Quote Originally Posted by somebodyshotmypaw View Post
I agree. The depth isn't good. We don't have the talent we are used to having. There are no Alcorns or Abilene Christians on the schedule. We don't have the depth for COVID or injuries. We are going to take our lumps on defense this year. I don't see any way around it.
We are not going to be good, but if you're talking about conference only stats, everybody is in the same boat, so it won't matter for conference rankings, and not everybody in the SEC is a powerhouse. We're going to be bottom third of the conference on defense. I don't think even the most optimistic fan is expecting us to be better than the 9th best defense. But the people acting like we are going to be historically bad are probably overly pessimistic.

We allowed 32 pts per game in conference last year. If you look at the actual game scores from last year and our schedule this year, it's not crazy to think we'll do a little better this year. We're not going to 24 points a game, but we might could get under 30. Just hard to say because there are so many unknowns. Our pts per game stats could improve a lot if our offense is competent and doesn't have a ton of three and outs and just gives our defense some breathers. We could have a couple of key injuries and be really, really bad. But we're probably going to look a lot like we did last year, which was bad but not horrific. Hopefully an adequate strength and conditioning program and accountability will have us look as good as our defense did with all the players available, which if we can do that, will probably result in us having improved SEC only, per game stats year over year, and probably ending up in that 9th or 10th in the SEC rather than the bottom.