The Minutemen have tough sledding in their immediate future, but wins could be hiding at the end of the schedule.
Katie Bateman & Abigail Ayotte raise a sign showing their support for UMass.
FOXBOROUGH — 0-9. That’s essentially what the University of Massachusetts football team is staring at right now.
No, I didn’t misread the record. I’m aware the Minutemen are currently just 0-7.
But let’s face reality, there is very little chance UMass is winning on the road against Vanderbilt, an SEC opponent, or Northern Illinois, which ranks somewhere between one and three in the Mid-American Conference depending on who you ask.
I’m not saying this to tear UMass down. To steal a line from the coach of Gillette Stadium’s most prominent tenant, “It is what it is.”
And “what it is” is not very good right now. We saw that today. Progression has turned into regression. A team that came within a sniff of beating a now-ranked opponent has gone from confident on offense to impotent.
The losses of the likes of wide receiver Alan Williams and tight end Rob Blanchflower hurt. The loss of right guard Nick Speller hurts the most.
What it also is, though, is a situation that could improve.
Allow me to explain.
UMass has two options in the next two weeks. It can allow Vanderbilt and Northern Illinois to beat them into a pulp, and spend the rest of the season sleepwalking.
Or, the Minutemen can focus on what’s really important, not worry for one second about the score for the next two weeks, and figure out how to turn those games into teaching tools that will get them close to where they were three weeks ago.
The reason it’s worth improving is the three winnable games that lie at the end of the schedule. Akron’s defense is downright atrocious. Buffalo’s offense is nearly as bad. Central Michigan seemingly can’t go five minutes without turning the ball over, and has a coach that may or may not be employed when the Chippewas ship out to Foxborough for the season finale.
Two of those games are at home (Buffalo and Central Michigan).
The goal has to be respectability at this point. We thought Charley Molnar and Co. had gotten there three weeks ago.
Turns out we were wrong.
0-12 is not respectable. 1-11 isn’t really either, but at least you’re not the butt of every joke. 2-10, after an 0-9 start, is respectable as far as I’m concerned. The Minutemen didn’t design their conference schedule. The fact that their three weakest opponents are also their final three is no fault of theirs. If UMass can get back to the level it was at against Miami (Ohio) and Ohio it has a very good chance to win two of those final three games.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe UMass springs a monumental upset in the next two weeks, and I look like a fool (it wouldn’t be the first time). But if I’m Charley Molnar, I do whatever it takes to put my team in position to win its final three games. If that means resting guys the next couple of weeks, so be it. If that means holding plays back, so be that too.
I know for a fact Molnar doesn’t care what I think — he shouldn’t quite frankly. But it’s not a stretch to say 2-10 looks a heck of a lot better to recruits than 0-12, and ultimately, that’s what this team needs right now — to build a nucleus of young players that can, in three years or so, be competitive in the MAC.
It also helps on the home front. A winless season does nothing but increase the volume of the voices that believe the move to the FBS and MAC was a mistake.
0-9 is where they’re headed almost assuredly.
What happens after that could very well be determined by what happens in the next two weeks. And what happens in the season’s homestretch, could go a long way toward the future.