Game 4—Appalachian State Mountaineers

[Blue & Gold]

26 minutes ago, 3rd&twenty said:

That's great! And they can start "doing those little things that no one knows about" by cutting down on the stupid penalties. Make the play, get up and walk away. 

 

And don't line up offsides.  What is this, 2nd grade pee-wee football?

Edited September 20, 2016 by Blue & Gold

[AppinSC]

Question for some of you guys in the know.................   Did Coach Bowden intentionally build Akron through transfer or is that due to attrition, injury, etc.... ? When looking at your guys roster, I found 29 players who had come from either a junior college or other college/university including Ohio State, Miami, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Utah State, Weber State, Boston College, Indiana, Iowa, Western Michigan, Rutgers, West Virginia, and Michigan.

[Aaron]

47 minutes ago, AppinSC said:

Question for some of you guys in the know.................   Did Coach Bowden intentionally build Akron through transfer or is that due to attrition, injury, etc.... ? When looking at your guys roster, I found 29 players who had come from either a junior college or other college/university including Ohio State, Miami, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Utah State, Weber State, Boston College, Indiana, Iowa, Western Michigan, Rutgers, West Virginia, and Michigan.

There's not a tremendous amount of community support for the Zips, and he seems to have a difficult time getting high schoolers in and excited about playing for the Zips at first glance.  The University sports facilities are amazing (especially for the MAC), and he has great success recruiting players who understand what college football is about, and for one reason or another aren't cutting it at their current place.  I would answer that it is out of necessity, but intentional.  Coach Bowden has been turning around the incredibly poor state of our football team for a few years now, in a four step process - lose big, lose little, win little, then win big.  He's somewhere between steps 3 and 4 right now.  

To understand when all the community support disappeared, look up 'Rob Ianello head coach' and be thankful you didn't have years like that to endure.

[AppinSC]

Aaron,

Thanks for your reply. I knew that it was probably something along those lines but the number just jumped off of the page when I consider that App has 2 juco transfers on our entire team. Hoping to see a good , hard fought , game between our programs this weekend. 

 

Mark Daniels 

Mountaineer '84

[AppinSC]

Considering that the Zips are averaging around 40 points per game and giving up around 39, this game could be a barn burner on Saturday. App has a really strong ground attack (even with Marcus Cox sidelined) and our defense has been our strong point thus far (even though Miami didn't get the memo). Looking forward to a good competitive game this weekend. The one thing that I think that App has going for it is the fact that we currently have played the 18th toughest schedule in the country. I would much rather be 2-1  but 1-2 with our schedule does not have me too down. 

[Dr Z]

44 minutes ago, AppinSC said:

...our defense has been our strong point thus far

How would you describe your scheme in the secondary? They will be challenged this weekend. I know the Mountaineers play a 3-4 defensive scheme but I can't pick up what they are doing on the backend from watching ESPN3. Our offensive line will have their work cut out for them stopping the pass rush. I really wish Warren Ball had a crack at their 3-4 front, I feel the size matchup would have been conducive to some broken tackles.

[Section210Zip]

16 hours ago, MDZip said:

I was a lot more worried about this one last week than this week. Thought the Zips had very little chance until this weekend and with both Our game and the App. St. game that thought process changed in a hurry. I'd look at it as a pick 'em maybe even Akron by 1 as a home game? I'm excited for a good game and the possibility of starting a season 3-1. The last time the Zips started 3-1? Almost 25 years ago in Gerry Faust's 7-3-1 year in 1992.

The Marcel Weems era ...  I had to go back and look at the schedule from then. What is so different is we opened the schedule with conference play and ended with ooc. One other thing of note is we beat ohio that year. That's something that we are past due on now.  

 

1992 Zips

Edited September 20, 2016 by Section210Zip

[zippy5]

1 hour ago, AppinSC said:

Aaron,

Thanks for your reply. I knew that it was probably something along those lines but the number just jumped off of the page when I consider that App has 2 juco transfers on our entire team. Hoping to see a good , hard fought , game between our programs this weekend. 

 

Mark Daniels 

Mountaineer '84

It seems that the Zips are starting to transition to a more traditional approach of 4 year recruits now that we've seen some success.

[MDZip]

24 minutes ago, zippy5 said:

It seems that the Zips are starting to transition to a more traditional approach of 4 year recruits now that we've seen some success.

I think Coach Bowden had to do it initially out of necessity, its pretty tough to talk high level recruits into joining your team when the team you are selling has historically been mediocre or worse and had just come off back to back 1-11 seasons. He took who he could sell on his vision and a year of additional playing time or getting to see the field. His first year he got a transfer quarterback to upgrade the offensive tempo and even though it resulted in another 1-11 season you could absolutely see the improvement and got to 5-7 in his second year. He still needed those transfers because the players who were good enough to help Akron (even local ones) were still bypassing the Zips. He finally has established enough success that talented local players (and players from other areas) are indeed starting to choose the Zips so I would suspect the plan is to start scaling back on the transfers in favor of the four year players. Transfers are still used to fill needs and gaps but when you were down as far as the Zips were it was a brilliant strategy (and thank God Terry had the connections) to bring in players that who not only could show a turnaround was starting but actually be a part of that turnaround.

[kreed5120]

Akron certainly appears to be less dependent on transfers with this up and coming recruiting class, but I don't see it going away anytime soon. They've found a good niche in acquiring talented players that have either fallen out of favor at their current school or got buried on the depth chart. I'm guessing in the future you will see fewer JUCO transfers, but still a steady flow of guys like Natson, Macrcus, Pittman, Ball, etc.

[zipsoutsider]

Although the goal is to reduce the number of transfers, I have heard Bowden talk about the need for transfers to play a big part, given the nature of college football today. He is pretty vocal in believing that the NCAA should loosen restrictions on transfers. He commonly mentions that coaches can go to other programs but players can't. I think he has a valid point. The play at mid-major college would only improve if they loosened the rules a bit. There are a lot of Warren Ball type kids who never get a real shot at a power 5 that would be play makers at the mid-major level and make mid-majors more competitive with  P5 schools, IMHO.

[LZIp]

14 minutes ago, zipsoutsider said:

Although the goal is to reduce the number of transfers, I have heard Bowden talk about the need for transfers to play a big part, given the nature of college football today. He is pretty vocal in believing that the NCAA should loosen restrictions on transfers. He commonly mentions that coaches can go to other programs but players can't. I think he has a valid point. The play at mid-major college would only improve if they loosened the rules a bit. There are a lot of Warren Ball type kids who never get a real shot at a power 5 that would be play makers at the mid-major level and make mid-majors more competitive with  P5 schools, IMHO.

At first I was disagreeing with your post because college football is already like the wild west enough as it is IMO, but you did say something that I agree with at the end. If the P5 schools get all the money and the only real shot at playing for the national championship, then the G5 schools should be allowed to take on transfers without sitting out a year, similar to transferring from FBS - FCS. It will help level the playing field.

[zipsoutsider]

17 minutes ago, LZIp said:

At first I was disagreeing with your post because college football is already like the wild west enough as it is IMO, but you did say something that I agree with at the end. If the P5 schools get all the money and the only real shot at playing for the national championship, then the G5 schools should be allowed to take on transfers without sitting out a year, similar to transferring from FBS - FCS. It will help level the playing field.

As it is now, no G5 school has a legitimate shot at the CFP. If there was more parity between the programs, we would have a shot. It's a long range plan to bring funding up at G5 schools by improving their play.

[Section210Zip]

On ‎9‎/‎19‎/‎2016 at 8:25 AM, Dr Z said:

The defense is going to have a lot of studying to do this week. Here are just a few personnel sets from the beginning of the first quarter in Tennessee. 

 

Both starting RB's for Akron and Appalachian State are questionable to play this weekend. (see injury list at bottom)

 

Replay of Appalachian State vs Miami Hurricanes here. Great crowd. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you guys notice that the right guard is looking back into the back field just like a center in some of these pics. I'm guessing this is to get the signal as to if he is pulling and to what side. Did anyone see this in the Miami game?

[kreed5120]

If we want to talk about actually increasing parity, drop the scholarship number to 75-80 instead of 85. In the current state a team like OSU is able to hoard guys on their 3rd string that would be starters for most other teams. Ball last season finished behind Zeke, Miller, Samuel, and Dunn in carries and now he is the Zips featured back. Had OSU only had 77 or so scholarships to begin with they might not have offered him in the 1st place and he would have ended up at MSU or someplace similar. This would trickle other current P5 players down to MAC and other G5 schools.

 

I'm counting 64 P5 schools x 8 scholarships = 512 players

[App90]

Good Luck this Saturday, you guys have a really good team and this Akron Vs ASU match up is an interesting one.  From an ASU perspective our team has been flat since the 2nd half of ODU, they may have been playing to just get the win.  But with that being said against ODU and UM they were a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde bunch.  What I see from Akron is consistency and solid execution which ASU is lacking right now.  Example snapping the ball over our QB's head while on Miami's 2 yard line, multiple 15 yard penalties that takes them out of their drives. Then there's the consistent false starts at least 2-3 a game and they can happen even if its quiet.  Then there's the inability to get the defensive calls in.  Our guys get caught standing around after UM snapped the ball. Then there's our DB's peeking into the backfield while WR's run past our CB's time and time again in the ODU and Miami game.  ODU sort of showed ASU's weak spots, Miami exploited them.  All of this spells doom this Saturday for ASU.  Its just too much to fix in 5 days. And I don't buy that UM caused all of these mistakes. I hope I'm wrong but I see Akron beating them like a drum and then maybe that will motivate them to execute going into Sun Belt play, they are not quitters just prone to mistakes.  Either way ill be in Ohio this weekend as my wife is from that area.  Hope to have a fun this weekend no matter the outcome.  You guys are a classy bunch.  Sorry for the bad spelling....

[Dr Z]

26 minutes ago, App90 said:

What I see from Akron is consistency and solid execution which ASU is lacking right now.  Example snapping the ball over our QB's head while on Miami's 2 yard line, multiple 15 yard penalties that takes them out of their drives.

Thanks for taking the time to join and post. Enjoy your time in Akron. The self-inflicted mistakes should be pretty even, Akron was flagged 13 times for 136 yards last week. Hopefully we can come to some kind of compromise with this weekend's referees. 

 

Then there's our DB's peeking into the backfield while WR's run past our CB's time and time again in the ODU and Miami game.  ODU sort of showed ASU's weak spots, Miami exploited them.  All of this spells doom this Saturday for ASU.

IMO, you would be correct to worry about this. It is one of the Zips strengths. Good luck, and safe travels. 

[ASU3432Mi]

4 hours ago, Dr Z said:

How would you describe your scheme in the secondary? They will be challenged this weekend. I know the Mountaineers play a 3-4 defensive scheme but I can't pick up what they are doing on the backend from watching ESPN3. Our offensive line will have their work cut out for them stopping the pass rush. I really wish Warren Ball had a crack at their 3-4 front, I feel the size matchup would have been conducive to some broken tackles.

We lost our best cover guy before the season to academics.  The rest looked OK against UT, but not good against 'Canes.   Our LBs are the strength of the D.

[zipsoutsider]

10 minutes ago, Dr Z said:

Thanks for taking the time to join and post. Enjoy your time in Akron. The self-inflicted mistakes should be pretty even, Akron was flagged 13 times for 136 yards last week. Hopefully we can come to some kind of compromise with this weekend's referees. 

I think the officials went overboard last week. Yes, we made some stupid penalties, but they probably threw the flags a little too frequently. At least they weren't one sided.

 

I hope the boys can stay focused this week after the big win.

[skip-zip]

10 hours ago, Section210Zip said:

The Marcel Weems era ...  I had to go back and look at the schedule from then. What is so different is we opened the schedule with conference play and ended with ooc. One other thing of note is we beat ohio that year. That's something that we are past due on now.  

 

1992 Zips

 

That was an exciting season for more reasons than being the best record in our I-A history.   It was also our first season in the MAC, after playing about 5 seasons as an Independent, so there was a prize to play for.  But most memorable for me was that Toledo Acme/Zip game where Daron Alcorn kicked the 56 yard field goal to end it.  Still to this day, that might be the best Steve French radio call of all time.   

 

That's interesting that the OOC games were at the back end of the schedule.  

Edited September 21, 2016 by skip-zip
edit

[App90]

9 hours ago, Dr Z said:

How would you describe your scheme in the secondary? They will be challenged this weekend. I know the Mountaineers play a 3-4 defensive scheme but I can't pick up what they are doing on the backend from watching ESPN3. Our offensive line will have their work cut out for them stopping the pass rush. I really wish Warren Ball had a crack at their 3-4 front, I feel the size matchup would have been conducive to some broken tackles.

 

It appears they are basically in a zone coverage, with a cover two look, our DC will move the LB's into coverage if  need be,  they are recruited for the position, fast but able to run stop and play coverage. The  angle here is to keep every thing in front of them.  Its prone to being beat over the top.   Basic, but does well when its firing on all cylinders.  LB's cover the  gaps on run plays.  Safeties take care of outside containment.  Just couldn't  do it against Miami.  And our secondary is really young.  Front  7 are  stout.  Hope that help  Dr. Z.

[Dr Z]

6 hours ago, App90 said:

It appears they are basically in a zone coverage, with a cover two look.......Hope that help  Dr. Z.

Yes, thank you, that is exactly what I was looking for. If I were defending the Zips, I would play a lot of cover two. The Zips will need some kind of run game, or more underneath stuff than they are used to in order to be effective offensively. Good luck.

[zipsoutsider]

7 hours ago, App90 said:

9 hours ago, Dr Z said:

How would you describe your scheme in the secondary? They will be challenged this weekend. I know the Mountaineers play a 3-4 defensive scheme but I can't pick up what they are doing on the backend from watching ESPN3. Our offensive line will have their work cut out for them stopping the pass rush. I really wish Warren Ball had a crack at their 3-4 front, I feel the size matchup would have been conducive to some broken tackles.

 

It appears they are basically in a zone coverage, with a cover two look, our DC will move the LB's into coverage if  need be,  they are recruited for the position, fast but able to run stop and play coverage. The  angle here is to keep every thing in front of them.  Its prone to being beat over the top.   Basic, but does well when its firing on all cylinders.  LB's cover the  gaps on run plays.  Safeties take care of outside containment.  Just couldn't  do it against Miami.  And our secondary is really young.  Front  7 are  stout.  Hope that help  Dr. Z.

Bowden and Milwee did a nice job picking on a freshman corner at Marshall. I would expect that they will be looking to expose any weagkness they can find against App State and that your guys will be looking for the best way they can to shut us down. I doubt that Marshall was looking past us and don't expect App State to, especially after the points we put up. I even thing I noticed is that at one point, we did slow down the drive a little. It was nothing like we did against KSU last year, but enough to give the D a little breather. I do think our run game is good enough that it can't be ignored and we have guys who can catch out of the backfield. We may also see a little JoJo out of the backfield at some point on a Jet Bubble Sweep.

[Blue & Gold]

ABJ: UA Offense Showing Explosiveness in Passing Game

 

http://www.ohio.com/sports/zips/university-of-akron-football-ua-offense-showing-explosiveness-in-passing-game-that-coach-terry-bowden-desires-1.713146

[zipsoutsider]

22 hours ago, AppinSC said:

Question for some of you guys in the know.................   Did Coach Bowden intentionally build Akron through transfer or is that due to attrition, injury, etc.... ? When looking at your guys roster, I found 29 players who had come from either a junior college or other college/university including Ohio State, Miami, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Utah State, Weber State, Boston College, Indiana, Iowa, Western Michigan, Rutgers, West Virginia, and Michigan.

One thing about this is that sometimes it means we have kids who have been in trouble at other schools. Knock on wood, we have not seen Bowden having any issues with these kids once they are here. Not sure if he has a knack for knowing which kids to give the second chance to, or if it's the way he manages the program.

 

We have some transfers because Bowden let's them run track and play ball. Not all schools allow that and he sees it as a good way to get speed on the team. 

 

Some of our transfers are just looking for a shot after not getting a lot of looks at P5 schools. Warren Ball was sitting out behind a first round draft pick. With injuries at OSU, had he stayed, he would likely have seen a lot of reps, but here he can be our feature back and get more attention. The same is true with Jamal Marcus and Se'von Pittman, as well as others.

 

It's easy to write off kids who make mistakes. I am just glad they end up at a program where coaches care about the kids, are able to give them another chance, and have the character to give some guidance vs. a young coach trying to make a name for himself.