Good luck making predictions for either Lane Kiffin or FAU at this point

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

Retirees come to Boca Raton to figure out how to reverse the clock a bit. It evidently comes pretty naturally to the football program there.

The Owls came into existence in 2001, and Howard Schnellenberger had them in the FCS semifinals by 2003. They moved to FBS in 2005 and won the Sun Belt by 2007. Winning was so much easier for them than it was supposed to be. At first. Since beating CMU in the 2008 Motor City Bowl, FAU has averaged 3.5 wins per year.

Seriously, if you look at FAU’s history backwards, starting with 2016, it looks like a pretty standard start-up that struggles early, then begins to thrive after a decade or so.

Two years ago, a program with a backwards timeline hired Lane Kiffin, a head coach with a backwards timeline. From 2007-16, Kiffin went from NFL head coach to college head coach to college offensive coordinator, which is not how that’s supposed to work, so I guess it would make sense that things have not moved in a logical order.

Indeed, Kiffin could do no wrong for the first 12 months or so that he was in town. After a 1-3 start, his Owls won their last 10 games of 2017, and by mostly dominant margins. Only one Conference USA foe got closer than 14 points from the Owls. A nine-win North Texas got two cracks at FAU and lost by a combined 110-48.

The Owls humiliated Akron, 50-3, in the Boca Raton Bowl and finished the season 50th in S&P+. Considering the priors baked into the S&P+ pie, it’s really hard for a program with a woeful recent history and a weakish schedule to rise that high, but FAU did.

It was easy to ignore the program’s history and assume the ascendance would continue in 2018. Kiffin was breaking in a new quarterback and coordinators, sure, and that will always be a red flag of sorts. But he had stars in players like running back Devin Singletary and linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, and he had a new batch of transfers: West Virginia WR Jovon Durante, Oklahoma QB Chris Robison, etc.

In 2018, the Owls scored about nine fewer points per game and allowed about nine more. Special teams went from great to horrible. They had a huge statement opportunity in facing Oklahoma in Week 1 but instead got blasted, 63-14. They lost to UCF by 20 and to Marshall by 24. Worse yet, they lost the close games, too, going 1-4 in one-possession finishes, including 0-4 in conference play. They plummeted to 5-7, out of bowl contention.

As it turns out, losing both coordinators and your starting quarterback can matter. That’s less of a problem in 2019, but now Kiffin has to replace Singletary, Durante, and about half of his defensive two-deep. He’s scaled back on the transfers, electing to instead build via star recruits. His 2019 recruiting class easily ranked first in C-USA — per the 247Sports Composite, it was as further ahead of second-place Marshall than Marshall’s class was ahead of eighth-place Louisiana Tech.

Long-term, that could work out fine. But the transition from stopgaps to freshmen can result in some growing pains. Is there another reset year in store before FAU catches fire again? Is there even any point in trying to piece together a logical timeline for this illogical program?

I guess FAU’s 2018 offense was disappointing only if you compare it to the 2017 offense. The Owls still ranked 49th in Off. S&P+ — down from 30th — which was impressive considering they were fielding a redshirt freshman quarterback (Robison) and an offensive coordinator barely older than said quarterback (Charlie Weis Jr., who was only 24 years old when hired). Granted, we know that Kiffin serves as his own OC for all intents and purposes, but this was still a unique arrangement.

Star power makes for a pretty good set of training wheels. Robison had an up-and-down season, but he still had Singletary (1,348 yards and 22 TDs), Durante (65 catches, 876 yards, 5 TDs), and Kerrith Whyte Jr. (1,020 combined rushing and receiving yards, 10 TDs) at his disposal. There were a few too many negative rushes (105th in stuff rate) and a few too many interceptions (12 in all), but this was still a pretty good attack.

The training wheels are now off, so to speak. Singletary, Whyte, and Durante are all gone, and while the skill corps isn’t bereft of talent, a lot of players are going to be playing more important roles.

The receiving corps still has quite a bit to offer.

Robison’s season had some dramatic ups and downs — he had a passer rating under 110 six times and over 170 four times — but he was, after all, a freshman. He isn’t anymore.

The run game takes a total reset, though. Redshirt freshman Malcolm Davidson and junior James Charles combined for five carries last season; they’re your returning leaders.

Davidson was a star recruit, and one of his two carries did go for 32 yards, so maybe he’s a Singletary in the making. Plus, incoming freshman Cameron Wynn was a high-three-star prospect with SEC offers and has potential at multiple positions; maybe he finds a role in the backfield.

Or maybe a couple more transfers create a bridge year. Alabama transfer BJ Emmons rushed for 173 yards in Tuscaloosa in 2016 before transferring, and instead of joining the FAU roster in 2018, the 230-pounder sat out a year first. He should be suiting up this fall. So, too, should Arkansas State transfer Chauncey Mason. The players in the backfield are pretty exciting, but the bar is high after Singletary and Whyte.

The names are new up front, too. Three of last year’s line starters are gone, including all-conference left tackle Reggie Bain. Tackle Brandon Walton’s got 30 career starts to his name, but the line could be heavy on sophomores and/or newcomers like JUCO transfer Lavante Epson or one of three three-star freshmen.

Hiring a new coach is a crapshoot. I say it all the time during the head coaching carousel, but it goes for assistants, too. On paper, Kiffin’s hire of Tony Pecoraro to replace his brother Chris made a ton of sense. Pecoraro had done some really nice things at Southern Miss, and he came to Boca in 2018 to inherit a unit that had improved from 128th to 89th in Def. S&P+ and returned almost everyone.

Technically, Pecoraro didn’t do a terrible job. FAU improved further, if only to 82nd, and that was with Al-Shaair, his best player, missing half the season. Though the Owls got torched by OU and UCF, they did mostly fine against more mortal offenses.

Well, they did until the end of the year. North Texas averaged 7.1 yards per play in a 41-38 shootout win over FAU, and then Charlotte, with one of the worst offenses in FBS, averaged 6.5 per play in an upset that kept the Owls from bowl eligibility.

Perhaps predictably, FAU and Pecoraro parted ways after the season, and Kiffin made another hire that, at least on paper, makes a lot of sense: former Oklahoma State and Charlotte DC Glenn Spencer now comes to town.

Spencer couldn’t save Brad Lambert’s job at Charlotte, but he did basically what Chris Kiffin did in 2017, improving the 49ers’ defense from dreadful (115th in Def. S&P+ in 2017) to far more competitive (mid-80s until a late-season fade to 98th).

Spencer’s got some interesting balancing to do between veterans and exciting youngsters — Kiffin signed 13 three-star freshman defenders, including mid-three-stars in each unit: defensive ends Latrell Jean and Travon Thomas, linebackers Diamonte Howard and Tye Edwards, safety La’Darius Henry.

Despite a mediocre pass rush, FAU’s defense thrived on passing downs in 2018. (The problem was forcing passing downs.) That’s a decent endorsement of the secondary, which returns a majority of of last year’s lineup.

Corner James Pierre and safeties Zyon Gilbert and Da’Von Brown were major pieces of last year’s rotation, and a pair of nickel backs (Quran Hafiz and Korel Smith) could either thrive in that role or move to a more primary CB/safety role. Corner depth could be an issue if Smith or a freshman doesn’t step up, but there’s potential, and Pierre’s a keeper.

Spencer will require some youngsters for improvement up front, too. Linebacker Rashard Smith (5.5 tackles for loss and five passes defensed) is a star, and end Leighton McCarthy is pretty well-rounded against run and pass despite a lack of size.

Still, four of the top seven tacklers on the line are gone, as are two of the top three LBs. That opens up playing time for either freshmen or 2018 reserves like tackle Noah Jefferson and linebacker Akileis Leroy. Again, there’s potential, but the list of unknowns is longer than the list of knowns.

A sturdy special teams unit is a good thing to have in close games. FAU did not have it last year. The Owls plummeted from 13th to 114th in Special Teams S&P+, and that was with Whyte serving as one of the nation’s best kick returners.

Youth was to blame for a lot of the struggles, as Kiffin turned to freshmen for both place-kicking (Vladimir Rivas hit only 69 percent of his field goals under 40 yards and went just 1-for-4 beyond) and punting duties (Sebastian Riella averaged just 38.1 yards per kick). Theoretically, that improves with experience — it better, at least.

If we’ve learned anything over time, it’s that it’s pretty much impossible to predict what either an FAU or Kiffin team is capable of at any point in time. That seems doubly true with this 2019 team. An optimist can easily point out that Robison held his own, that most of his receiving corps is back, that the backfield still has a lot of talent, and that the defense has a decent amount of experience to offer Spencer if the injury bug doesn’t bite too hard.

A pessimist could point out that Singletary, Whyte, and Durante were outstanding to the point of irreplaceable, that Kiffin’s offense regressed despite the star power when he replaced Kendal Briles with a nearly college-aged Weis, and that the defense loses half its two-deep and is now on its third coordinator in three years. Kiffin’s 2019 recruiting class was undeniably awesome (as long as the stars reach campus, at least), and that certainly positions FAU for big things down the line. But in 2019, with a tenuous balance between less proven upperclassmen and true freshmen, you can see whatever you want to see here.

S&P+ basically punted on this year’s FAU projection. The Owls were 81st last year and are projected 79th this year, but the schedule could help a ton: the three best conference opponents FAU faces (No. 74 Southern Miss, No. 77 Marshall, and No. 88 FIU) all have to visit Boca, and the Owls are at least a slight favorite in each of their last 10 games of the year.

They were favored a lot last year, too, though. Teams on backwards timelines don’t seem to conform to statistical norms all that well.

All 2019 preview data to date.