Three Things We Learned about the AAC in Week 6

Don’t sleep on Memphis

After not recognizing South Florida in this space for a few weeks, fans started to come out of the woodwork on Twitter and in our comments about the oversight. Not so vocal? Memphis fans, and quite frankly we’re surprised.

Memphis is 4-1 and shut down Temple over the weekend, 34-27, with some 2nd-half heroics. After falling behind early to a middling AAC team, the Tigers kicked a field goal to end the first half. This was their first score of the game— making it 13-3— but it was the first of what would turn out to be 27 unanswered points.

In terms of passing yards on the season, Temple has the slight edge over Memphis, but this turned out to be little more than scheduling as the Tigers scored the first 24 points of the 2nd half, and Temple didn’t have much in response. Memphis scored their first touchdown on a two-play, 85-yard drive from the on-fire Riley Ferguson to Doroland Dorceus, and the Tigers scored again less than a minute later on an interception return.

The Tigers return to action this Friday against a vastly improved Tulane, third-best rushing team in the AAC.

Cincinnati is done

It seemed like just a year ago the pecking order in the AAC was pretty clear. Final standings aside, the top really felt like Houston, Cincinnati, Memphis, maybe Navy thrown in after a decent first year in the league. And after East champion Temple has stumbled so far, last weekend saw the Bearcats move to 0-3 in the conference, as they lost in humiliating fashion to UConn, 20-9.

All nine of Cincy’s points came in the 2nd quarter, and despite 315 passing yards from QB Hayden Moore, he just couldn’t find the end zone. After UConn was comfortably blown out by Houston the previous week, we can apply the transitive property and say that not only is Cincinnati not going to make much noise this year, this is also not a very good time to be considering Big 12 membership.

Sorry, Cincy, it’s not them, it’s you. Cincy returns to action on October 22nd as they host the top-passing team in the AAC... no, not Houston, it’s actually East Carolina and their 2,268 passing yards.

Oh, by the way, watch out for Navy

What do you even say here.

The Houston/Navy game shut us down and we’re still not sure we can ever recover. Houston was supposed to be the Chosen One, starting with OU and running through the end of the season earning some prestige as well as a fat paycheck for the Group-of-Five conference. And like any other Fans of the Underdog, we watched in horror as they met their one weakness, the Triple Option.

Navy ran around on Houston pretty much at will, racking up 306 yards on the ground while attempting FIVE passes all day. That’s right, Will Worth was 3/5 passing for 76 yards, on a team with the lowest offensive output of any AAC team coming into Week 6. And they essentially played giant-killer on a day where gamblers everywhere were already tearing their hair out to start with.

Navy’s next game is against Memphis on October 22nd, and it’s entirely possible the winner of THAT game, shocking as it may be, could win the AAC West.