ORLANDO, Fla – UCF’s fall from the football graces has been as swift as it has been vicious; shocking both the organization and the fans alike after consecutive conference titles.
The 0-5 Knights do not in any way resemble the O’Leary coached teams that have personified toughness, persistence and the will to win of the past decade. With massive turnover on both sides of the ball there was a certain level of uncertainty headed into the season, but a devastating string of injuries have left them without a clear identity and with huge weaknesses in key areas due to extensive youth.
“When you have young kids, when you’re the third youngest team in the country and you lose nine, ten, I don’t know how many kids that would have started, your young kids are elevated right away and some kids aren’t ready to play yet,” O’Leary said at Monday’s press conference.
Inexperience has been the Achilles’ heel of the 2015 squad. It has been apparent to anyone who has witnessed a game this year that the talent level is not the same, that the Knights have simply not been able to compete or to finish games.
“They’re not strong enough, they don’t understand the speed of the game but they’ve got to play. There’s just too many of them at key positions – at the receiving corps, at the secondary – positions that have to move the chains on offense and positions that have to stop the big score on defense,” O’Leary said. “That’s really where we’re getting hurt a little bit as far as some of the game’s big plays on defense, which you can’t give up.”
As it stands, the program leads in the nation in games missed due to injuries on offense.
Quarterback Justin Holman has missed four games, center Joey Grant is out for the season, offensive lineman Chavis Dickey has missed three, number one wide receiver Jordan Akins is out for the year and Dontravious Wilson is still not back to full speed.
Not one of the active wide receivers had a recorded reception in his collegiate career before this season. UCF is the only school in the nation without a senior at the skill positions, and it has been strikingly apparent in regards to production.
“The key is there is a reason you play better as a senior or a redshirt senior than you do as a junior or a sophomore is that you’ve got more experience on the field, you see more and that’s what we’re not seeing right now. Our vision in the secondary needs to improve. Our understanding of receiving play and concepts needs to improve,” O’Leary said.
Things will get better over time, and if it wasn’t for losing starters in every phase of the gameplan there would be a different conversation around UCF football, but it will not happen instantaneously. There is no quick fix to turn this depleted team around.
“You move on,” O’Leary said. “You’ve been a this long enough and everybody has answers, but really the only answer is that we have to play better, stop making mistakes, and there’s not a lot of things you can do, there’s no magic wand you can wave and I think the kids need to understand that. We’re losing games because of what we’re doing, not necessarily what other people are doing. Missed tackles, turnovers – those are things that we can correct and we’ve got to get them corrected.”
It does not seem that the spirit of the players has left them completely, but even O’Leary has admitted that the season is not what Knights’ fans are used to, going to so far as to relent that 2015 might be a building block for the future.
“Rebuilding? I don’t know what word I’d use for it. But rebuilding is fine,” he said.
The AAC title is not yet out of reach with only one conference game out of the way, but it certainly will take rapid and drastic improvements to get there.
Photo Credit: Aileen Perilla
