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Sep. 1—GRAND FORKS — The trend around college football this last weekend was unkind to the underdog.
Broadly, the FBS hammered the FCS.
Blame the transfer portal, the scheduling of Power 4 rather than Group of 5 or the FCS losing top teams to the FBS the last few years. It’s a mix of all three.
With that in mind, Fighting Hawks fans — rightfully concerned about an all-out collapse to start 2024 with personnel and coaching questions — should be a bit more optimistic about the 2024 outlook coming out of a 21-3 loss at Iowa State last Saturday in Ames.
Giving up 21 points to Iowa State is a good start, a reflection of a ball-control offense and a defense that played pretty well but not great.
In UND’s previous games against opponents of the power conferences in college football, Utah’s 37 points in 2017 was the lowest it had allowed.
You can look around the Missouri Valley Football Conference to see how things could have gone.
Missouri beat Murray State 51-0. Iowa beat Illinois State 40-0. Purdue beat Indiana State 49-0.
Sure, I’m cherry-picking the results from teams not expected to challenge for a Missouri Valley title.
Let’s be honest, though, there was real concern this season the Hawks could be in that lowly mix, too: a surprising new starting quarterback who was once considered too small to play Division I football, a new offensive coordinator, four new offensive linemen, three new defensive linemen and two new starting safeties.
The opener had its warts, don’t get me wrong. The Fighting Hawks didn’t show an ability to push the ball down the field against Iowa State. The vertical passing game was relatively non-existent and first-time starter Simon Romfo was up and down in his first outing.
However, let’s not forget that was Romfo’s first outing since starting in the North Dakota Class A state championship four…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/miller-fbs-hammers-fcs-around-194400760.html
Author : Grand Forks Herald
Publish date : 2024-09-01 19:44:00
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