Why Coastal Carolina Will Win The Tailgreeter Cure Bowl
The offense will speed up enough and be effective enough to keep Northern Illinois on its heels.
Kent State runs a high-powered offense – in a different sort of way from what Coastal Carolina does – but it couldn’t get going against Northern Illinois in the MAC Championship because it couldn’t do anything on third downs – Coastal Carolina leads the nation in third down conversions.
Kent State also doesn’t do much on defense – Coastal Carolina led the Sun Belt in total D.
More than that, the run defense should be able to hold up well enough to make Northern Illinois a passing team. Rocky Lombardi has been good once in a while, but the team’s goal is to run, control the clock, and make other teams handle the pace, and Coastal Carolina has the make-up and precision offensively to screw that all up.
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Why Northern Illinois Will Win The Tailgreeter Cure Bowl
Coastal Carolina’s defense has been great, but it only faced a few teams that can line up and blast away.
Appalachian State can, and it ran for 228 yards in a win over the Chanticleers. Buffalo could sort of do it early in the season, and it ran for almost 200 yards and came close to pulling off a win. Georgia State doesn’t get all that physical, but it can run, and it won.
Northern Illinois isn’t going to do anything wacky. It’s going to run, it’s going to grind the pace of the game down to a nub, and it’s going to get great offensive line play to keep the Coastal Carolina pass rush from being effective.
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