Dear Diary,
It’s a weird time for the Huskies. They’re on a three game losing streak to Top 25 teams and the running back room is thin. Well, it might get a bit bigger. In addition, the Huskies are coming to the end of their gauntlet run with Fresno State at home. There’s a lot happening right now in the world of UConn football, and I don’t know how to feel.
Could We Get A Thick Six?
With Nate Carter and Brian Bewtons seasons both coming to an end due to injury, the running back depth is dwindling. With the one and two back going down, UConn had to look at a young duo. The duo of Victor Rosa and Devontae Houston carried the ball 14 times for 81 yards and a touchdown in the loss to North Carolina State. What was big was that Rosa scored late to cover the 38.5 point spread. Good teams win, great teams cover. With the depth being limited, Coach Mora stated that the team considered moving 300-pound defensive tackle Jelani Stafford to running back.
Stafford played running back in high school and he was a pretty good player. When this hit the national media, a lot of people were gung-ho about it. How awesome would it be to see Stafford rumbling, stumbling, and bumbling down the field for a six yard gain to give Houston and Rosa a breather?
While it’s unlikely to happen, everyone is able to dream. My dreams this past week have been filled with Jelani Stafford scoring a touchdown while UConn wins against Fresno State at the Rent.
Saturday Threads
With UConn returning home, the Huskies will be rolling out a pretty awesome wrinkle to their home threads. Each player will have the choice to put one of twelve cancer-specific ribbons on the side of their helmet. These ribbons also have the Jonathan Husky head on them and it makes a pretty cool design to go towards a great cause. The options for players to represent are breast, ovarian, colon, bone, pancreatic, skin, lung, liver, brain, stomach, prostate, and leukemia kidney cancer. UConn becomes the second FBS team to use this concept.
Coach Mora stated that in addition to it being Cancer Awareness Night, it’s a whiteout. He’s imploring that fans show up in droves to cheer on the Huskies in a tough matchup with Fresno State.
House Keeping
To cap things off heading into this game, CT native Jackson Mitchell is second in the nation with total tackles. On the season, he has 58 stops and is averaging 11.6 tackles per game. It’ll be tough to catch the man in first place as Old Dominion’s Jason Henderson has 65 tackles on the year and is averaging 16.2 stops a game.
While Mitchells been a bright spot, it’s worth noting that there is the potential for twelve Huskies to miss the remainder of the season due to injury. I mentioned earlier that Carter and Brewton are done. In game one, Roberson tore his ACL and against Michigan, Nigel Fitzgerald was carted off with a knee injury. Other receivers that the Huskies have lost are Cam Ross and Keelan Marion. On the offensive line, it appears that Ben Murawski and Brady Wayburn along with tight end Brendan Heatherman.
While the offense was hit heavily by the injury bug, on defense there’s only two players out for the season. Defensive back Kaleb Anthony and defensive tackle Matt Hoffman have both been shut down for 2022. It’s nice that the difficult part of the schedule has concluded, but having this many guys get banged up really hurts.