[joepa66]

7) BUFFALO - It's really hard to put the Bulls in this last spot of the MAC East. Despite a 2-10 finish last year, 1-7 in MAC play, the Bulls and Coach Turner Gill competed fairly well vs. the MAC last season.
Throw out a 42-7 whipping by Ohio and a 55-28 pasting by Champion CMU, the Bulls were only outscored 220-175 by 6 MAC opponents, and managed to beat a Julian Edelman-less Kent team 41-14 and took BGSU to OT eventually losing 48-40. First halfs were a real problem for the Bulls as they were outscored 252/57 over the first two quarter of games in 2006.
Despite those numbers, Buffalo was 4th in offensive scoring (25.1ppg) and 6th in passing offense. QB Drew Willy throw for 1391 yards (173.9ypg) and one-time starter Tony Paoli threw for another 584 yards. RB James Starks (704 yards) is back but the Bulls were 11th in the MAC in rushing with a 98.4ypg average. The change in competitiveness, if you call it that, is directly linked to a "situational" QB system instituted by Coach Turner and Willy's late season successes.
On the defensive side the Bulls return 3 busy tacklers from last year...but 2 of them are DBs! Not good for any defensive to have that much penetration by an offense. The question has to be where are the linebackers and down linemen and why aren't they making stops near the line of scrimmage?! The Bulls were dead last in scoring defense (39.2ppg), 10th in pass defense (220ypg), 12th in run defense (301.6ypg), and last in total defense (412.9ypg). They do have 8 starters back but put a helluva lot of pressure on the offense to score points in buckets fulls to avoid getting run each week.