Louisiana Tech is a very good football team these days. Let’s talk about that. It’s weird, right?
I mean, the Bulldogs have been playing this thing for a hundred and twenty years. There’s a rich football history in Ruston, believe it or not. A .571 all-time record is pretty good, and 25 conference championships looks pretty too (at least until you realise that precisely none of them are of the C-USA variety). LA Tech’s spent the past three decades hopping across various FBS divisions and bouts of independence, but hopefully they’ll call C-USA home for a while longer, as it seems to be a great fit for both.
On the other hand…Louisiana Tech’s never really managed to scrape the upper echelon. They’ve been ranked in just two seasons ever—1999 and 2012—and they’re top-25 in longest droughts since last appearance, as 119 AP polls have come and gone in the years since. Despite going 10-3 last year, their poor conference dragged them so far down they didn’t even sniff the rankings. (Unless you listen to TERSE, a confirmed G5-lover that pegged the Bulldogs 32nd at last year’s close.)
Suffice it to say that getting the kind of national recognition this team deserves is a tough thing to do by any stretch, given the college football world’s tried-and-tested history of ignoring good G5 teams from the middle of nowhere. If and when Skip Holtz is finally noticed by some swaggering blueblood with cash burning a hole in its pocket, the LA Tech seat will become one of the hardest jobs in FBS, what with local expectations and national cluelessness. Fail to live up to Holtz’s impressive standard and you’re out; succeed, and who cares? Aside from a few wild weeks in the heart of the 2012 season, college football has never cared about Louisiana Tech.
Today, we’re going to spend rather a while talking about one of the best teams in the country. Sure, the Bulldogs are set for a mammoth step back, what with the eleventh-worst returning production in the nation. But these previews are as much a look back to 2019 as they are a look forward to next year. And Louisiana Tech sure deserves one of the former.
Offence
2019 TERSE: 48.9 (64th)
2020 Returning Production (SP+): 61% (78th)
I’m the sort of person who likes to find optimism in college football. Of 130 FBS teams, I’m happy to see 125 of them succeed. (The banes of my existence, for those curious: Alabama, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia, and Florida.) This cavalier hopefulness has been known to get me in trouble.
At times, though, being optimistic about college football lets you find diamonds in the rough, like the senior season of LA Tech quarterback J’mar Smith, whose career numbers (56.7% completion percentage, 6131 yards, 31:15 TD-to-INT ratio) in two seasons for the Bulldogs were perfectly ordinary C-USA material. Nothing to get excited about, certainly, which is precisely when Smith went out and completed 64.3% of passes for nearly three thousand yards, 18 touchdowns, and just five interceptions in his last year with the Bulldogs. The incredible year was capped with a 14-0 victory over once-vaunted blueblood Miami in the Independence Bowl.
Now, of course, Smith has graduated, and the key cog in a unit that scored at least 35 points in 7 of 13 games is missing. To find their feet on offence, Louisiana Tech will likely turn to redshirt sophomore quarterback Aaron Allen, owner of a humdrum line (43-for-75 for 446 yards) in four brief appearances and two extended showings. Sure, those two games he started were both losses, two of the team’s three all year, but he was up against Marshall and UAB, to be fair. Ignored the 24 total points scored by a suddenly anemic offence. Please, please ignore them.
Fortunately, if Allen turns out as less-than-excellent as advertised, the Bulldogs have a contingency plan: one Justin Henderson, who racked up 1062 yards rushing and a clean 200 receiving last year. Henderson nearly lapped the team in yards from scrimmage, with next-best weapon Malik Stanley totalling just 649 at the WR slot. While Stanley graduates, his three equals at the position—Griffin Hebert, Adrian Hardy, and Cee Jay Powell all return. So long as the quarterback situation is at least decent, LA Tech should be set on offence.
Defence
2019 TERSE: 63.0 (47th)
2020 Returning Production (SP+): 31% (128th)
Statistically speaking, Louisiana Tech’s defensive success last year was a bizarre outlier, a titanic upheaval of expectations. The Bulldogs were ever-so-slightly better on defence than on offence in their 2018 season, but their returning production augured for a defensive step back.
Instead, they took a huge leap forward.
LA Tech’s defence had some great games last year. The highlight, of course, was holding Miami to the Independence Bowl’s first-ever shutout, but limiting UAB to 20 and all but four teams below 30 wasn’t too shabby at all. The Bulldog defence didn’t get things done in big games often, but it was airtight against practically every bad opponent, with only UTSA topping 21 against Louisiana Tech en route to an under-.500 record.
Given the blowouts the offence occasionally executed—scoring, remember, 35 points or more in a majority of their games—defensive totals were forgiven for lagging on occasion. There were, of course, disappointments too, chief among them giving up 45 points to Texas, a victory which looks much more impressive for the Longhorns in hindsight now that LA Tech is, you know, good. It’s easy to forget.
In terms of depth, well, it’s not looking great. Cornerback Amik Robertson was yet again fantastic, picking up five more interceptions for a total of 14 in three years in Ruston. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, but fortunately for advocates of G5 player recognition, he was so good that he headed for the NFL Draft. There’s no clear replacement, at least not in terms of ability, and the rest of the defence is suspect as well. The defensive line depth is 50/50 at best, with Willie Baker and Milton Williams back but Courtney Wallace and Connor Taylor out, and 50/50 depth at the best place for returning production on defence is not what you want.
Realistically, Louisiana Tech’s defence should fall off a cliff next year. But given what happened last year, when they were expected to regress, nothing’s certain.
The direction of the LA Tech program is rather uncertain at the moment. Skip Holtz has been in Ruston for quite a while, and the reason is clear: he’s built a habit of winning, but not quite enough to force the nation to pay attention and notice what he’s built. Eventually, though, Holtz is probably going to be plucked from the G5 ranks. (My money’s on Florida State, South Carolina, or Notre Dame, in respective order of when exactly he departs.)
More immediately, Louisiana Tech is trying to avoid the effects of one of the biggest drops from last year to this, what with the dreadful defensive returning production and the uncertainty at quarterback moving forward. Hoping for another 10-win campaign is probably an exercise in futility, but if the Bulldogs can managed 7 or 8, Holtz will have pulled off yet another successful season.
At some point, though, both Holtz and his team have to take their next step—Holtz in a burgeoning coaching career that’s been in that state for, oh, a decade or so, and Louisiana Tech to an 11- or 12-win season capped by a C-USA championship. For a team as good as they are, losing those two games last year behind a backup quarterback to drop them just behind division champ UAB comes with a heaping helping of what-if-ing.
But Louisiana Tech hasn’t yet taken that step, and until they do, the world won’t notice how fantastic they are.
CORN 