Head Coach: Zach Kittley is entering his first season as the head coach of the Owls. Kittley is well known for his ability to craft high flying offenses. The most notable instance was his tenure as the OC at Western Kentucky where they imported Kittley, Bailey Zappe, and other members of a successful offense at Houston Baptist (now Christian) to invigorate an offense that ranked 115th in scoring the year before. It worked perfectly, they skyrocketed to 2nd and Bailey Zappe set the FBS single season passing yards record. Despite QB injuries Kittley’s offenses remained productive at Texas Tech.
Program Outlook: Florida Atlantic is a program with lots of potential, yes there’s several big programs in their state but Florida is a state that carries a lot of talent to go around. The Owls have an advantage no one else has, they are located closer to the beach than any other FBS program. That has to count for something! The Owls hiring history is intriguing, for some reason they always loved hiring big name experienced head coaches who were previously fired elsewhere. Tom Herman was a hire that felt like it could succeed like Lane Kiffin did, but it simply did not happen. Now the Owls have gone a different route and it will be fascinating to see where this takes the program.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: As you would expect with a coaching change, the Owls don’t return a ton of production they rank 112th in the country returning 40.5% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. That being said, Kittley ensured the cupboard wouldn’t be bare. Key players for FAU starts with QB Caden Veltcamp, he comes in from WKU and is known for his incredible performance off the bench in the only Famous Toastery Bowl in history. Veltcamp started and had a decent season for Western Kentucky last year but the offense as a whole fell off late in the year. Easton Messer comes over with Veltcamp to give him a familiar target and Jabari Smith returns after catching 17 passes as a freshman, they brought in a slew of portal guys as well. There’s a trio of RBs who are all sophomores that are back, it’s likely a committee approach. The offensive line needs to come together with a couple transfers helping out. The defense will almost completely consist of new parts. Naejuan Barber from Coastal Carolina is a 310lb anchor to the Dline. Tyler Stolsky (Minnesota) and Leon Hart Jr (Marshall) are set to take over as the starting linebackers. The secondary struggled last year but for better or worse it’ll mostly contain homegrown parts.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: FAU has a pretty tough schedule. Their non-conference features September Maryland which will be tough and a UConn team that won 9 games last year, they also get a FIU team that’s in a similar position to FAU and Florida A&M a better SWAC team but not quite at the same level they were a couple years ago. FAU gets 5 of the top contenders in the American and only 3 of the teams that are in the same rebuilding position they are. It’s not impossible but it will require a lot of improvement to reach a bowl game.
Final Thoughts: Football in paradise begins a new era. There’s a lot of moving parts, probably too many to expect many wins in year 1 under Kittley. There is one guarantee, get ready for a lot of fireworks. This Owls team is going to get into a lot of wild shootouts.
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