FLORIDA ATLANTIC OWLS O:7 D:8

Their first season in the newly aligned SBC didn’t go necessarily as planned for Head Coach Howard Schnellenberger and his staff, but they had a very young team on their hands and lumps had to be expected. That being said, the Owls 2-9 record isn’t as bad as it looks. They played an incredibly tough non-conference schedule, and lost a couple of heartbreakers in conference play. Inexperience played an enormous role, but with a year’s worth of 1A pigskin under their belts, look for the Owls to be a more confident bunch in ’06. They boast speed and skill in every facet on offense, but how much they improve their PPG average all depends on which QB Sean Clayton shows up on a week-to-week basis. He was fantastic and erratic in his only two starts to close out ’05, but showed the tools necessary for guiding this attack. Defensively, look for a dramatic increase in production from this unit that got gouged on the ground a year ago (218 YPG), but the passing numbers will falter with a greener unit in the secondary. The Owls still have another brutal non-conference schedule, (@ Clemson, K-State, Ok-State, and South Carolina), but get to host four of its seven SBC games and will make some noise in only their second year as a member.