*Preview courtesy of Libertine on AGS
Harold Nichols’ squad was a consistently tough out for nearly everyone on their schedule in 2015. The Blue Hose were competitive in nearly every game and were within one score in each of their conference losses. They were particularly sturdy on defense, holding playoff teams Coastal Carolina, Charleston Southern and Chattanooga to well below their season scoring averages. Unfortunately, tough outs are still outs and Presbyterian racked up nine of them.
But, as I said, they were very competitive in their losses – particularly on defense – so the general takeaway from 2015 should be that they would be improved in 2016, right? Right?
Well, probably not.
Offseason attrition hit PC hard and I do mean hard. Many of the 104 names listed on the Blue Hose’ 2015 football roster are missing from the 2016 list released earlier this summer. Some guys exhausted their eligibility, some no doubt chose to graduate after their redshirt junior season and some simply walked away. None of that is new to any college program but, all told, Presbyterian has to replace 42 players off of last year’s squad, approximately 40% of the team.
The good news is that, well…. there is no good news to losing 40% of anything.
The offense was often maligned last year for its ineffectiveness and rightly so. PC’s offense only scored a total of 16 touchdowns on the season with RB Darrell Bridges accounting for half of those by himself. Sadly, at least on paper, things don’t look much better for the Hose O in 2016. Last year’s offensive line was nothing special and is now down three starters to graduation. At running back, the aforementioned Darrell Bridges was and is a stud but he was playing hurt for much of the second half of the year. Blake Roberts, who was injured on the first play of the season, chose to graduate and complete his rehab as a civilian and Malik Risher, who proved ineffective, also chose to graduate. The only other bright spot in the backfield, Quahlin Patterson, a true freshman back who showed a great deal of promise and the ability to give Bridges a much-needed breather has since chosen to transfer to Division II. Last year’s leading receiver, by virtue of his 14 total catches, slot WR Marquel Hines was only a sophomore in 2015 but has disappeared from the roster without explanation. DaShawn Davis looks like the primary candidate to replace that production but, at 5’9” and 160 pounds there’s a real question of whether or not Davis’ has the physical capacity to be a season-long contributor.
On the other hand, much like a shiny nickel sticking out of a cow pie, there may yet be a bright spot for the Presbyterian offense at the most important position on the field. Over the course of the 2015 season, PC elected to play musical chairs with three different quarterbacks and rFr QB Ben Cheek was the last man sitting, getting the starting nod from Nichols for the last four games. This season, the other two quarterbacks have graduated and Cheek returns as the unquestioned leader of the offense. Will his live game experience last year and some consistency in the offense pay dividends in 2016? It’s hard to say that they won’t but any improvement over last season would be significant.
Presbyterian’s struggles on offense, fittingly, only served to highlight the successes of their highly- effective defense. Under defensive coordinator Tommy Spangler (who was also the former head coach at PC when the current head coach was the quarterbacks coach but they both have had the same offensive coordinator; it’s an odd situation), the Blue Hose defense has been stocked with three-year starters and as evolved into a highly-aggressive and intelligent unit capable of putting points on the board themselves. Unfortunately, graduation hit that side of the ball hard as well taking both starting defensive ends, two-thirds of the starting linebacker corps and three-fourths of the defensive backfield.
Special teams fared no better. Given the strength of the PC defense, punter Stephen Doar became arguably the team’s most effective single player and he filled the role admirably, punting a whopping 80 times for a 38-yard average with only three touchbacks while also serving as the holder for FG-PAT’s. But, he graduated too. As did long snapper Rob Dennis. K Brandon Morrow was a solid contributor as a freshman in 2014 but, a year later, fell into a sophomore slump and was replaced by the newest freshman kicker, Brett Norton. Morrow is now gone from the roster as well.
All told, of the 97 names listed on Presbyterian’s current football roster for 2016, seniors/r-seniors and juniors/r-juniors make up only 25 of them. The Blue Hose are going to be extremely young through the ranks but, at least, their schedule-makers took note of that and scheduled some cupcakes accordingly, right? Right?
No. No, they did not. In fact,…
The schedule:
@ Central Michigan (9/1)
@ Chattanooga (9/10)
@ Campbell (9/17)
Florida Tech (9/24)
@ Gardner-Webb (10/8)
Monmouth (10/13)
@ Charleston Southern (10/22)
Coastal Carolina (10/29)
Liberty (11/5)
@ Kennesaw State (11/12)
@ Florida (11/19)