I guess this is old news, but it's slow times.  I was googling around and saw this quote from Walden from a few years back:

  "Offense is all about attacking and not about letting the defense dictate what you do. We want to dictate what the defense does."

And it just struck me how completely 100% opposite this is from the Dimel concept.  Dimel's philosophy was line up, see what formation the defense is showing, analyze it, QB look to the sidelines for a new signal, adjust according to the defense, and hope you guessed right. 

Problem with that is defenses figured that out and would show something different than what they were really doing.  Worse, they knew if they showed X in a particular down and distance we would change the play to Y.  So defenses were basically forcing us to run a play of their choosing, which is part of why we would struggle.

I don't know that Walden will be more successful, but I like the idea.  The offense *should* have the advantage that they know what they are going to do and the D is reacting to that.  But Dimel removed that advantage from his team.

Wow, Kidd sure is optimistic about the team. I sure hope he's right, eight wins is a lot, fingers crossed.

News that we just got a commitment from Corey Wren of TCU.  If he is immediately eligible that alone could be a game changer.  Blazingly fast

I saw that in the news too but I didn't get what position he plays. TCU is a bonafide good team and anyone from there that wants to come to Utep is welcomed with open arms.

I agree with your assessment on the third string QB. I was somewhat surprised that he was good. He was fragile though and I think that is his undoing as a first stringer. He has potential as a second stringer though to give the starting QB a rest or is he injures himself.

I'm very optimistic about this years team and I sure hope that it makes for a winning season, fingers crossed

I waited for spring ball to be completed so now I need to make my predictions based somewhat on that. The post spring ball departures, 6 or so by now, are imo based on where the guys see themselves in the depth chart. No harm in trying to find a place where you are more likely to see the field. I was surprised that Jake McNamara, QB, ended up at NMSU so quickly. I think he must have been at best number 3 on UTEP's depth chart but I do think he is a good qb.


   ************************  Home                Winner                     Score

Aug 31 UTEP                                      NE                     NE                          34 20

Sep 7   Southern Utah                    UTEP                     UTEP                       38  20

Sep 14   UTEP                               Liberty                   Liberty                    31 27

Sep 21  UTEP                                 CO St                    CO St                     31 27

Oct 3  Sam Houston                       UTEP                     UTEP                       31 17

Oct 10  UTEP                                  WKU                     WKU                        34 28

Oct 16 FIU                                     UTEP                    UTEP                        34 17

Oct 22 UTEP                                   LA T                   LA T                          28 24

Nov 2  MTU                                   UTEP                    UTEP                        38 24

Nov 9  Ken St                                 UTEP                  UTEP                         45 14

Nov 23 UTEP                                   Tenn                  Tenn                         38 20

Nov 30  UTEP                                  NMSU                 UTEP                        40 17

I see a lot more scoring by this Miner team and some good new defensive players. Should be competitive in most games and obviously a couple more than the 6 wins I'm predicting are possible and most welcome. Should see bigger crowds this season with the new staff and an exciting offense. TV games will be plentiful. I expect the Nebraska game to be on the Big 10 Network, the Tennessee game on the SEC Network, the 4 October mid-week games on either espnu, espn2 or cbssn. The CSU game is controlled by the MWC contracts so could be cbssn, fs1. Likely one other game will end up on cbssn, either at Liberty or NMSU or vs MTSU or KSU. We will find out late May or early June.

So that will put UTEP in either the New Mexico Bowl or the Frisco Bowl. Either one is winnable for this team but certainly not a sure thing. Both would be well attended by UTEP fans. Go Miners!