Florida Atlantic (1-11, 0-8)--The final year of legendary coach Howard Schnellenberger's career was disastrous. The Owls lost all their conference games and only won 1 game all year long. The Owls were horrible on offense ranking in the bottom 12 nationally in passing yards as well as rushing yards. FAU was even worse at scoring averaging a paltry 12.9 points for game, good for second worst in the country. In 6 of the 12 games, the Owls scored less than 10 points including being shut out 3 times. The only reason the scoring average over 12 was that FAU scored over 30 points in a loss to ULL and over 30 in a win versus UAB. The only offensive positive was running back Alfred Morris who is lost to graduation and a chance at the NFL.
Defensively, the Owls were 103rd nationally giving up 24.7 points per game on the season. The Owls only held two opponents to fewer than 30 points but lost the games by a combined 46-0. The nicest thing to say about the FAU defense was that it was an unmitigated disaster and could not be much worse than it was in 2011.
With the departure of Coach Schnellenberger to retirement, Coach Carl Pelini steps in. Coach Pelini is the younger brother of Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini. He comes in with a defensive pedigree that is second to none in the college football universe. This is Pelini's first head coaching job but it works out well due to the low expectations for FAU in 2012.
With changes in the coaching staff as well as such a horrible 2011 season, things will not get much better in 2012. There are not many scenarios that see the Owls winning more than 3 games. Pelini has his work cut out for him and will get plenty of time to fix a program that has fallen off significantly in the last couple of years.
No comments:
Post a Comment