USF Football: 2018 Bulls are reloading, but still dangerous

USF football loses a handful of important pieces from last season’s 10-win team. There’s still talent here, but is it enough to contend for an AAC title?

To the untrained eye, Charlie Strong’s 10-2 debut season at USF might have seemed like a rousing success. It was, after all, only the second double-digit win season in program history, and only the second time the Bulls have finished a season ranked in the Top 25.

But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Tampa. USF was the runaway favorite to win the AAC in the conference’s preseason poll, but the Bulls came up short, dropping an all-timer in the final minutes against rival UCF.

Willie Taggart’s record-setting Gulf Coast Offense, a spread-option scheme predicated on open space and stretching the field horizontally, was replaced by Sterlin Gilbert’s veer-and-shoot, which favored power running and vertical passing. Gilbert’s offense was still productive, but it was too often choppy and inconsistent and didn’t play to star quarterback Quinton Flowers‘ strengths.

Bulls fans had to stomach watching UCF run the table and snatch the AAC title and New Year’s Six bowl bid from under their fingers, so you’ll have to forgive them for being a little crotchety this offseason. Flowers departs, as do several key seniors on both sides of the ball, and it feels a bit like a window of opportunity has shut.

But on a team with so much talent relative to the rest of their conference (one of the few positives for USF of dropping from the Big East to the mid-major AAC), windows typically don’t stay closed for long. The Bulls undoubtedly have the players to be a force in the AAC once again; it’s just a matter of whether or not that young talent can mature in time for the 2018 season, or if another run at a conference title will have to wait until a year or so down the line.