Can Texas State get out of its own way and start building a real football program?

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

On its face, it seemed a pretty natural occurrence. After nearly three seasons, Texas State fired its head coach, Everett Withers, after he went just 7-28 in charge. A bad record leads to a firing, rinse and repeat.

With the details that emerged following Withers’ dismissal, however, it began to seem like TXST was doing Withers a favor by letting him leave town.

Here are a few of the more notable reports [reporter Keff] Ciardello has tweeted recently.

* Texas State promised to cover Everett Withers’ buyout from his previous employer. They reneged on that promise, forcing Withers to pay a quarter of a million dollars out of pocket. [...]

* Several Texas State student athletes have been rampantly misdiagnosed and mistreated by an athletics training staff that is reportedly woefully inept.

* Texas State’s football coaches were forced to pay out of pocket for deli trays to feed their own players after the nutrition budget was cut with no prior notification. [...]

* The Bobcats’ recruiting budget was suddenly stonewalled with no communication, causing the coaches to directly solicit donors for emergency funds. [...]

* Texas State’s compliance team erroneously told the coaching staff that they could not blueshirt incoming recruits.

* Lastly, when Larry Teis broke the news of Withers’ firing to the players, the team verbally accosted him to the point where Teis was forced to be escorted out of the room to avoid an altercation. If message board posts are to be believed, supposedly Teis could not name a single player in the room when players started challenging him.

Yikes.

When we talk about the football potential that certain programs have or don’t have, we usually think of things in terms of recruiting and geography and whatnot. Positioned in San Marcos, halfway between San Antonio and Austin, Texas State will forever have a lot of that type of potential. But you still need an administration capable of giving coaches what they need to succeed.

It’s hard to say with any certainty that Withers was the right guy for the job. The former Minnesota and North Carolina defensive coordinator and Ohio State co-coordinator hadn’t worked in Texas for 15 years before landing the TXST job, and ... I mean ... he went 7-28. His defense made fantastic strides in 2018, and it didn’t matter because the offense was never anything but hopeless.

Still, you can’t say with certainty that he couldn’t have thrived if the administration had done its part. He was coaching with one hand tied behind his back. Would anyone have been able to succeed?

Now we get to find out if Jake Spavital can figure things out that Withers couldn’t.

Spavital certainly has more recent experience in the region. He also knows how to score points. A 33-year old former assistant at Tulsa, Houston, Oklahoma State, and Texas A&M (and, most recently, West Virginia), Spavital has been paired with plenty of the world’s renowned air raid engineers — Kevin Sumlin, Sonny Dykes, Dana Holgorsen — and landing his first head coaching job in this locale makes plenty of sense on paper.

Like any first-time HC, Spavital has a lot to prove. In this case, so do his superiors.

Spavital’s offensive coordinator hire was guaranteed to win the internet’s approval. Bob Stitt was head coach at Colorado School of Mines and Montana before spending last season as an Oklahoma State analyst. Stitt has served as a Svengali type of influence for a lot of successful offensive coaches (including many who employed Spavital), and bringing him aboard does more than appease writers like me — it also both strengthens the staff’s offensive bona fides and gives Spav the Wise Old Sage that a lot of first-time HCs try to bring to their first staff.

This offense needs all the help it can get. In three seasons under Withers, TXST ranked 121st, 127th, and 126th in Off. S&P+. Last year’s attack uncovered just enough big-play ability to score the most points of the Withers era (237), but it was too dreadfully inconsistent for that to matter too much; they scored 31 or more points in a game three times but scored exactly seven four times.

For whatever it’s worth, the 2019 TXST offense will have experience. Sophomore quarterback Tyler Vitt shared the starting role with Willie Jones III last season; both missed time with injury, but Vitt ended up with 1,159 passing yards and a decent run presence. He was far more INT-prone than Jones, who has since transferred to a junior college, but the three-star from San Antonio appears to have potential.

So does his receiving corps, at least if you squint. Senior Hutch White and junior Caleb Twyford seem to have efficiency capabilities in the right offense — they combined for a 66 percent catch rate but just 8.4 yards per catch — and junior Jeremiah Haydel is explosive (17 yards per catch over two seasons) if inconsistent (48 percent catch rate). Mason Hays has 18 catches for 270 yards over two seasons, and sophomore Javen Banks caught 10 for 161 last year, too, and among true and redshirt freshmen, there are five former three-star prospects.

Granted, all of these weapons didn’t prevent TXST from ranking 122nd in Passing S&P+ last season, but if you pin some of that on youth at quarterback and a less-than-clear vision from the coaches, you can maybe talk yourself into improvement this season. And if Vitt doesn’t grasp what Stitt is throwing at him, one of two JUCO transfers (Fullerton CC’s Gresch Jensen or Independence CC’s Chase Hildreth) might.

One figures Texas State might be throwing the ball more in 2019, and that could be a good thing, as the Bobcats didn’t get much from the running back position last year. Anthony D. Taylor “led” the way with 86 carries but averaged just 3.6 yards per carry, and junior Robert Brown Jr. didn’t top him by much (67 carries, 4.5 per carry). The return of sophomore Anthony Smith (4.8 per carry in 2017, with a 43 percent success rate that would have led last year’s RBs) from an ACL tear could help, but no one’s proven much here.

The line was a disaster last year, but you can blame at least part of that on injuries and constant shuffling. Only one player started all 12 games (honorable mention all-conference center Aaron Brewer), and Texas State became the rarest of the rare: a team that starts at least 10 guys up front. I encounter a small number of them during each preview series; it is not a designation that tends to lead to much success.

In-season continuity tends to mean a lot for a line, and TXST had absolutely none. But all 10 players who started are scheduled to return, and Spavital signed JUCO lineman Eddie Rivas and big three-star freshman Dalton Cooper, as well. Competition could produce a steadier unit. That’s how it works in theory, anyway.

In order to maintain the Bobcats’ defensive progress, Spavital went with someone he likely knows pretty well: his brother. Zac Spavital spent most of the last decade at Houston and Texas Tech, where he spent 2017-18 as co-coordinator of a defense that wasn’t good, per say (70th and 81st in Def. S&P+, respectively) but definitely improved, at least.

TXST actually topped Tech in Def. S&P+ last season, surging from 111th to 73rd. Despite minimal disruptive presence — 91st in stuff rate, 94th in havoc rate, 123rd in sack rate — the Bobcats played smart, reactive ball; they tackled well and ranked fifth in passing marginal efficiency allowed and seventh on standard downs. You didn’t make many big plays on Texas State (3.7 gains per game of 20-plus yards, 22nd in FBS), and they didn’t make it incredibly easy to make dink-and-dunk gains either.

Stylistically, this is dramatically different than Spavital’s Tech defense, which was more active and more willing to sacrifice big plays for incompletions and/or potential turnovers.

Spavital inherits one of the most experienced defenses in the country. Of the 12 players who recorded at least 23 tackles, all of them are scheduled to return.

There are key seniors at each level of the defense, from end Ishmael Davis (who led the team with eight tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks) to corner Anthony J. Taylor, but the linebacking corps, led by six seniors, is the heart of the unit.

ILBs Bryan London II, Nikolas Daniels, and Gavin Graham and OLBs Frankie Griffin, Clifton Lewis Jr, and Hal Vinson give the Bobcats depth that few other Sun Belt teams can manage, and they force Spavital’s hand when it comes to maintaining the 3-4 system from Withers’ days. Sophomore end Jakharious Smith is one of the more exciting young defenders on the team, too, and at 6’3, 210, he’s built far more like an OLB (or an SEC safety) than a DE.

The front seven is pretty senior-heavy, but the secondary is both strong and younger. Sophomore Jarron Morris could be one of the best corners in the league and pairs nicely with both Taylor and junior Kordell Rodgers. The safety corps is loaded, too, with junior Josh Newman and seniors JaShon Waddy and Jalen Smith.

My only concern here is one of style. TXST found success playing a certain way last year and held four of its last seven opponents to 20 or fewer points with it. Spavital appears to be a bit more aggressive, and maybe the personnel at hand is experienced enough to grasp and thrive with the changes.

Or maybe there is more risk-taking in 2019, and we find that the good big-play-prevention personnel isn’t nearly as impressive at making plays itself.

The next good TXST special teams unit will be the first in a half-decade. Under Dennis Franchione, the Bobcats ranked sixth, 44th, and 66th, respectively, in Special Teams S&P+ from 2012-14. They have ranked in the triple digits ever since.

The return game appears to be in good hands with Hutch White (punts) and Jeremiah Haydel (kicks), but place-kicking was utterly miserable last year. Three kickers combined to miss five of 24 PATs, make just 50 percent of their field goals under 40 yards, and make 33 percent beyond 40. They ranked 130th in FG efficiency, and while two of the three kickers were freshman, that’s inexcusably bad. And considering how much the Bobcats were punting, ranking 109th in punt efficiency was an issue, too. None of this is guaranteed to improve with current personnel.

S&P+ doesn’t take coaching changes into account, but based solely on massive levels of returning production — third-most in the country — the Bobcats are projected to improve to 102nd overall. That would be their best ranking in five seasons.

A 100th-or-so ranking in the Sun Belt tends to get you pretty close to bowl eligibility, and sure enough, S&P+ projects the Bobcats as a comfortable favorite in three games and within a touchdown in five more. If the offense improves and the defense either improves or doesn’t regress much, this could be a pretty fun season in San Marcos.

Of course, a coaching change tends to throw projections into the air a bit. Can Spavital maintain the burgeoning defensive culture while overhauling the offense? Can he keep things moving forward in some areas while completely changing others? We never really know in advance.

The numbers tell us there might be something here; history, and Texas State administration, remind us not to take that for granted.

All 2019 preview data to date.