UTSA is 3-5 (2-2 in CUSA) Their record is weighed down from playing 3 "buy" games, suffering losses against Arizona St, Baylor, and Kansas St. They did beat the one Sun Belt opponent the've played (Texas St.) which is more than we can say. As for Common opponents:
UTEP W 30-21
Rice W-20-3
La Tech L 3-31
They play a lot of freshmen and sophomores and it's hurting them this year. They have talent, but the youth and inexperience hurt them. They had a bye last week and the extra practice time to prepare for us is going to be a big boon for all of their young guys.
If you want to get mad, watch Frank Wilson's press conference from yesterday. The basic message was "UAB was allowed to get all of these 6th year senior transfers but we are not taking shortcuts like that here, we are building the right way. "
Offense
If you have watched Wisconsin or Stanford play (or Rice,) you have an idea of what they try to do. They will play with two TE's, They will play with a FB, they will occasionally spread you out. They have two good RB's. We played against Jalen Rhodes last year, He is built like a fire hydrant, short, thick and tough. He has competition this year in Sophomore BJ Daniels who actually leads them in rushing.
The biggest change from last year is that dual threat QB Dalton Sturm has graduated. Their new QB is Cordale Grundy. He's also a dual threat guy, but is a drop off from what they had. He has completed 50% of his passes (110-216 5 td's vs 3 ints) for 990 yards. By way of comparison AJ Erdely has completed 57% of his passes (102-178 7 td's vs 6 ints) for 1449 yards. You all know how frustrated we have been as fans with our passing game. We've offset that by rushing for nearly 2000 yards as a team. Well UTSA has only rushed for 761 yards as a team. In short, UTSA has struggled to move the ball consistently whether through the air or the ground.
My only concern is that they are very multiple in the looks they give and they have had two weeks to cook up surprises.
Defense
They run a 4-2-5. Long time blazer fans will remember that we ran a similar scheme for years in the Watson era. The Steel Shield teams were mostly 4-2-5. Against us it will turn into what is basically a 4-4 defense with two of their safeties coming down and playing as linebackers on run downs. They are led by a legit NFL prospect in Butkus Award semifinalist Middle Linebacker Josiah Tauaefa He's big, he's fast, he's Samoan.
They have good size on their d-line, rotating 5 or 6 300 pound tackles in the middle, including Kevin Strong, a 6-4 300lb legit NFL prospect.
Marcus Davenport has graduated (YAY) and is now terrorizing NFL QB's instead of CUSA ones. So we have that going for us, which is nice.
The have a decent secondary, the strength of which being their safeties.
Highlights:
(This post was last modified: 10-30-2018 10:00 AM by BlazerMatt.)
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UTSA Scouting report
