Pre Rutgers (Week 13, 2013)

We’re coming up on the first of our final 2 home games this season. The opponent is the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers, a 5-4 team who are better than their record but have been having a very up and down season. The Scarlet Knights offense essentially is a see-saw and Gary Nova is the fulcrum. The offense goes as Gary Nova goes; if he has a good game, the offense will be working as efficiently as any; if he has a bad game, we see more turnovers, errant passes, and hampered offensive production as evidenced in the Louisville and Houston. Coach O’Leary said it best in his Tuesday evening radio show, Nova is a streaky passer. He’s got the ability to throw the ball as good as anyone (he’s thrown only one less passing TD than our own Blake Bortles) but when he gets pressured or doesn’t have time to get into a rhythm, he goes cold and his play drastically suffers.

 Getting pressure on the QB early or at the least having tight coverage will be the key to beating Rutgers. Our D-line, which has already been producing less than desirable results, has been weathered down through the course of the season from injuries and players leaving the team. With the losses of starters Deion Green and more recently Seyvon Lowry to season-ending injuries, UCF is forced to start freshmen who have the speed but lack the size needed to shed their blocks and generate pressure quick enough to disrupt the play and get to the quarterback. On the interior, Coach O’Leary says that we have the desired size but we need to see a better second-effort following their initial move when battling their blocker and we also need to do a better job of closing the passing and running lanes that allow quarterback to get easy completions or scramble for a big chunk of yards as we saw with Houston’s O’Korn and with South Carolina’s Connor Shaw before he went down with an injury. It goes without saying that our defense absolutely cannot afford to have another absolutely atrocious tackling display as it did against temple, hopefully the defense can tighten up the pass coverage and focus heavily on getting players in the best position to make the tackle. Barring any unforeseeable miscues or errors, if our offense continues to play as it has all season (possibly improving red-zone efficiency) and our defense gets back to the form it was before the Temple game, we should be able to execute the gameplan to take home another W en route to our Black Friday matchup with USF, clinching the first American conference title and the last AQ BCS bid of the American Athletic Conference.