UTSA gets their first win of the season behind a dominant performance by their defense. Today we look at the eleven best graded players from this week’s game according to Pro Football Focus, as well as a breakdown of the quarterback passing chart.
Takeaways:
What else is there to say about Josiah Tauaefa at this point? His 90.3 is the highest grade achieved by a UTSA player this season. He looks faster and more explosive than ever. Look for him to continue to dominate now that the hardest part of UTSA’s schedule is out of the way.
Five out of the starting eleven are defensive lineman to no one’s surprise. Lorenzo Dantzler is strating to emerge as a force on this unit. Baylen Baker had a nice little breakout performance after being quiet for the first few weeks. Kevin Strong tiped a ball that was intercepted, and had the game sealing safety at the end of the game. The list just goes on and on. This defense continues to lead Conference USA in tackles for a loss and is climbing up to the number one spot in sacks.
Greg Campbell is the number one receiver on this team and is beginning to play like it. He still doesn’t have that long breakaway touchdown just yet but you can see it coming.
Cordale Grundy’s grade is interesting to me. I break it down further below.
Passing Direction - Cordale Grundy
Takeaways:
Grundy is having a very hard time completing passes down field. Early in the season I thought it was because of the receivers and/or offensive line, but it has become apparent after watching him closely his deep ball is not there. He has no issues with the short stuff as it shows on the chart, but once he is asked to push the ball down his accuracy is not there.
And that is exactly what Texas State forced him to do by stacking the box, taking away the running game, and taking some of the short high percentage passes away. It worked as shown by the 1 of 9 for 22 yards Grundy threw on passes over 15 yards.
Not advocating for a quarterback change, but UTSA does need someone that is able to threaten defenses vertically, or else you’ll see the offense continue to struggle like you’ve seen these first four games.
