KENNESAW STATE STARS IN PALM SPRINGS
It's one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.
This week, last week, it’s all the same. Kennesaw State dropped to 1-5 on the year with a 27-20 homecoming loss to Tennessee State that followed the exact formula as the rest of the program-worst five-game losing streak.
We’ve been stuck in a time loop since Week 2 in Chattanooga, reliving the same game weekly. It’s Palm Springs on the football field. Instead of Andy Samberg dealing with the nihilism of living someone else’s wedding day on repeat, it’s a transient Owls team struggling for meaning and wins during a season when the results do not matter. The lack of stakes doesn’t make the uncharted territory any easier for a program used to success throughout its brief history.
“I don’t have words right now,” head coach Brian Bohannon told the MDJ after the game. “It’s frustrating and the kids are frustrated.”
As a whole, the FBS promotion has been an interesting process to follow. On a week-to-week basis, I’m starting to understand the logic behind a nine-game schedule. The advanced box score from homecoming, via Game on Paper, is not exactly a fun read.
“Frustrating,” as Bo put it, does enough on its own to describe the five-game skid. But here’s how to recognize when you are stuck inside an Owls time loop:
The defense will do enough to keep the game close. In Palm Springs, they spend a lot of the movie drinking beer in the pool, killing time. Nothing flashy, just staying afloat. Based on yards per play allowed, Nathan Burton’s unit sits in the FCS top 30 in his first year on the job - not dominant but largely holding up despite the constant rotation based on redshirt strategy. That’s not to say it’s a finished product, as the Owls sit 98th in tackles for loss and 103rd in sacks. It’s also hard to decipher how much stats like opposing pass efficiency (18th) and opponent yards/attempt (27th, 6.69 yards) are influenced by the quality of opposing QBs, but we’ll gladly take any cause for optimism.
There will be quick drives and pain on third down. Kennesaw’s offense can’t stay on the field consistently. The offensive overhaul is proving as difficult as expected, and it’s showing most visibly on third down: just a 25% conversion rate through Week 6. Triple option outsiders presume the offense is designed to crawl down the field, 3 yards at a time. We moved away from the flexbone, and that’s actually the best-case scenario right now. Again, none of these challenges are unexpected or permanent. They just feel that way.
A flash of potential on offense, either on a highlight-reel play or an extended drive that shows you what the offense can do. These are the good times, the dance numbers . We might have fixed this loop after all. On Saturday, it was second-year quarterback Davis Bryson coming in and averaging 11 yards per carry in his first DI snaps, and Gabriel Benyard reeling off a 158 all-purpose yards on 7 touches, most notably an 84-yard kick return that set up a short field and third quarter TD. Bryson’s quick impact makes his lack of involvement to this point even more confusing. The program is explicitly playing for the future, yet holding back on an electric young player who appears to have already redshirted last fall. Benyard hit the four-game mark against TSU and likely will not appear again this season, so Bryson will be the most explosive offensive weapon to finish out the final three games.
At some point, a wayward snap will get past the QB for a big loss. There is no explanation for this, according to Bohannon, and the issue does not happen in practice. I guess there is no real scientific reasoning for reliving the same day over and over, either. This is the point in the story where the edges of reality start to become unglued. You start asking questions about what lessons we need to learn to escape.
A one-score loss. The main character dies or falls asleep, and we all restart the loop next game. To their credit, the team keeps waking up and trying again despite four one-possession losses and an 6-point average margin of defeat. Whether the opponent is a Top 25 SoCon squad or Tennessee Tech, they also manage to pull the other team into the same loop weekly. I’m convinced the Owls would somehow lose to Georgia and also North Cobb High School by the same scoreline.
Unless we’re actually stuck here, this particular movie ends in a few games as we inch closer to CUSA and more meaningful football next fall. A double bye week is up next, followed by a game against Lincoln University that you’d hope will break the loop (please) and snap the losing streak. The Oaklanders have one of the few schedules in college football capable of out-weirding KSU’s nine-game slate: 12 straight weeks away from home, mostly as a buy-game sacrifice for FCS squads. Here’s a good read from last fall about an independent Lincoln program that is tough to research while its in-house articles call to mind the fake news stories from career mode in sports video games. If this is anything other than a comfortable Owls win, there’s no transition year excuse that would hold any weight.
My not-so-bold assumption: There will be a heavy dose of Sam Houston State install in practice the next couple weeks to prepare for the future conference foe on Nov 4. The Bearkats made the FBS jump a season ahead of the Owls and will provide a good reference point of CUSA talent, even as they’ve started 0-5 and dropped their first two conference games. As a pessimist, there’s a value in a sneak preview of the current floor of our new home. We have no clue what kind of shape the Owls roster will be in at that point, but with another Bishop Sycamore game to close out the season against Virginia-Lynchburg, the SHSU trip will be the last matchup with any sort of meaning other than extra practice reps.
Plus, you’ll see a ton of windshield time for the coaching staff to take advantage of the extended bye week(s) for recruiting purposes. With conference schedules well underway in G5 leagues, Bohannon and his assistants can fully shift their focus to reloading talent to bring the roster up to an FBS standard through high school prospects and the transfer portal. In the 10 weeks between now and early signing day, the Owls will only have to spend any actual time preparing for one opponent. That extra focus on the Evaluation Period won’t make or break how an individual recruit feels about the Kennesaw State project. It does, though, give the staff a window to try and catch up on the talent gap without wasting as much energy on gameplans.
During the bye weeks, I’ll tune into just about every game from the CUSA’s shameless MACtion ripoff, which continued Tuesday night with Liberty staying undefeated against Jacksonville State and MTSU getting their first conference win. As many shots as CUSA catches from the rest of the G5 fans, the midweek experiment has been pretty entertaining so far. Even if we’re on the sidelines for now, I’ll watch whatever it takes to move on from our season and think about the future, really.