Not really. NC State, top to bottom is not a good football team. Fan reactions are just a lot different than they used to be for this program. Ten years ago, this win would have been business as usual. Nowadays, our fanbase is so starved for a quality win, that any victory over a BCS conference opponent has us on pins and needles for 48 hours wondering if we'll receive enough votes to crack the top 25. Don't get me wrong, I liked what I saw in Atlanta. It was fun to see Tennessee having its way with an opponent. But NC State is no measuring stick.
a little, I honestly thought we were going to lose to NC State, so beating them in somewhat convincing fashion changed my tune just a little. If nothing else, we are 4-0 going into a big game with Georgia in the national spotlight at the end of the month. Not my normal expectations, but this start would be head and shoulders better than previous years. The last time I had that UT is a decent football team feel was 09 UGA and USCe games.
My outlook has improved considerably. I thought it was possible we would look like the squad that went to Lexington all year, if we stumbled in that game.
This. I kinda expected the NC State game to play out like it did, but there was the nagging possibility in the back of my mind of the back half of 2011 Part Two
Hate to sound like a coach but there's quite a few winnable games that are also losable. Maybe I feel better about what we've got, but they're gonna have to prove it weekly.
While the first half contained most of the highlights and eye catching plays. The half time adjustments and bouncing back from a bad end to the first half are more impressive. If Sal can get and keep the LBs and Safteys in the right spots more consistently this D could be pretty good by mid season. Im not on the 10 win season banwagon yet, but 9-3 looks doable. Some of that is aided by the early returns on the east teams. We are not gonna learn much about UT this week, but could get a better feel for the rest. Trying to hold back optimism is hard when you have sucked this long.
It's hard not to be optimistic based on that performance but the jury's still out for me without knowing how NCST actually is. I likely won't have a feel for this team until after the FL game.
it met my expectations. I still say 8-9 wins is the max for this team. Watching the rest of the SEC East makes me think 9 wins is a lot more doable, but I still think we have one more loss that just shouldn't happen with our talent. Why do I have lower than normal expectations for this football team? Because the past few years our football team has been garbage. There's roughly 9,473,298 reasons to blame for that, but it's valid. Anyone that expects the same results from this team that we expected in '98, got in '99 or had in '01 are kidding themselves. It is what is. The program went to hell in a handbasket and that lowers excpectations until we finally get rebuilt.
I keep seeing this here and especially on TOS and TOOS. It makes no sense because by all appearances Florida looks exactly as bad as many of us predicted, if not worse.
Playing Florida is as much of a test of the team's mentality as it is their ability to play football. And the former concerns me more.
