Charlotte 49ers College Football Preview 2021: What Will Happen, Season Prediction
When Charlotte got to seven wins and a bowl game in 2019, it helped that it played a whole slew of mediocre-to-awful teams to get to the Bahamas Bowl.
But so what? Charlotte just started doing this football thing in 2013, and then got into the Conference USA world in 2015. So there’s no reason to think that the 2-4 2020 season had much more to do with anything other than 1) a global pandemic and 2) better teams on the slate.
To be very, very respectful to the 2019 team, it managed to shock Marshall as the one strong win, but for the most part it lost to the teams it was supposed to.
The same thing happened last year. Appalachian State, Florida Atlantic, Duke and WKU were all better than Charlotte, and North Texas and UTEP weren’t.
And that’s what’s going to make this year so interesting in the third year under head coach Will Healy. There aren’t enough teams on the slate that the 49ers are going to be favored against, but there’s the talent and experience in place – at least on offense – to win some of the tougher games anyway.
Set The Charlotte 49ers Regular Season Win Total At … 4.5
Duke and at Illinois. Unless there’s a shocker, take those two out of the mix, but out of home games against Gardner-Webb, Middle Tennessee and Rice, going at least 2-1 isn’t asking for the world.
It’s possible to win a road game at Old Dominion, pull off a home victory over Florida Atlantic if everything goes right, and hope for a few more breaks to make this a decent year, but there are too many road blocks to make it a second bowl season in three seasons.
But Healy and this program have defied expectations before. There’s a good chance they get into mid-November with a shot to get to six wins …
But they’ll come up just short.
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– What You Need To Know: Offense | Defense
– Top Players | Keys To The Season
– Charlotte Schedule Analysis