I can’t believe that there is an 8 page thread about this ULM game and yet nobody has mentioned one of our top 3 individual performances: 1.) Hankins. 2). Hardison. 3). Keenan Stewart. Keenan Stewart was very good in this game and he is starting to become one of my favorite players to watch. His stats don’t jump out(as most DT’s usually don’t), but him and Moss are the biggest reason why ULM finished the game with only 7 TOTAL rushing yards for the entire game. Stewart is just a physical talent for our level of football who can play inside on running downs and DE in 3 man fronts and passing downs. Stewart had the QB pressure causing the first interception, he had a pass knockdown as a DE, and then he consistently set the line of scrimmage at the point of attack on running plays. I had to rewatch one running play because he was at the bottom of the pile and I didn’t remember him lining up on that side, so I rewatched it and he made the play as the opposite side DT. Just an impressive play. People that are 305 pounds are not supposed to move as fast as he does. He is another Sophomore JC player(like Hardison), who the coaching staff deserves a ton credit for going out and finding after only 1 year of JC. If he was a few inches taller or had gone back for one more year of JC, I would bet that he would have 15-20 FBS offers. Instead UTEP went and found him early. If you can not tell, I am becoming a big fan of watching Stewart play. UTEP has rarely had interior D-linemen with his ability over the years and I know that Praise(another Sophomore) is getting a lot of the local media, but I think that Stewart has the potential to maybe be a 2nd team all-conference type of guy before his career ends.
I was also impressed with Fryar’s blocking potential as a TE. He is another young JC guy(a redshirt freshman from NMMI). This was my first time watching him and I think he can be solid.
UTEP made an O-line adjustment in this game, by playing playing more Darta Lee at LT and mixing in Henry with Byers at RT.
I know that the staff likes Fields because of his good ball security and he is dependable with his responsibilities in the blocking schemes. I can respect that those are important aspects, especially when trying to grind out early wins, as we have done. I also don’t blame Josh, as there just have not been a lot of holes for him to run through this year. But it still almost feels like we are wasting a carry every time that he runs the ball. It just feels like we should be more aggressively developing a higher upside back like Awatt or Eldridge via more carries.
Grinding out wins against lower level teams is one thing and it is even fine when we are still building our program(as we currently are), but at some point we are going to want to take a next step and in order to do that some areas will need to be upgraded. It is never an easy thought to replace guys, but some areas that really could use an upgrade on offense are Fields carries at RB, Walter Dawn’s slot WR position and man if we were somehow able to find a true big transfer #1 WR, which would allow Cowing and Garrett to shift down to the #2 WR and #3 WR roles, then we could have a legitimate high end CUSA level passing game.
Our defense has given up less than 198 yards passing in 3 of our 4 games this year.
Dennis Barnes is another new JC guy, who got beat a couple of times(which will happen to every CB), but outside of those two plays, I thought he played very well also and is clearly improving.
After 1 1/2 games, I also don’t think that going from Van Hook to Theard has been much of a drop off.
We are getting so much quality early production out of our new guys, but one area where our new JC guys have not had an impact, are our 2 new JC ends(Williams and Taylor). It’s rare to be getting so much early success from JC guys(the old saying was that when you recruit a JC guy, you are only getting them for one year because they need a year to adjust). So is there hope that these two guys are going to turn the corner in the future, or do we need to actively work to upgrade them? At this point, I am leaning more towards needing to upgrade, with Taylor having the more shown potential of the two thus far.
I have mentioned this before, but when Deion Hankins was coming on the scene early in High School, people were mentioning that he was a SEC level RB and I thought that we would never get a chance to see him in a UTEP uniform. Now that he is playing for us and living up to what we hoped he could become, is a really nice feeling. Dimel and Staff have mostly improved our talent by doing a good job of evaluating under the radar guys, but Hankins is one of the few examples of where Dimel went out and actually beat people in recruiting.
Dimel has done a good job of getting the discipline and penalties under control compared to last year. That is even more impressive when considering all of the new players and the lack of normal practice time. We still had some of the same knuckleheaded play clock expiring issues yesterday in the second half, but overall, our discipline has been much improved this season.
The win and 3-1 record feels good and for the first time in a long time there is at least a positive buzz regarding us, even with some of the national media. Dave Campbell’s even has us ranked today as the #5 best team in Texas and even they mentioned in their podcast that they don’t think that has ever happened before. I don’t know if we are really a good team or not?, in fact I would lean towards not. Our best chance remaining looks to be the home game verses So. Miss. So I just hope that we can get through the bye week with no COVID outbreak and the La. Tech game without any injuries(as well as having at least a few things go well for us in that game, so that we can keep some of our confidence). What I do feel confident about saying, is that if a coach should be judged based on if his program is either improving or not improving, then I don’t think that there is any doubt that UTEP is a better team this year compared to last year.
I was also impressed with Fryar’s blocking potential as a TE. He is another young JC guy(a redshirt freshman from NMMI). This was my first time watching him and I think he can be solid.
UTEP made an O-line adjustment in this game, by playing playing more Darta Lee at LT and mixing in Henry with Byers at RT.
I know that the staff likes Fields because of his good ball security and he is dependable with his responsibilities in the blocking schemes. I can respect that those are important aspects, especially when trying to grind out early wins, as we have done. I also don’t blame Josh, as there just have not been a lot of holes for him to run through this year. But it still almost feels like we are wasting a carry every time that he runs the ball. It just feels like we should be more aggressively developing a higher upside back like Awatt or Eldridge via more carries.
Grinding out wins against lower level teams is one thing and it is even fine when we are still building our program(as we currently are), but at some point we are going to want to take a next step and in order to do that some areas will need to be upgraded. It is never an easy thought to replace guys, but some areas that really could use an upgrade on offense are Fields carries at RB, Walter Dawn’s slot WR position and man if we were somehow able to find a true big transfer #1 WR, which would allow Cowing and Garrett to shift down to the #2 WR and #3 WR roles, then we could have a legitimate high end CUSA level passing game.
Our defense has given up less than 198 yards passing in 3 of our 4 games this year.
Dennis Barnes is another new JC guy, who got beat a couple of times(which will happen to every CB), but outside of those two plays, I thought he played very well also and is clearly improving.
After 1 1/2 games, I also don’t think that going from Van Hook to Theard has been much of a drop off.
We are getting so much quality early production out of our new guys, but one area where our new JC guys have not had an impact, are our 2 new JC ends(Williams and Taylor). It’s rare to be getting so much early success from JC guys(the old saying was that when you recruit a JC guy, you are only getting them for one year because they need a year to adjust). So is there hope that these two guys are going to turn the corner in the future, or do we need to actively work to upgrade them? At this point, I am leaning more towards needing to upgrade, with Taylor having the more shown potential of the two thus far.
I have mentioned this before, but when Deion Hankins was coming on the scene early in High School, people were mentioning that he was a SEC level RB and I thought that we would never get a chance to see him in a UTEP uniform. Now that he is playing for us and living up to what we hoped he could become, is a really nice feeling. Dimel and Staff have mostly improved our talent by doing a good job of evaluating under the radar guys, but Hankins is one of the few examples of where Dimel went out and actually beat people in recruiting.
Dimel has done a good job of getting the discipline and penalties under control compared to last year. That is even more impressive when considering all of the new players and the lack of normal practice time. We still had some of the same knuckleheaded play clock expiring issues yesterday in the second half, but overall, our discipline has been much improved this season.
The win and 3-1 record feels good and for the first time in a long time there is at least a positive buzz regarding us, even with some of the national media. Dave Campbell’s even has us ranked today as the #5 best team in Texas and even they mentioned in their podcast that they don’t think that has ever happened before. I don’t know if we are really a good team or not?, in fact I would lean towards not. Our best chance remaining looks to be the home game verses So. Miss. So I just hope that we can get through the bye week with no COVID outbreak and the La. Tech game without any injuries(as well as having at least a few things go well for us in that game, so that we can keep some of our confidence). What I do feel confident about saying, is that if a coach should be judged based on if his program is either improving or not improving, then I don’t think that there is any doubt that UTEP is a better team this year compared to last year.
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