A UH defensive penalty aided all four USF touchdown drives. In all four drives, a penalty resulted in a first down—just a killer.
But it’s not new. For the season, the UH defense has committed a penalty on 11 of 25 opponent offensive touchdown drives (here, we count drives of 3 or more plays). That’s not even counting FG drives.
Several personal foul penalties looked ridiculous Saturday, but when you’re last in the country in penalties and combine it with terrible AAC officiating, that’s what you’re going to get.
Nathaniel Dell was targeted 11 times in the USF game (9 in the first half) and caught them for 112 yards and two scores. He’s been targeted 83 times in eight weeks and has 10 touchdowns to show for it.
Tank had 76 yards after catch against the Bulls, the most he’s ever recorded in a regular-season game. He had 79 against Auburn last year in the bowl and 110 YAC vs. Cincinnati in the AAC title game.
He’s T-2nd in the country in touchdowns (10), trailing Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt (14) and tied with Marvin Harrison (Ohio State).
UH was the best in the country on giving up 3rd down conversions – the Cougar defense gave up just 27.91%.
Houston has plummeted to 42.86% this season, now the 95th best nationally. It’s the second-largest downtrend in the country from a year ago (Florida).
The kicking duties were odd against USF. With a strong wind out of the west (box score calls it 12 MPH), kicking was going to be affected. Bubba Baxa handled kickoff duties to start the game with the wind. Three of his four kicks were touchbacks, and the fourth was returned from the goal line to the 15.
In the second and third quarters, Kyle Ramsey handled the kickoffs into the wind. Two were pooch kicks and the third was a squib. Special teams coach Mark Scott had no interest in setting up Brian Battie. He returned two kicks 100 yards for TDs last year.
Clayton Tune was sacked four times in the Kansas game in 44 dropbacks. Since then, he’s dropped back 209 times in five games and been sacked five times.
In the last two weeks, four players have had their first-ever college touchdown: Matt Byrnes and Sam Brown in Anapolis, and Stacy Sneed and Peyton Sawyer against the Bulls.
It was, arguably, Tune’s best career regarding the deep ball. After going 4/4 Saturday, he’s now 16/34 (47.1%, 6 TDs, 0 INT) on balls thrown past 20 yards this season. That does not sound stellar, but he’s up considerably over the three years since he took over for D’Eriq King (51/57, 32.5%, 23 TDs, 8 INT).
If you include the two games he started at the end of 2018, Tune had started 40 games and has thrown 26 TDs on deep balls.
Tune has had a sackless game four times in his 41 starts: USF in 2020, UConn and Tulsa in 2021, and last weekend again vs. USF.
The closer your top tacklers line up to the ball, the better your chance of winning. But in this era of football, it’s fairly common that your top tacklers are not defensive linemen. Usually, it will be two linebackers or an LB and a DB. In the USF game, UH’s top two tacklers were DBs (Mwaniki and Owens).
In the last two seasons, UH has had DBs as the top two tacklers just four times: vs. USF, vs. Auburn in the bowl game, vs. Cincinnati in the AAC championship, and against SMU last year. USF seems to be an outlier in regard to its talent.
Sure, against the deep-throwing teams, you are more likely to have DBs making tackles. But USF and Auburn were not in that breath, for sure. Just something to watch this weekend against the Ponies.
Players I’m watching this weekend –
Defense: D’Anthony Jones, AJ Holmes, and Chidozie Nwankwo.
Offense: KeSean Carter, Tyler Johnson, Matt Byrnes
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