There’s almost no question how this one is going to turn out, but we would be remiss not to discuss it a little bit. It’s not like any of the other bowl games haven’t given us interesting upsets.
By the way Fresno State, how’s that working out for you?
Houston (10-3, 6-2 C-USA) vs. Air Force (7-5, 5-3 MWC)
December 31st, 2009 12:00 PM ET
Amon G. Carter Stadium, Fort Worth, Texas
History
Created in 2003, the Armed Forces Bowl was originally called the Fort Worth Bowl for unsurprising reasons. The Bowl started under the sponsorship of PlainsCapital Bank and continued until 2005 when no corporate sponsor was available for the game. In 2006 Bell Helicopter Textron – a Fort Worth company – took over sponsorship and renamed the game the Armed Forces Bowl that we know and love today.
The products of Bell Helicopter should be familiar to most people. You have probably seen this unique flying machine. Bell also produces a large number of civilian helicopters making it likely that if you see a medical or news chopper, it has likely been produced by Bell.
This game started out as a matchup between the Big 12 and the Mountain West, but the Big 12 didn’t end up sending a team until the third year of the Bowl when Kansas managed to fill the spot. The previous two years had a WAC school and then a C-USA school replacing the Big 12. The only year the Mountain West failed to send a team to this game was 2004 when former MAC school Marshall faced off against Cincinnati.
The most interesting matchup for the Armed Forces bowl was the very first one played. Boise State faced off against TCU (sound familiar?) in 2003 which the Broncos walked away from with a 34-31 victory. That was the only other time (other than last season) that these two teams have faced each other. The Fiesta Bowl gets more exciting with every passing day!
Ok, that’s about as much enthusiasm as I can inject into that travesty of a BCS bowl selection. Let’s get back to the game at hand.
Houston
Early on this season Houston was easily generating the most excitement from fans of the “Let Chaos Ensue” strategy of eliminating the BCS. Two games in a row Houston was able to knock off a member of the Big 12 conference. The first was then number 5 Oklahoma State who they beat by 10. The second was then unranked Texas Tech by one point scored in the last seconds of the game. After that, however, things started to go a little sour.
The next week, UTEP hung 58 on Houston en route to a 17 point beating at UTEP. Houston recovered from this and won their next 5, though having lost much of the prestige they had earned in the first 3 games. A 5 point loss at UCF in mid-November knocked Houston out of the minds of the average College Football fan, and that was followed a couple weeks later by a loss at East Carolina by 6. Along the way, Houston did manage to take out up-and-comer Southern Methodist (you know them as SMU, or, better yet, those cheaters that got the death penalty) by a score of 38-15. It’s not often you see a June Jones team get mauled by 23. Oh, wait…almost forgot.
Houston is lead by a Quarterback who everyone has heard about in discussions of the Heisman Trophy, but probably got shafted by not being invited. Case Keenum had a spectacular rating of 159.3 with a 71% completion percentage on 659 throws for 5449 yards, 43 touchdowns and only 9 interceptions. Read those stats again, I’ll wait. Those are the kinds of stats that are usually put up by “system quarterbacks”, and perhaps Keenum is one of those, but he is still very very good at what he does. He’s certainly no Reggie Ball.
Given the quantity of passes Keenum throws, you might expect that he hits a wide variety of targets. You would be correct as Houston as thrown to 19 different receivers, 7 of them catching at least 2 passes per game. This makes Houston an extremely dangerous team to defend in the secondary (you’re surprised, right?). Three receivers in particular stand out: James Cleveland with 101 receptions for 1182 yards and 14 touchdowns, Tyron Carrier with 86 receptions, 998 yards and 7 touchdowns, and Patrick Edwards with 81 catches, 985 yards and 5 touchdowns.
If any team is designed to take what you give them, Houston is that team. Along with a proficient aerial attack, Houston still finds time to run the football often. Bryce Beall and Charles Sims share the load with 138 and 118 carries respectively. Sims is the more efficient of the two, gaining 5.4 yards per carry and 9 touchdowns for his efforts. Beall “only” has 4.8 ypc and 7 touchdowns to his name this season. Keenum, too, runs the ball occasionally with 132 yards and 4 touchdowns on 56 carries. If your defense actually manages to seal off the receivers, you can bet Keenum will find a way to gain yardage.
Air Force
The Falcons haven’t nearly the season that Houston has. The schedule has been particularly brutal to Air Force as they couldn’t seem to find any rhythm at all flipping back and forth between winning and losing every few weeks. They did, however, have good showings against decent teams when they did lose. The first four losses for the Falcons included a 7 point loss at Minnesota, a 3 point loss at Navy, a 3 point loss to then number 10 TCU (wasn’t quite as close as the score indicated), and a 7 point loss to then number 18 Utah. Air Force held their own quite well against good competition all season.
The one sore mark on their record was a 17 point loss to Brigham Young in their last game. The game wasn’t even as close as the score suggests as BYU started out with a 24-0 lead through the first 25 minutes of the game and then coasted to the victory. This was mostly caused by two reasons, the first was that Air Force could not complete a single drive with points, turning the ball over twice and missing a field goal in four drives. The second was that their defense was simply unable to keep BYU from scoring on 4 straight drives. Often that leads you to a rough loss.
Air Force, like all of the service academies these days, is a run first offense. In fact it’s a run second and run third offense too. The runningback leading the attack for the Falcons is Jared Tew with 212 carries 797 yards and 7 touchdowns on the season. Tew is your prototypical Big Ten style running back. Punch it up the gut repeatedly and get the tough yards. The change of pace back in this set is Asher Clark with 736 yards on only 134 carries and 5 touchdowns. Clark is much more of a big play threat than Tew, at least as much as is possible on this Falcon’s offense. Also running the ball is starting quarterback Tim Jefferson. Jefferson has 217 yards on 72 carries with 3 touchdowns running the ball.
His passing stats are equally depressing with only 79 passing attempts and only 54.4% of those completions for 687 yards 5 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. Air Force prefers instead to throw the ball with a number of different passers, and even then follow Woody’s sacred idea that the pass was nothing more than a trick play. Consider that Air Force has thrown only 139 times this season compared to 743 rushing attempts.
Who Are We Picking?
Mali: Houston
Eric: Houston
Jeff: Houston
Jim: Houston
This is yet another battle of two offensive styles that are diametrically opposed to each other. Air Force is going to run the ball down your throat come hell or high water and Houston is going to throw it no matter how smart running the ball seems to be. Should be a fun game to watch as I suspect Air Force won’t be able to defend Houston, and Houston may not be able to defend Air Force.
This should be fun!
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