Temple runs away from UConn
Historically bad season ends with fitting type of loss
The Huskies’ 57-7 loss to Temple on Saturday sealed the program’s first one-win season since 1977, and officially allowed more points per game over a full season than any FBS team since World War I.
EAST HARTFORD – The 2018 disintegration was completed with one last Saturday annihilation at Rentschler Field, maintaining a 13-week trend and calling for edits to a national record book going back at least 100 years.
It was a fitting flop and total mess, this 57-7 loss to Temple before a few thousand masochistic fans, and when it was over we were left with numbers and rankings to back up what our eyes and minds have been telling us for weeks.
The UConn football team had the worst defense in modern college football history and the Huskies, who finished 1-11 and lost every FBS game on the schedule, were one of the worst teams, period, ever assembled on the sport’s top playing fields.
Looking no better Saturday than during the August opener against Central Florida, UConn showed little, if any, growth along the way, a disconcerting route toward the following NCAA
record book entry points …
The Huskies allowed 7,409 yards this season, 617.4 per game.
Both are national records.
They allowed 605 points, 50.41 a game. Those, too, are national records. It doesn't, it can't, get much worse.
So, why?
And, what now?
Saturday's three-hour beatdown was one of fumbles, interceptions and missed tackles. Temple, strong and physical, ran around and charged through the young Huskies.
“We don't have that temperament right now, but that will change,” coach Randy Edsall said. “That will change. 2018 is over. 2019 starts [Sunday]. Guys have to have a resolve to work and want to get bigger, faster and stronger because it's the only way you're going to be able to compete and be able to win in this league.”
Edsall held back in his postgame press conference. A coach, he said, must choose his words carefully, and he quickly noted that he thanked seniors for their effort. It's his job to be accountable. He didn't want to call this the players' fault.
But he is leaving to recruit Sunday at 6 a.m. and he made clear Saturday night that the UConn problem is that the program does not have good enough players to compete … with just about anyone. Several players with a year of eligibility remaining won't be back.
“You win with people,” Edsall said. “And you have to have the right people. Right now, we don't have all the right people yet. That's no knock. Some kids, they're here. It's not their fault. They were recruited here. Now what we've got to do is make them as best as we can. And we've got to go and recruit above them and over them. I think we did that with the freshmen we have and we're going to continue to do it, because that's the only way we're going to get better. That's the only way, pure and simple.”
Edsall went 3-9 last season with a roster he inherited and 1-11 this season with a team he essentially turned over, playing so many freshmen that looked like little kids lined up with men they were charged with trying to tackle.
Edsall essentially chose this as a startover season by putting underclassmen up and down the depth chart. For the most part, those are his guys, his recruits, and he'll ride this out with who he believes in, what he believes in. Those kids will be better next season. They have to be. Still, UConn will again be painfully inexperienced compared to the rest of the AAC.
Which reminds us: This is a long, arduous process and, yes, Edsall is working against forces that are not his doing. It's his job to judge, and then reconstruct, the roster and he's doing what he's paid to do. The path has been chosen and we need to let him steer and eventually accelerate, frustrated as fans are with the pace.
Still, it is fair after an autumn experience like this one, to wonder if there's traction to this point. It is fair to wonder about direction considering and whether this was a lost season given the lopsided scores, the dwindling attendance, the historically bad numbers that dressed up the entire product. UConn made its way to national headlines with its struggles.
“The reality is we don't have the personnel to be competitive right now, and that's evident,” athletic director David Benedict said. “I think the thing that most people easily forget is the fact that there has been so much change in this program since 2011. This is how that manifests itself.
“There's a reason why our program is where it's at. This is ever more why we brought Randy back. We're at where we're at not because of Randy. I'm confident, just like Randy is, that this will get back to where we want it to be, which is to come out on the field and be competitive week in and week out. But that does take time and it is a process.”
Asked if he continues to believe in Edsall, Benedict said, “Absolutely 100 percent.”
Asked if he continues to believe in coordinator Billy Crocker and the defensive coaching staff, what they're trying to accomplish, Edsall said, “Yeah. Yeah.”
Something has to change on that front and maybe Edsall is right in his assertion that personnel will wind up meeting the chosen styles. We'll start to find out in 2019 if he's doing this right.
“The problem,” Edsall continued, “is we're playing with linebackers who have never played linebacker. … So when we can go and get some guys who have been high school linebackers and you can work with them and you can get them seasoned, it's going to help you.
“I'm not discouraged. I'm just going to keep working. That's all I know how to do. All I know how to do is go find guys who want to be here and give it all they've got. I ain't putting up [that type of effort] anymore. … Some of these guys [need to] understand what the pride was here because that's been lost. It's been lost.”
The answer?
“We've got to find guys that love football, that want to compete,” Edsall said. “It's my program but it's their team. If they don't want it and don't want to go out and play hard and give everything they've got and put the time and effort in in the weight room to get bigger, faster, stronger, it don't matter what any coach says.”