With a 12 game regular season, we can easily break the season into early (first four games), mid (literally middle four games), and late (last four games) of the season. Our Bears are 2-2 as we close out the early season portion and enter the mid season stretch of games mark. Comparatively to the rest of our UAC conference mates, only two teams have MORE wins than us. That’d be only Austin Peay (3) and Tarleton (4). Three teams have better overall winning percentages than us but four teams don’t. Those are facts without feelings attached. Sure, I’d love to be 4-0 right now. Who wouldn’t? But if before the season started you would’ve said we would be 2-2 as we closed out the first part of the season, I wouldn’t have disagreed with you. That would have sounded about right for me considering how I looked at the schedule and realistic expectations.
Now as we enter the mid season 4 game stretch, I don’t see us coming out 2-2 or better. Three of those four games are away games and one is against FBS Florida State who actually put up a good fight against FBS juggernaut Alabama. This stretch of FSU, ACU, and Tarleton on the road and ending with UT-Rio Grande at home is brutal. Playing the way we’ve been playing, I see us going 1-3. Beating ACU or UT-Rio Grande. Now if we can figure out how to open up our offense and get our special teams woes taken care of, there is a path to possibly beat ACU and UT-Rio Grande. But don’t hold your breath on that happening. At this point I see us being 3-5 when this mid season stretch ends.
Lastly, as it stands now, the last 4 games are mostly winnable. Not to be confused with someone reading this and thinking that I said we will win them. Three of the last four are on the stripes AND three of the teams aren’t fairing better than UCA is at the moment. So I could see going 3-1 during that stretch. Which we’ll need to go if we only go 1-3 during the mid season stretch as I predicted.
But unfortunately that places our Bears at 6-6. Not acceptable and it may cost Coach Brown his job. Especially if UCA gets embarrassed on the stripes again this season. I personally think we need to go at least 7-5 and get a signature win between now and season’s end to justify retaining Coach Brown. Guess we’ll see how it goes. Go Bears!!!!
