When will C-USA’s most consistent team win the conference?

The Bulldogs should improve offensively, but can they overcome the loss of an all-time great pass rusher?

Bill C’s annual preview series of every FBS team in college football continues. Catch up here!

When Louisiana Tech looks good, Louisiana Tech looks great. And the way it happens, with high-level athleticism and giant chips on shoulders, feels natural. Watch the Bulldogs beat nine-win North Texas, trail LSU by three points midway through the fourth quarter, and pummel Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl, as they did in 2018, and you view them as the program with the highest upside in Conference USA.

They seem to provide these moments every year. In 2017, they lost to nine-win South Carolina by one in Columbia and humiliated SMU in the Frisco Bowl. In 2016, they lost to Arkansas by one, beat the best WKU team of all time, and beat Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl.

Skip Holtz and Tech win eight or nine games, scare the hell out of a P5 team, and peak in bowl season. They produce high-ranking draft picks — end Jaylon Ferguson this year, first-rounder Vernon Butler in 2016, etc.

There are far worse fates. But there are also better.

After winning nine games each year from 2014-16 and serving as official C-USA bridesmaid, the Bulldogs slipped to seven in 2017 and eight last year. They finished 45th in S&P+ in 2015 but slipped to 60th in 2016, then 93rd and 94th. And for all the upside, there are also duds — a narrow win over hapless UTEP and a 15-point loss to 3-9 WKU last year, for instance. The offense dominates and the defense craters (16th in Off. S&P+ and 112th in Def. S&P+ in 2016), then one hole gets filled and is replaced by another (56th on defense and 111th on offense in 2018).

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We could see a similar plot reversal in 2019. The offense returns almost everyone and boasts a high-upside, low-downside QB in J’Mar Smith, a big-play receiver in Adrian Hardy, and a line that returns six players with starting experience. After a steep two-year slide, it would be a surprise if the Bulldogs’ offense didn’t bounce back. But the defense loses Jaylon.

After a productive first three seasons in Ruston, Ferguson absolutely erupted last year. He logged 26 tackles for loss (which raised his career total to 66.5, or more than 16 per season) and 17 sacks (which gave him 45 overall, most in NCAA history). He was the center of gravity for a defense that ranked fourth in the country in sack rate.

Worse, Ferguson leaves with a lot of his friends. Tech must replace seven of last year’s top nine linemen, essentially leaving junior end Willie Baker, senior tackle Ka’Derrion Mason, and a bunch of freshmen and sophomores. Most of the linebacking corps and secondary return, but the team’s biggest strength now has the most to replace. And Holtz just made a coordinator hire that could change the identity of the defense.

That could make it difficult for Holtz to get over the hump and finally secure a conference title in 2019. Pure upside will give the Bulldogs a shot, as will a schedule that requires C-USA West contenders Southern Miss and North Texas to play at Tech. But just as one side of the ball gets its act back together, it’s conceivable the other will fall off again, and Tech might have to again settle for merely being the most solid program in an unsteady league.

Offense

Heading into October, it appeared that Tech had solved its 2017 offensive issues. The Bulldogs had put up 54 points on Southern, 21 on a tremendous LSU defense, and 29 on North Texas. They were 43rd in Off. S&P+ as September ended. But then came two different funks.

• First 4 games: 6.1 yards per play, 33.5 points per game, 54 percent average offensive percentile rating
• Next 3 games: 4.9 yards per play, 23.0 points per game, 46 percent average offensive percentile rating
• Next 5 games: 4.8 yards per play, 17.4 points per game, 27 percent average offensive percentile rating

As the season wore on, the defenses on the schedule got worse, and Tech’s production still slid.

So what happened? A key injury/suspension? Not really. It seems a bunch of minor injuries led to a lineup that slightly changed every week. The top two running backs missed a combined three games, two of the top four receivers missed time, and perhaps most importantly, a whopping 10 linemen started at least one game (only two started all 13). It was like there was a new starting left guard every week.

A lack of continuity can have a cumulative effect on chemistry. But if you’re Louisiana Tech right now, you’re pointing out that it also has an effect on the depth of offensive experience.

Smith’s back for his senior season, and the skill depth is impressive. Jaqwis Dancy and Israel Tucker, last year’s top backs, return after combining for 1,253 rushing/receiving yards, and six of the top seven receivers are back as well. There are some losses up front — namely, all-conference tackle O’Shea Dugas— but six of the 10 who started a game are back, at least, and Holtz added two JUCO OLs to maintain some depth.

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If the Tech offense couldn’t generate big plays, it wasn’t consistent enough to score points. In eight wins, the top four receivers (Hardy, Teddy Veal, Alfred Smith, and Rhashid Bonnette) combined to average 13.7 yards per catch with a 62 percent catch rate; in five losses, it was 10.9 and 59 percent, respectively.

It was the same for the running backs. Combining rushes and receptions, Dancy and Tucker averaged 5.4 yards per touch in wins and 4.1 in losses.

One other problem: red zone stalls. Tech ranked 97th in points per scoring opportunity (first downs inside the opponent’s 40), 100th in inside-the-10 success rate, and 87th in goal line success rate. These failures were of direct importance in the loss to WKU — the Bulldogs created two more scoring opportunities than the Hilltoppers but scored just 13 points in seven chances. WKU scored 28 in five.

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The potential remains obvious, though. Hardy blossomed as a sophomore, with four games of at least nine catches (he had 10 for 181 and two scores against LSU), and Bonnette had 19 for 272 yards in the first four games but missed the second half of the season with an ankle injury. Plus, a lot of Tech’s most-touted recent recruits are in the skill corps: juniors Hardy and Alfred Smith, redshirt freshmen Smoke Harris and Tahj Magee, etc.

There are quite a few weapons for J’Mar Smith and coordinator Todd Fitch, in other words. And Smith has one more season to figure out how to play consistent ball. Two seasons as a starter have produced ups and downs, and most of the “ups” have come early in the year:

• Smith passing in August/September: 58 percent completion rate, 13.0 yards per completion, 133.6 passer rating
• Smith passing in October: 57 percent completion rate, 12.6 yards per completion, 124.9 passer rating
• Smith passing in November: 55 percent completion rate, 11.3 yards per completion, 110.0 passer rating

Though Smith has owned two bowl games, his effectiveness has dissipated over the course of the last two seasons. That’s not a great thing if you consider yourself a conference contender.

Defense

Ferguson was so good in 2018 that it doesn’t do any good to talk much about last year’s defense stats. So let’s skip right to listing the assets that will still be in Ruston this fall.

That list has to start with Amik Robertson.

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Robertson might be the league’s best DB. After combining 11 passes defensed with 7.5 tackles for loss as a freshman in 2017, he went for 16 and 7.5, respectively, as a sophomore. If you think that sounds like an incredibly unique combination, you’re right: between 2005 and 2017, only six FBS defenders did it, less than 0.5 per season.

If this defense has a new anchor, it’s him. Tech has a couple of rotation safeties to replace, but Robertson will still have fellow corner L’Jarius Sneed and senior safeties Darryl Lewis, James Jackson, and Ephraim Kitchen back there. Obviously everyone’s job was easier with Ferguson wreaking havoc up front, but this should be an excellent secondary regardless.

The next names on the Gotta Mention list: end Willie Baker and linebacker Collin Scott. Even with Ferguson snarfing up TFLs, Baker and Scott managed 21 TFLs and 11 sacks between them. They are the only two returning members of the front seven who made more than 16.5 tackles last season, but they’re good starting points.

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Actually, there’s one more familiar name we should mention: Bob Diaco. When defensive coordinator Blake Baker left for the same role at Miami (under another former LT DC, Manny Diaz), Holtz replaced him with the former UConn head coach and Notre Dame DC.

It’s an interesting hire, primarily because his best defenses were geared more toward big-play prevention — bend-don’t-break, so to speak — instead of the attacking ball Baker and Diaz espoused. Maybe that makes sense in a year in which Tech is replacing so much attacking talent, but it’s an interesting potential shift.

Special Teams

So it’s a bad news, bad news situation.

The bad news: the best aspects of last year’s units — Teddy Veal in punt returns and Davan Dyer on punts — are gone.

The other bad news: everything else was really, really bad. Tech ranked 125th in kickoff efficiency, 118th in kick return efficiency, and 100th in FG efficiency, and you can’t say it’s because there were a bunch of freshmen. Returning kicker Bailey Hale appears limited in range (12-for-14 under 40 yards, 3-for-8 beyond), and in kickoffs Tech combined a lack of touchbacks from Hale with iffy coverage. Tech plummeted from 50th to 116th in Special Teams S&P+, and it’s hard to predict an immediate rebound.

2019 outlook

In the 2016 and 2017 classes, Tech’s average recruiting ranking, per the 247Sports Composite, was around 0.7900 — basically a high-two-star average. In 2018 and 2019, Holtz has raised that to over 0.8200, signing 30 combined three-stars. There are exciting true and redshirt freshmen in basically every unit, and Holtz has been in Ruston long enough to prove that he’s got a developmental program.

So the future remains bright. And the present ain’t bad either.

But replacing Ferguson, a lot of his line cohorts, and his aggressive coordinator is a tall ask.

The schedule will help, though. Projected 86th in S&P+, Tech plays only one team projected higher than 74th (Texas in Week 1) and is given at least a 41 percent win probability in all of its other 11 games. If the offense improves more than projected or the defense avoids a total collapse (and that pass defense could be awfully good), then maybe the stars finally align.

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All 2019 preview data to date.