Scouting Monmouth... Sorta

Monmouth Head Coach Kevin Callahan

The opening line is out and Monmouth is favored by 33 points against Columbia Saturday.

Monmouth is trying to say all the right things about Columbia QB Brett Nottingham. 

What it should be doing is trying to find out whether WR Connor Nelligan will be ready for the game this Saturday, or any game this year for that matter.

As usual, and it’s not completely the athletic department’s fault this time, fans are very much in the dark about Nelligan’s status since the preseason intra-squad scrimmage. (Injury status is a dicey issue in college football and if the coaches don't want to talk about it, there's nothing the rest of the administration or athletic dept. can do about it. And that's not the coaches' fault either. Privacy rules can be strict in the NCAA). 

His absence has changed what Head Coach Pete Mangurian considered to be a strength in the preseason to a clear weakness.

Besides Nelligan, we have scant information about former standouts Chris Connors and Isaiah Gross, who have been used sparingly this season. We do know Connors has a permanent leg issue after his injury at Cornell last year, but being able to catch the ball is trumping speed right now with all the dropped passes the Lions are still seeing.

Remember too that as bad as Columbia was at holding on to passes last season, the WR corps was facing a new challenge this year anyway because we have a new WR coach in Ola Adams.

I don’t mean to intentionally pick on the receivers or the passing game, the fact is Columbia is not doing any of the essentials very well.

But I do want to mention that punting and kick/punt coverage have been very good for CU this season… so we’ve got that going for us. 

Wednesday is that day where for years, I've dedicated some time to scouting our opponents in hopes of giving fans a chance to familiarize themselves with them and maybe highlight their strengths and weaknesses relative to Columbia. 

But this season, (and last season of course), this part of the fan-building/fan forum agenda for this blog seems fruitless.

The Lions are coming in to every game like a JV team going up against a varsity, a AA club playing an MLB squad, etc. 

Don't let 28 minutes of Princeton mistakes last week fool you into thinking Columbia has "taken a step" as Mangurian put it. 

We haven't. We look, and are, out of our league week after week. 

Focusing on our opponents or scouting them is ludicrous, unless we find evidence they plan to arrive at the stadium drunk or with members of the marching band starting in place of the actual players.

Is this harsh? Yes, but what else can you call a team that was at least competitive before this regime came in and has now lost 14 straight games by at least two scores each and by an average of 32 points per game? 

It's not about our opponents, scholarship schools or not.

It's about us. 

This is not varsity football. 

And every team playing us does not take us the slightest bit seriously, despite what Monmouth is saying publicly about our QB. 

When we clamored for Mangurian to be fired at the end of last season, we were told we would see improvement this year. 

We haven't seen it.

The scoreboard doesn't lie.

Stop the bleeding.