Life is a roller coaster for Ball State football, but the pieces for improvement are there

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Wheeeeeee, indeed. My Ball State previews through the years have been an almost perfect progression of the Cardinals’ up-and-down nature. Ball State won nine games but was a little lucky to do so! Ball State won 10 games, and Pete Lembo is a coaching star! Ball State fell to five wins but improved enough that maybe it’s a temporary stumble!

Granted, while fortune is always temporary in Muncie, it was probably short-sighted of me to assume a rebound after 2014’s stumble. Ball State never rises or falls only once.

The five-year Pete Lembo era goes into the books as three separate stages:

BSU never managed to reach a MAC title game, but Stage 2 of Lembo’s tenure was an unmitigated success. Ball State has won nine-plus games just six times in its 41-year FBS history, and two of them came in 2012 and 2013. But things went south in a hurry.

If I had to pinpoint Lembo’s primary issue in Muncie, I would say it was recruiting. For the most part, recruiting in the MAC is laden with parity, but even as Lembo was deep in his recruiting grace period -- the first few years when what you’re selling can’t be proven wrong (and in Lembo’s case, what he was selling coincided with definitive improvement) -- his best class ranked just fifth in the MAC per the 247Sports Composite. His 2012 and 2013 classes ranked just seventh, and following the 5-7 year, his 2015 class ranked 10th. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that his 2015 team basically finished tied for ninth in the conference standings.

Lembo couldn’t get the defensive side of the ball figured out, and the offense spent two years in flux after the departure of Keith Wenning and members of his supporting cast in 2013. Without the offensive upside, the flaws were magnified, and BSU went from 19-7 in two years to 8-16 the next two.

Instead of waiting around to get fired, Lembo left to take a job(s) as assistant head coach/special teams coordinator/tight ends coach at Maryland. Both he and BSU got a fresh start, and in response, the university basically hired Lembo’s opposite.

Whereas Lembo a) gave a pretty laidback public face, b) brought a decade’s worth of college head coaching experience to the table when he arrived, and c) took the job with no previous connections to the university, Mike Neu is the opposite in each regard. He is outwardly intense, he’s a Ball State grad, and he’s only coached at the college level for two years over the last two decades.

Between 1998 and 2008, Neu coached for four different arena football teams -- the Nashville Kats (offensive coordinator), Augusta Stallions (head coach), Carolina Cobras (offensive coordinator, then head coach), and New Orleans VooDoo (head coach). Since then, he has spent seven years with the New Orleans Saints (player personnel assistant, then QBs coach) with a short stint at Tulane (QBs coach) in the middle.

Neu is uniquely qualified as an alum with six years of head coaching experience (and 54 career wins), but he hasn’t coached above the Mason-Dixon Line since he was a BSU graduate assistant in 1994, and he’s barely spent time at the college level since then. He is an experienced blank slate, and I have absolutely no idea what he’s capable of at this level. But knowing Ball State, there will be some extremes one way or the other.

Because of late-season improvement in 2014, I indeed felt a rebound was possible for the Cardinals last fall, but things just never got off the ground. They were okay in September -- percentile in performance in the 40s three times in four games -- and had a chance to take down an eventual 10-win Northwestern team in Week 4, but that was pretty much the end of it. Injuries and further quarterback uncertainty dragged them down, and only one performance even topped the 30th percentile the rest of the way.

It bottomed out in November. Following Lembo’s final victory, a 20-10 home win over UMass in front of just 4,576 attendees, the Cardinals cratered, losing to three solid conference foes by an average score of 50-16. It was pretty easy to see the writing on the wall at that point; Lembo was going to be hard-pressed to pull off a rebound in 2016, and he left for College Park.

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

For two straight years, BSU’s quarterback situation has been muddy. In 2014, then-sophomore Ozzie Mann began the season as the starter and looked fine against Colgate and Army. But he struggled mightily against Iowa and in an upset loss to Indiana State, and he was eventually benched in favor of then-freshman Jack Milas.

In 2015, the shoe was on the other foot. With Mann transferring to Georgetown (Kentucky), Milas began the year atop the depth chart. But after a decent game against VMI, he began the Texas A&M game just 1-for-8 with an interception. Freshman Riley Neal took over from that point forward.

Neal basically played like a freshman, with high highs and low lows. Against EMU, NIU, and UMass (two wins and a shootout loss), he completed 66 percent of his passes with a solid 144.4 passer rating; meanwhile, against Northwestern, Georgia State, WMU, and BGSU (four losses, two blowouts), those numbers were 53 percent and 96.3, respectively. It took Neal a while to play himself into games (his passer rating was below 105 in both the first and second quarter, then rose to 140.7 in the third), but he gave hints that he could eventually be pretty proficient within Lembo’s quick-passing offense.

That seems like a useless point -- he could have been good under the last guy! -- until you notice that Neu retained Lembo’s offensive coordinator, Joey Lynch. Neu and Lynch are kindred spirits of sorts; both are former BSU quarterbacks, and both rank in the school’s top 10 in career passing yards. But in retaining Lynch, Neu seems to be acknowledging that this Lembo-Lynch offense wasn’t the problem for Ball State. When the QB position is stable, this quick passing can produce efficiency and offset what has been a general lack of size.

If Lynch and Neu can pick a quarterback and stick with him (and Neal seems like the most likely choice), the offense could get back on track.

As important as the quarterback clearly is in a pass-first attack, you could certainly make the case that the Quarterback du Jour didn’t have the pieces he needed to succeed either. The run game was drastically inefficient, which is deadly if you’re trying to get away with playing a freshman quarterback. Beyond that, though, the receiving corps needed some extra punch.

Ball State is basically why I’m now listing both catch rate and success rate in the receiver tables above. Your catch rate is simply how frequently you catch the passes thrown your way, and it can easily be used as a quick-glance efficiency measure; your success rate is how frequently those passes result in a successful play (50 percent of necessary yardage on first down, 70 percent on second, 100 percent on third). It is the efficiency measure.

The Lembo-Lynch system has long been predicated on quick passes to the perimeter, which results in low sack rates and high catch rates. But while KeVonn Mabon, Corey Lacanario, and Chris Stallings combined for a strong 64 percent catch rate last year, their success rate was a miserable 42 percent, far too low for a pass-first attack.

That Ball State could neither run nor pass efficiently meant the Cardinals needed to be bailed out with big plays. They didn’t really get those either. Of the eight players who caught at least seven passes, only one averaged better than even 10.6 yards per catch, and that one player (Jordan Williams) is gone.

Assuming for a moment that Neal wins the starting job, improvement from him is likely. But that will only matter so much if these quick perimeter passes don’t occasionally turn into long gains.

A quick passing game only works if those passes occasionally go somewhere, but at the least it helps to keep defenders out of the backfield. Ball State routinely produces strong sack rates no matter the quality of the line, but the line actually kept opponents out of the backfield on run plays as well last year.

Unfortunately there are two problems with that:

1. Either the line didn’t get any sort of push, or BSU running backs were incapable of taking advantage of the blocks they got. Avoiding losses is great, but you still need actual gains, and aside from when Neal himself was tucking and running, BSU’s run game was still dreadfully inefficient.

2. The line basically has to replace four starters. Granted, because of shuffling, it still returns three players responsible for 22 of last year’s 60 starts, but turnover is still an issue. Half the two-deep is gone, and BSU is perhaps just one or two injuries away from having to dip into the freshman class to fill the first and second string.

Given that Ball State hasn’t ranked better than 83rd in Def. S&P+ since 2005, it probably isn’t a surprise that Neu decided to bring in some new blood on that side of the ball. The primary addition: defensive coordinator Tim Daoust; Daoust is from the Scott Shafer tree, having spent the last five seasons on the Syracuse staff. And while Shafer didn’t really work out as ‘Cuse head coach, his brand of crazy-aggressive defense has worked well at times.

Daoust’s primary role at Syracuse has been as defensive line coach, and Syracuse almost always had a disruptive line with him in charge. Even last year, as the defense fell from 33rd to 69th in Def. S&P+, it retained its aggression up front, ranking 37th in defensive line havoc rate.

You never know what kind of system a guy is going to create until he gets the chance to create it, but until proven otherwise I’ll assume he will be aiming for this same type of up-front aggression. That will be quite a change for Ball State, which for most of Lembo’s tenure had a bend-don’t-break attack that broke too much. One method is not obviously better than another -- aggression can obviously lead to allowing a ton of big plays -- but at this point, change for change’s sake might not be the worst idea in the world.

Ball State ranked 122nd in Havoc Rate, 120th in Adj. Sack Rate, and 93rd in stuff rate. To say the least, the Cardinals weren’t disruptive enough in 2015. But the good news is that among this year’s returnees are those who were most successfully aggressive. End Joshua Posley had 6.5 non-sack tackles for loss, rush end Anthony Winbush had five sacks, and linebacker Sean Wiggins had 4.5 TFLs and six passes defensed. And the return of tackle Darnell Smith gives Ball State a unique, quick (read: undersized) weapon in the middle.

There’s a chance that a more attacking approach will look good on this personnel. And hey, it would be hard for this defense to do any worse than it did last year.

The Ball State secondary desperately needed help from the pass rush and didn’t get any. Left to its own devices, it bombed. Opponents completed an incredible 71 percent of their passes (worst in the country by more than two percentage points) with 26 touchdowns to just seven interceptions. BSU allowed a passer rating of 160.7, which basically means that the Cardinals turned every opposing passer into Jared Goff (161.3 in 2015).

Assuming Daoust is at least a little bit more successful at generating pressure, the onus will be on the secondary to take advantage. And the Cardinals do have more experience this time around. The secondary that was so frequently torched featured two freshmen, two sophomores, and no seniors among the top eight contributors. The top eight are therefore all back, as is senior Corey Hall, who missed the final 11 games of last year. With help, corner Darius Conaway could be a particularly disruptive option.

You can only improve so much after allowing what Ball State allowed last year, but experience alone should result in lopping off some of that dreadful passer rating.

Though it produced only one touchdown, Ball State featured an efficient overall set of return games last year; this shouldn’t be a surprise, as Lembo teams frequently turned special teams into field position advantages during his tenure.

That said, the coverage units were dreadful. The Cardinals allowed 10.5 yards per punt return (94th), and while their kick return average was better (18.0 per return, 10th), Kyle Schmidt and Morgan Hagee didn’t produce much depth, which meant opponents didn’t need great returns to get out past the 25.

When you lack play-makers in both the receiving corps and secondary, that hints at problematic athleticism, which could bleed over into special teams coverage. Regardless, improvement here is mandatory.

Because success isn’t that far in the rear view, and because Ball State is returning quite a bit of last year’s production (or, if you prefer sarcastic air quotes, “production”), the Cardinals are projected 101st in S&P+. That would represent decent improvement. Obviously a coaching change makes projection quite a bit harder, but experience really could lead to a forward step or two if Neu’s changes take.

The schedule could also help. Ball State not only plays eight teams projected 97th or worse, but the Cardinals get three of those teams in the first four games. Granted, two of those three are on the road, but in all, BSU is given between a 41 and 58 percent chance of winning in seven games; that means that a bowl isn’t completely out of the question.

Ball State now bears the burden of proof, and we have no idea what kind of coach Mike Neu will be. But after a two-year stumble, the Cardinals at least have something to shoot for in Neu’s first year. And if a play-maker or two emerges, the Cardinals could be in business. This might be the start of another roller coaster ride.