LoyalZIP

I agree, I am a fan of our 2023 opponents as far as being winnable games that set up the program for success. I hate that they only have 5 home games again, though. And this is false. Williams scheduled the game before he left, the releases for these games do not come out for many months until after they're scheduled. Guthrie was not happy that this game was scheduled, and has made that very clear. Williams wasn't going to fire Arth if he had stuck around, either. That info is directly from UA Sr. athletic administration.

Also a fair point. EMU is a good example to bring up. I think they've won the most games (as a MAC team) vs. Power 5 opponents since 2016 or so. Go check out who they've played, spoiler alert: no Blue Bloods! They've feasted on the likes of Purdue, Illinois, Rutgers, and Arizona State. Not programs with long standing success by any means. I like that strategy. But what has it meant for EMU? Still living in the shadow of Ann Arbor, same crappy stadium, same crappy attendance, and they haven't won a MAC title since Cain and Abel were eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch together on Saturday mornings. And Kent's 17-point loss to Georgia, 30-point loss to Oklahoma, and 25-point loss to Washington have them set up nicely for a big bowl game at 2-3 at just about the mid way point in the season. They were very battle tested in those ball games and it helped them gain 750 yards on Ohio so they could fumble the ball 5 times and need overtime to beat a below average Ohio team. I'm not really seeing this magical correlation.

Fair enough. But when that game was put on the schedule ~18 months ago, Larry Williams didn't do it to give Tom Arth (or whoever he expected to be the coach at the time) a chance to make a big splash win in front of the national audience. Williams was told to cut a huge chunk from the athletics budget. So in addition to making budget cuts within the department, he saw the football schedule as an opportunity to help. So he called around and got in touch with Tennessee. They agreed on $1.5 Million, but had to pay $500k of that to Army to buy them out. The Zips were going to host New Mexico State that week instead (the trip to Las Cruces in 2020 was canceled by COVID). So instead of a winnable G5 game in front of the home crowd, who has never seen Akron defeat a nonconference G5 opponent at InfoCision Stadium, the Zips lost a home game to get humiliated by Tennessee's first, second, and third stringers 63-6. Took away a chance for the people who actually care and love Akron football to see their favorite team in their beautiful, state of the art, Mecca of a football stadium in their hometown. I suggest anyone reading this thread, full of great discussion, to go back and watch Zips Live on Facebook leading up to the Liberty game. Joe describes in detail why these games at this volume are problematic.

Check out literally any of his media availability from that stretch in the schedule. He is fine playing P5s, as are all Zips fans, but loading up the schedule with blue bloods to “play the best” or whatever that means is not doing what you think it is, and that’s according to Joe Moorhead, head coach of the Akron Zips, former OC at Penn State and Oregon, former HC of Mississippi State. I’ll side with him.

Lost to Iowa, beat UT-Martin, Army, and Kansas in nonconference. No blue bloods on the schedule there either.

Fleck was able to do that because they set up their schedule well for success. They scheduled a pair of Big Ten bottom feeders, a G5, and an FCS. If they had scheduled Wisconsin, Ohio State, Tennessee, etc. early in the year, they most likely lose the game and there’s never a WMU Cotton Bowl to speak of. Everyone can believe whatever they want. I choose to side with JoeMo, who rightfully says this whoring out for money strategy is a joke. Let’s play one a year and give it our best shot, and then we can actually try to win some games and maybe possibly go into league play at .500 once in a blue moon. In Joe We Trust, Joe knows best.

I’ve been hoping UA can take a look at the 2023 schedule and figure a way to get out of the Indiana game, maybe even the Temple game to get a 6th home game. What do you think the likelihood is of this? I haven’t heard any rumblings.

Ohio Week Presser

The only 3-3-5 scheme that I know of that is notoriously successful is the one Iowa State has been running for the Campbell years. His DC Jon Heacock kind of came up with the particular scheme. He runs it because they’re physically overmatched by the traditional powers in that league and simply has to rely on his guys being smart about doing their job and then using speed to fill gaps on run plays. It’s quite interesting. Some of their biggest upsets over the past 5-6 seasons have been attributed to their ability to create coverage sacks while also not letting RBs get to the second level.

No mercy! 4-0 Zips shortly before half.

Already at the midway point in the season, and the road warriors are back at it. So great for the home fans to experience one home game over a span of 5 games! The Kittens opened the season with a nice home win over FAU, and beat Fordham in a shootout in week 4. They opened MAC play with an embarrassing choke job losing in OT at Kent. Kurtis Rourke leads the offense, brother of former Bobcat QB Nathan Rourke. And he’s just about as good. The line is Ohio -11. Akron hasn’t won in Athens since….2004!

By my count, 11 MAC teams in the bottom 32. Wowzers.

You think you like what you’re seeing so far, just wait until Joe has his Zips going 5-7 every year! 🤣

Finally got to listen, and wow. That’s one of the best postgame pressers I’ve ever heard from a Zip coach. Every Akron fan needs to check this out, this man is one of us and he wants it as bad as we do!

Wow. Spot on post by @catdaddyp. Thank you for making this board even greater than it was, we're so happy to have you here! I don't think I disagree with anything said above. I am bummed that we haven't seen Golden-Nelson the last couple of weeks, and I hope that whatever injury he has sustained isn't too serious. Joe hasn't been hiding that info and has been pretty open about it, I just don't think he's been asked. Perhaps someone will submit that as a question during the live video of Zips Live this week. There's an advanced metric box score I always like to check out on CollegeFootballData.com https://collegefootballdata.com/boxscore/401416609 A lot of it is over my head, but there are a few things I like to look at. Postgame Win Expectancy yesterday was BG 69%. That metric is essentially who would win the game if it were played again with the same stats, etc. Sure enough, if a couple bounces go a different way, this would have been a big homecoming win. For example, we all know Golden's muffed punt cost the game, a few of us said as much the second it happened. It flipped momentum, and instead of being down 3 and getting the ball to open the half, they were down 10. Well, BG did the SAME THING at the SAME EXACT SPOT ON THE FIELD! That was shocking to me, and kind of hilarious. But he was able to pick it up and evade a couple of tacklers to get out of bounds at the 12. That ended up as an 88-yard TD drive to make it 31-21 early in the 4th. That is football being football, and man did it pee me off. Grimes did play early, but was not dressed for most of the game. I have a feeling this wouldn't have happened with Tony in there. Damn damn damn. Another thing I like to look at on the advanced box score analysis is called Scoring Opportunities. It measures the points a team scores per scoring chance, which is defined as moving the ball inside the 40-yard line. BG made 9 trips inside the 40 on offense, netting 24 points, and 2.67 points per opportunity. The Zips, on the other hand, made 4 trips inside the 40, scoring a TD every single time (Adams TD catch was 41 yards, close enough). It's nice to see the offense turning these sustained drives into touchdowns more often, that's 5 quarters in a row finding the end zone! Just need to do it more than once a quarter. I also emphasize 3rd down efficiency on offense and defense a lot. Akron was one of the worst 3rd down teams coming in, but put up a very impressive 11-17 number yesterday. The threat of running the ball is the difference there. Later in the game, I felt a rare confidence in the Zips' ability to do either, and that's credit to Joe for once again being a mastermind in playcalling. I loved the QB draw calls and thought DJ was a smart runner, sans the fumble. Still holds on to the ball too long at times, and it's going to be hard to win games where you take 6 sacks. The defense struggled on 3rd down, giving up 7-13. They got decent pressure, but could not finish plays with hurries and sacks. McDonald had his best game against Akron and made some big time clutch throws. He did just enough to eek out the win that was served up to them on a platter. I still say that Akron should have won that game. I'm definitely bummed, but far from discouraged as to the progress of the program. I predicted this result pretty spot on, and I expect more games like this as we move through the season. The Zips are bad and at the bottom of the MAC, that is no surprise. Going from distant worst to middle of the pack/above average is what I was hoping for, but definitely not expecting. I've been thinking a lot about who I would compare this team to, whether in football or a different sport. In football, it reminds me of Kent in 2018, Lewis' first year. While he had Woody Barrett as a brand new QB, we've got a guy who played occasionally last year, and might as well be new with this new system. Some old guys who lost a ton sprinkled in with some new guys who show promise. But the same results in the win/loss column despite a new style of football and much more competitive games. On the basketball side, it feels like the 2018-2019 Zips. A team that did much better than the year before with an overhauled roster, that shows great flashes of potential but still can't seem to rack up the wins. That team also set itself up to win games and then shoot themselves in the foot constantly. I'm becoming a broken record, but I see a lot of these issues as growing pains, whether it be the players or the staff. This is one of the youngest staffs in the sport, with a big group of guys that have lost a butt-load of games and don't know how to win. I recommend listening to last week's edition of Zips Live to hear more about the staff construction, interesting stuff there. But words cannot describe how much better I feel about the program now than I did 365 days ago, that is for sure. Yesterday was nothing short of a heartbreaker, and these last 7 games could be a struggle, but I believe in the man on that sideline and I can see his vision playing out already in its early stages. Go Zips!

We do still need a “Joe’s Next Endeavor” thread! He’s no better than Arth! Getting blown out by bad Big Ten teams and UMass already! Oh wait…

Not gonna get too deep into this one yet, I’ll sleep on it. But some small notes off the top of my head. Akron is a bad football team. Upgraded from horrendous. Great! My concerns for this week ended up coming into focus. Lots of growing pains by a team and group that doesn’t know how to win. JoeMo put them in great position all game, just couldn’t execute. They played from behind from the opening kick, giving BG the ball at midfield. Overall, the D was bend but don’t break. They really only gave up 2 real TD drives if you take out the pick and the muffed punt. That’s a good sign. A couple too many huge plays though. Wish the DL would’ve come up with another couple of sacks. DJ was excellent for 80% of the game. Thing is, the other 20% or so was a bad fumble, bad pick, overthrow at the end, and a couple sacks. He’s a tough dude, I’m glad we have him. The team is more banged up than I thought. Grimes not dressed, Wiley must’ve been hurt, though Price was dynamite, Golden-Nelson not dressed. Bubba didn’t look the same. We went from last week saying “we could’ve won” to this week saying “we should’ve won.” The arrow is pointing upward, but Zips fans are rightfully tired of waiting. This team can win some games this year, they just have to learn how to eat their mistakes and bounce back. Beautiful day for some ball today though, and I’m looking forward to the challenge next week. Go Zips!

What a shame. Had him. Choked. Damn damn damn.

Alex Adams redemption tour! D is due for a stop. Come on!!!!

Back breaking play of the game. Tight window and a hell of a catch and run. Damn.

Not a fan of the 3rd down play call. And bad break not finishing the tackle on the dumbass play by the returner. Huge sequence there.

If Adams had hands he’d be in the Heisman conversation right now. Not much more Joe can do…

Fumble, pick 6, big kick return to open the game, awful muffed punt. These are the growing pains I’ve been talking about this week. Very frustrating.

I don’t think we’ll see Bobby Golden for a while. Just a horrid mistake that will cost the game.

Catastrophe. That is the ball game right there.