Head Coach: Willie Fritz is in his 1st year as the head coach of the Cougars. Houston has loads of potential in this new Big 12 and Fritz is a coach who could unlock it. You can read more about Fritz and the hire grade here: https://updogsportstalk.com/2024/04/23/college-football-coach-hire-grades-houston/
Program Outlook: I mentioned it above and I’ll say it again, Houston is a program with a lot of potential. At one point they had too much potential and some teams in the Big 12 weren’t sure if they wanted them in the conference as a result. We got a taste of what things could be for Houston when Tom Herman was there in 2015 and 2016. They started bringing in better recruits, beat several major programs and very much found themselves on the college football map. It’s been a little tougher since then but now Houston is in the Big 12 and they have everything at their disposal to succeed.
How does the 2024 Roster look?: There’s some transition here as you frequently see with coaching changes. Houston’s offense will be led by future 1st round pick Donovan Smith, ok fine I’m saying that with a little tongue and cheek, I saw a headline from PFF earlier this offseason that mentioned that our of nowhere and I’ve run with it ever since. I decided if there’s a Donovan Smith hype train we’re going to help drive it. Back to being serious, he does have a lot of good tools but needs to be more consistent and cut down on the mistakes. There’s returning receivers like Joseph Manjack IV and Stephon Johnson that he’s familiar with, along with some transfers that can make an impact right away. The concerns for the offense is an offensive line that is basically starting from scratch and Kevin Barbary the offensive coordinator was part of a move from an air raid offense to more of a running offense gone bad with Mississippi State last year, although I suspect the head coach there made that transition not work. The defense is going to be a bigger mystery, it was bad at about everything last year and Houston’s approach as a result was to change just about everything. New scheme, new players, hardly anything is the same and we’ll see how it turns out, it probably can’t get much worse.
Screenshot from fbschedules.com1
2024 Schedule Thoughts: So about the schedule… yikes. Houston’s non-conference is tough with Oklahoma, a UNLV team that’s a potential MWC title contender and a Rice team that beat them in a wild game last season plus returns a ton of experience. The conference schedule only makes matters worse, Houston has to play 5 of the top 8 contenders for the conference title and a lot of the games against teams in the same area of the preseason conference poll as them are on the road. I will say, while it makes no sense, Cougars vs Cougars on rivalry week is a fun title at least.
Vegas Projection: Houston’s win total is set at 3.5 with the odds geared toward the over. It’s the lowest win total in the conference which certainly doesn’t paint an optimistic picture.
2024 Best Case: Donovan Smith really does play like a 1st round pick, the offense takes off and the new defense hits the ground running. Houston opens strong with a win over UNLV and they battle hard with Oklahoma but Jackson Arnold throws a late TD pass to take down Houston. The Cougars aren’t phased and despite the schedule getting tougher they battle their way to winning the next 4 games. Following that comes the roughest stretch of the season with 4 top contenders. Houston battles hard with all 4 and upsets one of them before winning the last 2 games to finish the regular season with a strong 8-4 record. A win in their bowl game is only further proof that Willie Fritz is going to build something big here.
2024 Worst Case: This might take a while. The new pieces on defense are sent into a spin cycle immediately in the opener against UNLV they can’t make stops on their way to a blowout loss, and it doesn’t get better against Oklahoma either. The Cougars hope they can at least get back the Bayou Bucket from Rice but that doesn’t even happen, Rice has too experienced of a squad to let Houston take them down. Houston is handled by Cincinnati in the Big 12 opener and it becomes apparent they’ll be desperate just to get one win, and that never comes. It’s a disaster 0-12 start for the Cougars and there’s already worries this might not work out.
Welcome to Updog Sports Talk 
Leave a comment