Charlotte established its identity in 2015. Can the 49ers turn that into wins in 2016?

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When you’re in the middle of the building process, and you know you don’t have the pieces in place to completely do what you want on offense and defense, you have two choices. Either go full-speed ahead with your intended style, knowing that you’re going to get lit up quite a bit in the process, or stay conservative, hoping to fail by a smaller margin.

The latter makes perfect sense. Trim the playbook down, slow the tempo, and hope that your guys get decent experience while playing for a future season. Hope they don’t get beaten down too much in the process.

The former, however, is certainly the ballsier option. And for better or worse, Brad Lambert, Charlotte’s first and only head coach since the school added football in 2013, went with the former. The 49ers’ offense played at one of the highest tempos in FBS with one of the least efficient offenses. The defense chased havoc stats while giving up 12 gains of 50-plus yards (only 10 teams gave up more).

Charlotte very clearly announced what it wanted to become in 2015. It also very clearly displayed that it wasn’t ready to become that yet. The result was a mostly disastrous 2-10 campaign. The 49ers lost only two games by fewer than 10 points and lost five by at least 24. They finished 124th out of 128 in the S&P+ ratings, ahead of conference mates North Texas and UTEP, primarily because they actually looked good a few times (whereas a team like UTEP had lower upside but probably higher downside).

You know what? Good for Lambert and Charlotte. You might as well go big and fail hard when everyone is expecting you to fail anyway. Two provisional seasons at the FCS level had produced a 10-12 record; the 49ers had barely eked by Division III power Wesley College late in the 2014 season. Absolutely nothing was expected of Charlotte last fall, and the team actually hinted at some upside (particularly on defense) in the process of routine poundings.

Expectations will remain low heading into 2016, but the 49ers bring back one of the nation’s most experienced teams, at least in terms of last year’s returning production. They return two quarterbacks who threw at least 87 passes last year, three of their top four running backs, their top four receiving targets, eight linemen with starting experience, 10 defenders who recorded at least two tackles for loss last year, and 10 defenders who defensed at least two passes.

Experience isn’t always good experience, but Charlotte returns a core of players who know exactly what is expected of them. And since they play in Conference USA, their 2016 slate features quite a few potential wins.

If you saw one Charlotte game last year, it was probably the season opener, televised and played on a Friday afternoon in the Georgia Dome. In that game, the 49ers scored their first FBS win in their first attempt, jumping out to a 20-3 halftime lead over host Georgia State, then holding on for dear life as the Panthers surged back in the fourth quarter. The 23-20 win and the easy victory over Presbyterian (in which the Niners very much looked the part of a too-athletic-for-an-FCS-opponent squad) made them 2-0.

And then reality struck.

The quality of the opponent obviously improved, and Charlotte had little to offer in return. Aggressiveness paid off far less on defense, and the offense had very little to offer. That the defense struggled wasn’t a surprise, but I actually thought the offense would be further ahead than it was in 2015. But injuries and uncertainty meant constant shuffling on the depth chart, and an unsettled lineup struggled.

Tempo is a tactic, not a universal solution. Lambert and offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen almost certainly knew that all along, but if they didn’t before 2015, they definitely do now. In terms of adjusted pace (which looks at your run-pass ratio, determines how many plays you would typically run, and compares it to your actual output), Charlotte played at the 15th-fastest tempo in FBS. Most of the 15 teams above the 49ers on the list were prolific; Charlotte was not.

The drawbacks of tempo are obvious: if you’re inefficient, a fast tempo just means you’re going three-and-out in hyper-speed and assuring that your defense gets minimal rest. Since Charlotte ranked 124th in Success Rate+, it’s safe to say the 49er defense was the least-rested in the country.

But again, this is the vision of what Mullen and Lambert want to create. They want Charlotte running a balanced, fast-as-hell offense. They didn’t have the pieces last year -- they ranked in the 120s of almost every advanced statistical category above -- but they stuck to the vision. In theory, that can pay off ... unless the constant failure stunted growth.

Note: players in bold below are 2016 returnees. Players in italics are questionable with injury/suspension.

As the saying goes, if you’ve got three quarterbacks, you’ve got no quarterbacks. Or something to that effect. Charlotte more or less employed a three-man QB rotation in 2015, relying on hot hands to determine who gets to line up behind center. That became a problem when hot hands ended up few and far between.

Matt Johnson, 2014’s starter who suffered a knee injury late in that season, started off the year pretty well; he completed 27 of 43 passes for 431 yards, three touchdowns, and two picks in Charlotte’s two wins. But he was just 5-for-13 with two interceptions against MTSU, and the carousel began. Brooks Barden went 5-for-15 as well against MTSU, so Lee McNeill got the nod against FAU and threw four picks. He held onto the job for most of the next few weeks despite minimal production; then Barden got another look late in the season with Johnson, the most mobile of the bunch, coming in for red zone and short yardage opportunities.

It was a mess. Lambert has vowed to nail down a starter this spring, and at the very least, he’ll have options from which to choose. Last year’s trio returns, and Lambert landed JUCO transfer Kevin Olsen and ECU transfer Cody Keith as well. On paper, Johnson appears to have the highest upside of the bunch, but his interception and fumble rates were quite a bit higher than the others’, and that seemed to hold him back. But hey, quick three-and-outs are only a little bit better than interceptions.

The quarterbacks’ supporting cast wasn’t particularly supportive. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. The line trotted out six different starting combinations in the first six weeks before gelling a bit. Running back Kalif Phillips ran well behind the unsettled line (first six games: 121 carries, 703 yards), then faded (last six games: 65 carries, 258 yards, and a knee injury).

But while Trent Bostick had a decent season as Charlotte’s primary big-play receiver (14.3 yards per catch, albeit with a 52 percent catch rate), perhaps the production Charlotte needed the most (and didn’t get) came from the slot.

In 2014, Austin Duke averaged an incredible 17.4 yards per catch, which is awfully rare for a slot receiver; the slot is usually the efficiency option, and last fall Duke was more of the prototype. He was a frequent target (7.7 targets per game) and averaged just 10.1 yards per catch, which is fine as long as you’re catching about 70 or 75 percent of your passes. He caught 58 percent.

After dominating in Charlotte’s two wins (16 catches, 261 yards), Duke managed more than 40 receiving yards in a game just once the rest of the way. Efficiency is vital for a tempo offense, and the bouncy Duke holds the key to keeping Charlotte’s defense off of the field. He’ll need to raise that catch rate to be effective this fall; of course, he needs help from the QB position to do that.

The Charlotte offense was a terrible disappointment in 2015, but the defense was a happy surprise. The 49ers ranked just 94th in Def. S&P+, but after allowing 32 points and 478 yards per game at the FCS level in 2014, that’s a respectable output. That rating grows even more impressive when you realize how frequently it was on the field.

Matt Wallerstedt’s unit combined a sturdy pass defense with an all-or-nothing run defense. The 49ers were above average from a havoc perspective (tackles for loss, forced fumbles, passes defensed), and they played pretty well in the red zone. And almost every disruptive presence from last year’s attack is back. More “all” and less “nothing” from the run defense, along with some faster starts (the first quarter was by far UC’s worst), could turn Charlotte’s defense into an upper-tier unit within Conference USA.

Granted, strength of schedule adjustments don’t do this defense any favors, but the raw numbers were impressive: Charlotte ranked 22nd in stuff rate, 41st in power success rate, 61st in opportunity rate, and 61st in passing downs sack rate. Larry Ogunjobi was one of college football’s most disruptive nose tackles, and Zach Duncan recorded 7.5 tackles for loss as a freshman. Nick Cook was the requisite tackling machine as a 3-4 inside linebacker, and Daquan Lucas was a constant presence both in the backfield (10 TFLs) and in pass coverage (eight passes defensed).

Charlotte must find a replacement for Caleb Clayton-Molby, Cook’s counterpart at ILB, but most of 2015’s playmakers are back, and that’s exciting.

Obviously the run defense needs to improve, but 2015 was an unquestionable success for this unit. Charlotte seems to have the requisite size for playing a 3-4 defense at the mid-major level -- Duncan is a bit small for a 3-4 end, but of the 11 linemen listed above, five are at least 280 pounds, and the 10 returning linebackers average 6’2, 230. It seems conceivable that a steadier run defense could emerge to complement the play-making.

The secondary was the opposite of the front seven: more steady, less active. But after some ups and downs, the pass defense dominated down the stretch. UTSA, Kentucky, and Rice combined for a 56 percent completion rate, 7.6 yards per completion, and a passer rating of just 94.3.

Three-star redshirt freshman Nafees Lyon, one of the stars of the 2015 recruiting class, joins a pretty crowded rotation. Corners Terrance Winchester, Tank Norman, and Anthony Covington combined for a solid eight TFLs and 19 passes defensed, while safeties Devin Pearson, Markevis Davis, and Najee Tucker play the safety-valve role well.

As we’ve learned, experience in the secondary means more than at any level of the defense, and Charlotte has a lot of it. Combine that with play-making potential in the front seven, and you’ve got a defense that could rise into the Def. S&P+ top 75 or so. And if the offense actually does it a few favors (which isn’t a given), that’s even better.

Another thing that could help the defense: actual positive contributions from the special teams unit. Charlotte ranked 125th in Special Teams S&P+, missing a third of its field goals under 40 yards and consistently dooming itself to poor field position.

That almost everybody’s back from a poor unit is a plus and minus, but at the least, Arthur Hunt’s punts are high and often unreturnable, and the return units has shown a smidge of promise. The coverage units, not so much.

We know four things about Charlotte heading into 2016:

1. The defense is close. The 49ers were aggressive and interesting on that side of the ball and return most of last year’s production.

2. The offense knows what it wants to do. The 49ers were fast and drastically unsuccessful last year, but they return most of last year’s production.

3. The two-deep will be loaded with experience. And Brad Lambert has signed a few reasonably interesting recruits in the last couple of classes to perhaps challenge the older players.

4. November is huge. The first nine games of the season alternate between coin flips (EMU, ODU, FIU) and likely losses (Louisville, Temple, Marshall, Southern Miss), but the last three games will tell the tale of Charlotte’s 2016 season. Visits from Rice and MTSU and a trip to UTSA could go well (chances of going 2-1 or better: 38 percent) or really poorly (chances of going 0-3: 18 percent). And how those games swing will determine how we judge progress in Charlotte’s second FBS campaign.

The Charlotte experiment has always been intriguing. The university is close to a lot of talent and carried with it a media market strong enough to earn inclusion in Conference USA. Fellow start-ups like South Alabama (6-6 campaigns in both its second and third seasons of FBS existence), Georgia State (a bowl in its third year), and UTSA (7-5 in its second year) have shown that you can find a reasonable amount of quick mid-major success with no history. Can the 49ers do the same?