When the quarterback is kept clean in the pocket, most teams expect a 67-70% passing percentage. To this point in the season, Conner Weigman is 74.4% when kept clean. That’s elite.
But the issue is that Weigman is kept clean less than half the time he’s gone back to throw. Through three games, Conner has been under pressure on 43 of his 85 drop-backs (50.6%), by far the highest percentage in the country. In fact, among the 150 quarterbacks with the highest number of dropbacks, no one else is above 43%.
Given those numbers, it’s impressive to see what Weigman is doing: he is 16/32 under pressure with zero turnovers. Under pressure, Donovan Smith was 7/21 with an INT (2024) and 8/26 with 2 INTs (2023), and Clayton Tune was 9/30 with 2 INTs in 2022 through three games.
Only four players in FBS have been under pressure more times than Conner, and each has at least 34 more dropbacks.
1981. 1989. 2025.
Since Houston joined the SWC 50 years ago, those are the only seasons the Cougars held opponents to under 30 points in the first three games. In 1981, the Coogs held New Mexico, Miami, and Utah State to 29 (but lost the Miami game 12-7. The 1989 team was a force on defense, giving up just 150 points the entire season. They squeaked by UNLV, Arizona State, and Temple 170-14 in their first three games (the first two on the road).
This 2025 team does not have the same firepower as the 1989 squad, but the defense has played exceptionally well as a unit.
One of the most unheralded guys on the defense is senior linebacker Jalen Garner. Jalen is a UH grad and has grown into one of the most prominent leaders on the defense. He leads the defense with 20 tackles and has two QB hurries and a TFL. Austin Armstrong told me in Fall Camp to watch for him, and Garner has delivered.
Here’s Austin on Talkin’ Bout Them Cougars on Sunday night discussing Jalen:
Winning is hard. Willie Fritz’s five-point mantra of how his team will win is pretty much exactly how it looks each time the Cougars come out victorious:
Each of those contributes to winning, but the turnover battle has been significant this year. UH has not committed a turnover through three games.
I went through box scores for the last 30 years, and UH never had zero turnovers through three games. In 1999, Houston had one TO through three games. Two other times (2015, 2018), UH had two turnovers through three played. Every other year over those 30 seasons, Houston had at least three turnovers.
Through three games, last year’s team had four, while Dana’s last team had three. In the last 30 years, UH has averaged 5.45 turnovers in those three games (4.3 over the last 10 years).
The worst seasons for early turnovers? Tony Levine’s first team had 10, Art Briles had 11 in 2005, and Dana Dimel had 11 in 2000. But Dimel’s 2002 team turned it over 12 times in the first three games (including seven times in the Tulane game, which also included Tulane returning an onside kick for a touchdown).
UH’s top seven OL coming into the season were Alvin Ebosele, Jason Brooks, Demitrius Hunter, Matthew Wykoff, Dalton Merryman, David Ndukwe, and McKenzie Agnello. Hunter is the only one who has started each of the first three games at the same position.
Ebosele started the first two at LT, then moved to RT to start the Colorado game. Brooks started the SFA game at LG, but he and Ndukwe were out for the Rice game due to dehydration, and Brooks did not start vs. the Buffs. Wykoff started the opener at RG, but started the last two at LG. Merryman, who started the first two games at RT, missed the Colorado game with an injury. Agnello (starter at RG the last two games) and Ndukwe (who started the Colorado game at LT) went down in the Colorado game and did not return (Ndukwe is out for the year with a knee dislocation).
Cedric Melton has played about 75 snaps at RT, and OL coach Eman Naghavi will be leaning on him even more.
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