a declining talent level and shrinking exposure for our University. You appose this? Because if you appose the move to the FBS it = accepting the later.

We will be fine. We lost two very close games to pretty dang good programs. No excuse for not coming out on top, but there are plenty of FBS teams that would have loss those games. Arkansas nearly fell to Samford. Our guys will continue to get better and we still might shock the world and upset or scare the crap out of the Gators.

And to any who doubt that we will still not send shock waves through the SBC when we arrive, make no mistake.. we will.

Now get your Eagle arsh on the bus and hang on for a ride.. "you ain't seen nothing yet!" GATA

In my best Forest Gump voice... "WE STILL - GEORGIA SOUTHERN!"

(10-07-2013 01:34 PM)TheEagleWay Wrote:  

(10-07-2013 12:45 PM)gsu95 Wrote:  our esteemed president basically dismissing FCS as something not worthy of Georgia Southern.

Having traveled to Furman, Samford, Woffrd, and Citadel, I can tell you that Southern does not fit in the SoCon or the FCS anymore. We fit in the Sun Belt. Its that simple.

It shocked me this past weekend when I traveled to Samford for the first time and realized how my high school stadium was larger than Samford's stadium.

What does it matter to you anyway? Aren't you too busy in Columbia SC to even attend a game?

This is a major factor. Question: Why are those teams still able to compete with Georgia Southern so well? Question: Are they getting that much better or are we getting worse?

All we can do is speculate, but our fade in recruiting power due to so many FBS teams in the region that either used to be FCS or didn't exist may be a part of it. Some of those programs have done well for themselves in improving, but I think these recruiting issues are probably a big factor. If there is ANY truth to that, it will only get worse for teams remaining in the FCS - the sky is truly falling in that division.

But the fact that these programs will travel nearly zero fans is a big factor. The money matters! Why? Holding onto coaching staff is a big one! For all the complaints about our assistants, you would think that those apposed could see what losing those guys can mean. Ticket sales = more $ to pay those guys, better facilities for recruiting and developing players. The exposure of FBS will be a big boost. I suppose the doubters will just have to wait and see. But in relation to that, what we have to look at is the declining exposure with all the new rules coming - of the FCS and at the very least maintaining our current exposure. It will improve instead of decline is the point. How much will it improve? That's the part are going to have to wait on and see.

We do belong in the Sun Belt. Have for a long time. For more reasons than winning and losing against FCS teams. Consider how much better we might currently be if we had had 22 more scholarships for longer and more $ to keep coaching staff continuity.

Texas St struggled in their FCS fairwell tour. Doing better now with recruits becoming older. Your FCS does not dictate how you will play at the FBS level. Otherwise we'd be screwed. It helps to have a good history but look at UMass, they were better at the FCS level then we were.

Regardless of App's perceived talent advantage (especially skill positions,) we were beaten by teams that played better as a team than us. I guess if we were going to have an "off" season, this is the season to have it. I am looking forward to our future and being part of the Sun Belt.

I never heard of most of the teams on your schedule. Perhaps they are giving you their best shot because you are leaving the FBS?
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa-13/sun-b...hedule.php

(10-07-2013 07:45 PM)Louisianafanrcajun90 Wrote:  I never heard of most of the teams on your schedule. Perhaps they are giving you their best shot because you are leaving the FBS?
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa-13/sun-b...hedule.php

I can really see that as well.

What people do not realize with the TO, you need solid play from your backs (blocks and runs). We have already gone through 5 backs..... 5. We have eaten through our depth in the backfield and it's killing us.

JJ Wilcox (starter with the Cowboys now)was a back that opened up the lanes with his aggressive blocking and running. We thrived on plays from guys like Wilcox, Swope, and Brown. We do not have those playmakers due to the NFL, season ending injury and career ending injury.

It is becoming very clear that we are redshirting players at a hangnail. I have no problem with that. The problem will come from the ethical point of view.