Cincinnati football: Realistic post-spring expectations for 2023

It’s been somewhat of a chaotic offseason for Cincinnati football. The Bearcats finished the year at 9-4 which wasn’t quite the “successful” season that fans had grown accustomed to under Luke Fickell, but he bolted for the Wisconsin job.

Even more chaotic was Scott Satterfield’s sudden departure from Louisville to take the Cincinnati job which kind of surprised a lot of people.

Now that Satterfield is in town, he’s bringing transfer quarterback Emory Jones in with him and he’s hoping that will keep the expectations high. Jones is a veteran quarterback who’s been around quite a bit but junior Evan Prater will be pushing him for that starting job. Prater sat patiently behind Ben Bryant last year and had 423 yards and a touchdown on 66 attempts.

The running backs will be decent, led by Corey Kiner and Myles Montgomery and they should combine to help lead that offense with Charles McClelland moving on.

On defense, Dontay Corleone returns on the line along with Jowon Briggs and Malik Vann so that should be a strength on this side of the ball. The Bearcats also added a wealth of transfers to the linebacking corps and the back-end of the defense and there shouldn’t be too much worry on this side of the ball.

Realistic post-spring expectations for Cincinnati football

With spring ball wrapped up and a number of transfers are officially heading to campus, Cincinnati has to feel decent about where it stands in year one of Satterfield, but to expect the playoff-contending years to return would be foolish — at least right now.

Looking at the schedule, the “sure” wins for Cincinnati this season would be Eastern Kentucky, Miami (OH), and UCF. The rest of the games are either toss-ups (at Pitt, at BYU, Iowa State, Baylor, at Houston, at West Virginia, Kansas) or likely losses (Oklahoma, at Oklahoma State, Kansas).

If Cincinnati can steal a few from the toss-ups and likely losses category, I think this team finishes 6-6 and makes a bowl game.