2013 Middle Tennessee football’s 10 things to know: A surprising turnaround

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We’ve got good news and bad news. First, the bad: Middle Tennessee really wasn’t a very good team last year. The Blue Raiders finished 8-4 and whipped Georgia Tech (I stand by my point that they should have been playing USC in the Sun Bowl instead of the 6-7 Yellow Jackets), but they lost to McNeese State, lucked (somewhat) into a 4-1 record in one-possession games, and fielded a pretty dreadful defense (114th in Def. F/+).

Yes, they kind of got screwed out of a bowl bid, but one can only muster so much outrage when a team that ranked 96th overall misses the postseason. That said...

...96th is better than 115th, and 8-4 is better than 2-10. Rick Stockstill pulled off one hell of a bounceback season, switching his offense up and overcoming the loss of quite a few impact players from the skill position portion of the depth chart. With a terribly inexperienced team, he saved his job and pulled off enough of a rally that Conference USA came calling. MTSU may not have been a good team, but it was a much better team, and that is to be applauded.

As a whole, MTSU teetered between competent and good. But in three losses -- McNeese State, Mississippi State, and Arkansas State -- the Blue Raiders were perhaps the worst team in the country in that given week.

Note: players in bold below are 2013 returnees. Players in italics are questionable with injury/suspension.

The formatting is funky now, but go back and look at last year’s MTSU stat profile. The Blue Raiders ran just 56 percent of the time on standard downs and just 21 percent of the time on passing downs. Logan Kilgore, then a sophomore, was done no favors by play-calling, facing a lot of “go out there and make a play on passing downs (with a pretty poor receiving corps)” situations. The result: a 59 percent completion rate, 12 interceptions, and a No. 107 Passing S&P+ ranking.

Enter Buster Faulkner. Despite his background -- before MTSU, Faulkner was Chris Hatcher’s offensive coordinator at Murray State; Hatcher is an Air Raid disciple who served as a Hal Mumme assistant at Kentucky in the late-1990s -- Faulkner took the reins of the MTSU offense in his second year in Murfreesboro and actually doubled down on the run game. MTSU raised its run rates to 69 percent on standard downs and 35 percent on passing downs, making the Blue Raiders a pretty run-heavy team overall.

For three years, Benny Cunningham was a decent backup; from 2009-11, he compiled 1,009 rushing yards (4.2 per carry) and 10 touchdowns: reasonably competent but far from spectacular. But the new offense gave him both freedom and opportunity, and he took full advantage. After carrying just 20 times for 91 yards in the first three weeks, Cunningham ripped off 217 yards and five touchdowns in the win over Georgia Tech, then rushed for 230 and two scores against Florida International two weeks later. Suddenly he was looking like a potential 1,500-yard rusher and all-Sun Belt performer. He made my Heisman column a couple of times. But late in the FIU game, he injured his knee and was lost for the season. A senior putting everything together in his final season, then going down with injury, is painfully disappointing.

In 2013, then, the line comes with expectations. Seven players with starting experience return from a line that was a pleasant surprise. If the running backs stay healthy this time around, MTSU should have a rock solid running game.

The positive spin: MTSU had twice as many sacks as its opponent in 2012!

The less positive spin: MTSU had just 14 sacks in 2012, worse than all but a handful of teams; the Blue Raiders were bad at geting to the quarterback on standard downs and awful at it on passing downs. Also: they got pushed around against the run, particularly in short yardage situations, and made next to no plays behind the line of scrimmage.

MTSU’s offensive line must have just dominated the defensive line in practice, huh? The DL was pretty awful as a whole, and improvement in 2013 will rely mostly on former three-star recruits actually becoming three-star players. Recruiting rankings have been relatively kind to MTSU as a whole -- each unit has its share of three-star guys (except the OL, one of MTSU’s best units) -- but that only matters if production occurs. Big, three-star tackles Patrick McNeil and J.D. Jones did next to nothing last year (same goes for end Alexandro Antoine), and while the depth of experience is impressive ... again, that only matters if results follow.

Perhaps by necessity, MTSU was conservative as a whole, preventing big plays better than it made them. The bend-don’t-break attack can work, but the Blue Raiders bent way, way too much in 2012. The team took huge leaps on offense and special teams last year, but MTSU will have to make a few more plays on defense for that to matter too much in Conference USA. Can this personnel, which really does have quite a few three-star (and one four-star) recruits involved, begin to translate athleticism to quality now that the two-deep features much, much more experience?

Thanks mostly to place-kicking and kick returns, MTSU’s special teams ratings were downright strong in 2012; knowing how much the field position battle matters in football, this was a huge boon to the Blue Raiders’ 4-1 record in one-possession games. Star return man Reggie Whatley returns, which is great, but kicker Carlos Lopez does not. Can MTSU shore up its dreadful kickoff and punt return units to account for the loss of Lopez?

I keep calling the move from the Sun Belt to Conference USA a “step up,” and it is, but only marginally so. If Middle Tennessee’s offense indeed improves as I expect, and if the defense can become a bit less of a sieve, the Blue Raiders should be able to crawl into the 80s, or perhaps even the mid-70s, in the F/+ rankings. Do that, and there are quite a few wins to be found.

Aside from rough trips to North Carolina and BYU (neither of which will be unwinnable), every game is within reach here if MTSU can capitalize on last year’s step forward with another one. The Blue Raiders were not as good as their record last year, but they were good enough to build optimism for what could be a pretty damn nice squad in Murfreesboro this coming fall. I love what Buster Faulkner did with this offense last year, and I think it could carry MTSU to a lovely 2013 season, defensive warts and all.