USF Bulls College Football Preview 2021: Keys To The Season
USF Bulls Biggest Key: Offense
Keep things moving. There wasn’t enough of a steady running game, the passing attack wasn’t consistent, and there weren’t enough big plays to rely on. Going forward with this veteran offense with a whole slew of good parts, converting on third downs is a big deal.
The Bulls seemed to hit everything in the wild and fun shootout loss to UCF, and they started the season converting 41% of their chances against Citadel from the FCS. In between they failed to hit 40% on third downs in any of the seven games and finished the season converting just 31% of the time.
USF Bulls Biggest Key: Defense
Find one thing this group can do really, really well. Find a positive identity that other teams have to worry about.
Coming up with sacks and pressure in the backfield might be it – at least from the linebacking corps – and the D was decent at taking the ball away, but teams that could run on the Bulls ran, and teams that wanted throw were able to throw.
Shockingly, USF did a nice job of holding down Cincinnati, but everyone else either ran for 200 yards threw for 270 or more.
USF Bulls Key Player To A Successful Season
DT Kelvin Pinkney, Sr.
Name your position and it could be the key to a good year – quarterback is probably front and center – but the defensive improvement has to start on the inside, and the 6-3, 315-pound Pinkney is the veteran bulk on the nose.
It’s his fifth season after working mostly in a rotation early on before taking on a larger role, making 57 career tackles with 4.5 sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss. The stats aren’t as big as his ability to hold up as the anchor.
USF Bulls Key Game To The 2021 Season
at SMU, Oct. 2
Just how much has the team improved over the last year? It’s going to be a really, really rough run early with at NC State, Florida, and at BYU before starting out the American Athletic Conference season going to SMU.
The finishing kick is a bear, and the home dates aren’t a breeze, so this is about as tone-setter as a conference opener gets. The Bulls won three in a row in the series before losing in 2019.
2020 USF Bulls Fun Stats
– 1st Quarter Scoring: Opponents 92 – USF 37
– 3rd Down Conversions: Opponents 71-of-141 (50%) – USF 38-of-124 (31%)
– Fumbles: USF 13 (lost 11) – Opponents 10 (lost 3)