East Carolina Pirates 2023 game-by-game predictions
By Austin Lloyd
The East Carolina Pirates had an impressive 2022 campaign. Will their 2023 run provide them with more of the same?
Regardless of how mean it may sound, none can deny that the East Carolina Pirates have been some of the AAC’s favorite punching bags in recent memory. From 2015 to 2020, they never saw a season finish better than 5-7.
Luckily for them, they managed to go 7-5 in 2021 and pulled off an even better 8-5 in 2022. With that quick of a turnaround in mind, it’s fair to wonder if they could do just as good if not better in 2023. However, I find their chances of doing either virtually impossible. This is almost solely due to the abundance of talent they’ve lost—especially on offense.
Since their solid run last fall, the East Carolina Pirates have said goodbye to QB Holton Ahlers (threw for over 3,700 yards), RB Keaton Mitchell (ran for the better part of 1,500 yards), WRs Isaiah Winstead and C.J. Johnson (both caught for over 1,000 yards), and CB Malik Fleming (led the team in interceptions).
With all of them gone, East Carolina football is a shell of its former self, and an imbecile could foresee the downfall it’ll likely endure as a result. But just how steep of a downfall will it be? Will ECU stand as a slightly worse postseason power, or will it crash down far further, returning to the cellar-dweller levels it witnessed in the late 2010s? Let’s find out.
Here are my official game-by-game predictions for the 2023 East Carolina Pirates.