All the articles and stories I have read about the upcoming football season, all the "experts" say the same thing. FAU's team is extemely inexperienced and young.

Last year they were extemely inexperienced and young. How long does it take to become experienced and a little older? Does the media not know what they are talking about? Is all this news reported without looking at the teams or getting reports on performance and progress?

Or is the team still extemely inexperienced and young? They had the seaon from hell last year. That should produce some veterans.

I think that goes on until a team wins a meaningful game. I think we will surprise some people this season. All those experiences in Kansas, Louisville and Minnesota has to make these players better not worse.

I think you'll see the inexperienced label until 2007 when the lineup is full of juniors. When you look at our roster and see a bunch of freshman and sophomore players, the media is going to just assume that they lack experience, although for the Owls that is not really the case with most of the young players having at least a full season of actual game experience.

fauowls44 said

I think you'll see the inexperienced label until 2007 when the lineup is full of juniors. When you look at our roster and see a bunch of freshman and sophomore players, the media is going to just assume that they lack experience, although for the Owls that is not really the case with most of the young players having at least a full season of actual game experience.

I agree totally. But the writers either don't know about the youngsters getting actual game time or don't care.

The cycle of a lineup full of juniors will have to come to an end sometime. If not, 2009 will be a repeat of this past season. Hopefully, after the 2008 season, there are only 6-7 starters graduating, 6-7 the next season, and so on. 16 graduating starters is not good for the program.

2009? You jumped pretty far into the future. I see your point but like any other football program, FAU will have to replace outgoing players every year. Most of your successful football teams are loaded with juniors and seniors. But there are some good freshmen and sophs waiting in the wing too. The make-up of last year's young team was due to the loss of the entire 2001 team. FAU is not a start-up football program anymore so the transition of players is only marginal.

True freshmen and redshirt players will be playing by then so the loss of entire senior classes will not happen again. Now add in the addition of more "highly recruited players" who will chose FAU over other schools and you have a good pipeline of players. That's the key. Getting in some good players who would have left the state to play elsewhere. We need to get/keep those type of players here at FAU.

Eventually FAU will be in a situation where the team won't lose 15+ starters every year. That really hurt the team in the past. The experience gained from last year will go a long way in the next 2-3 seasons. By the time last years youngsters are seniors, the squad will be kicking in the door to the SBC title. GO OWLS!!!

First we where in a two year transition period in our move from 1-AA to 1-A and now we our in a similar two year transition of physically getting the players that are 1-A talent. This will be another re-building year for this team.

This is still a young team and are much further ahead in our development then the previous year, which should make a difference on the field. Will this relate to more wins, but instead on answering that question with a YES, I think what we will see is a more confident team, a more disciplined team (which includes those awfull and costly mistakes that turned scoring opportunities last year to zip), thus putting us in better position to posibly win more games. The potential is there for us to have a good season and we also need to remember that with young players mistakes will occur.

We have an unproven QB (still to be determined) at the helms, seasoned RB and TB and OL - young WR and TE, which leads me to believe that our running game will have to be our strenght for the first time in our brief history, something that has not been solid or consistant yet. If our back field steps up and the chosen QB avoided mistakes and make solid decisions, then our offense should be an improve unit. And this lead back to maybe WHY Souverain was not part of the QB race after Spring ball. As great of an athlete he was, he may not have flip the bill for the need we have from the QB position going into the season and that is consistancy which IMO Clayton and Smith provided better decision making under pressure, while Souverain made more costly mistakes. Our QB's will have to make solid decisions if we our going to have success this year on offense.

On defense, I am still trying to figure out where we stand as a unit - we have a strange mix of youth and experience and in an odd way depth. Even with the exprience there exist youth. We have lost some very good players at key positions, yet we have some very talented players ready to prove themselves. IMO, we should be a more confident group then last year which should help us to be better overall.

Overall, this will be a more confident group when the season starts.

How far along is the progression of the offensive and defensive lines? This is a big question especially on the offensive side of the ball. Do the guys have the size to compete with much bigger, stronger programs? Does anyone have a breakdown of the current size of our starting lines? GO OWLS!!!

With the type of offense we run, having lineman with mobility is just has important as having big lineman and for that matter more important (I think OG did a comparison of last years line to LSU's and we where very similar as far as size). We are getting bigger every year at the line on both side of the ball and better athletes in general.

Our problems that occur at the line is not always because of size, but break downs in assignments and going against better athletes. Just look at our Minnesota game last year and we where facing one of the top DB in the country and that does wear a team down - these type of players have a way of making plays even when you manage to slow them down ones in a while.
They create havoc even when the execution is perfect.

Both of our lines have made great strides in their developments and I do believe will make a difference on offense especially with the running game and it doesn't hurt having Sanchez back either.