If Rourke stays healthy, I think we improve. He is the difference in my opinion. He makes everybody else better on the offense.

I really expect the same type of season as this year, with perhaps some key learnings from the Akron game last year that hopefully impact the way they play this upcoming season (not turning it over in key situations). My predictions:

-Hot non-conference start
-Head-scratching MAC loss
-Some injury that creates team havoc
-In a tight race for MAC East Champ
-Berth in MAC Championship game
-Narrow loss
-Bowl bid
-Bowl win
-Fan complaints about not getting to the next level

I think our offence will be ELITE next year. We were great this year just turned the ball over a little too much. We return most of our line, AJ, Irons, and Ross gives us a great RB rotation. We have Rourke back at QB, he's the best QB we have had in year. Also have good depth with Maxwell. We lose both TE's which may hurt blocking some, but isn't a huge loss. We didn't use them that much passing. In the pass game is where I think we take a big step up. We return Papi, Meyers, Odom at WR. We also return Elijah Ball who was receiving a ton of hype in the preseason before his injury. If he can return to himself and stay healthy that gives us a big target receiver that we were missing last year. If Rourke cuts down on turnovers I don't see any team being able to stop us offensively.

Defensively is where I get worried. After being great in 2016 we took a step back in 2017. We lose a lot of good pieces on our front 7 just like we did last year. This makes me wonder will we see another step back this year, we need new guys to step up and become leaders of that unit. The good news is that our young secondary returns and we should see some sort of improvement there.

If we can limit turnovers on offence and be about as good as we were last year on defense I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be expecting a MACC this year. Really we could have had it last year with our elite offence, but our turnovers killed us. I think this team will be very similar to last years, Great offence, average defense, just need to cut out turnovers.

Not many teams in college football have as few "questions" on offense as we do. We return our leading passer (Rourke), leading rusher (Ouellette) and leading receiver (Papi White) from last season. If that wasn't enough, we also get back Malik Irons (HB) from suspension and Elijah Ball (WR) from injury. Those two were both expected to contribute heavily last year until we lost them for the season. Our offensive line was great this past season and we return most of it.

We were 9th in the nation in points per game last year. That has to be an OHIO record, right? I agree with posters above... I'm extremely confident we will move the ball and score regularly. If Rourke progresses even a little, our offense is going to put up historic numbers. The key is going to be limiting mistakes. We had four games last season where we lost the turnover battle by 2 or more. Those were the four games we lost.

...

Defense is a different story. Even in some of our wins, we got scored on quite a bit and we have questions at both defensive line and linebacker. We actually were pretty good against stopping the run last year but it didn't matter with all the yards given up in the passing game. Going back to the turnover differential, equally important to limiting turnovers on offense is forcing more turnovers on defense. We forced a total of ONE turnover in our four loses. We didn't have any takeaways in our last three games of the season.

I would be OK with not being quite as good against the run this season IF our front 7 is better at pressuring the opposing QB. Hopefully with Hagan back our secondary can create more turnovers this season. As a freshman Hagan had 5 forced fumbles and 3 interception. This year 0 forced fumbles and just 1 interception.

I think we will be scoring enough that teams won't be able to settle with just running the ball against us this year. I could see us having a lot of "shoot-out" type games. Our schedule isn't a killer. Win. Win. Win.

Ohio will win the MACC next year. I thought Ohio would get to Detroit in 2016 to face WMU and in 2017 to face Toledo with good chances to win both. Ohio was 3 points short and about 30 yards away from beating a ranked and undefeated WMU team, and was a loss to Akron away from a rematch vs a Toledo team that Ohio destroyed several weeks prior. Next year Ohio will get to Detroit and beat whoever it faces in the West. Toledo was clearly the West’s best team and was no match for Ohio. Ohio will be the best team in the MAC next year and will prove it by winning the title. You can book it.