The Houston Cougars had a strong 2021 season under head coach Dana Holgorsen. Houston is one of the biggest, best, and most fertile recruiting grounds for quality football talent in the United States, and UH is beginning to make inroads in its backyard. It\u2019s true that SEC programs such as Houston and Texas A&M, plus the University of Texas and competitors such as Oklahoma, will also get their share of prospects from the Houston area, but there\u2019s a lot of talent to go around, and the University of Houston needs to make sure it gets a good portion of the top recruits from its own city. Industry analysts believe that is beginning to happen, and in 2021, UH certainly stood out to other recruits by making the AAC Championship Game before losing to a brilliant Cincinnati Bearcat team. Houston scored a thrilling 44-37 win over SMU on a last-minute kick return for a touchdown. That victory lifted UH into the AAC title game. Cincinnati had a special season, going unbeaten in the regular season and making the College Football Playoff. There was no shame for Houston in losing to the Bearcats, but now the challenge in 2022 is if UH can vault past UC and win the AAC title for the first time since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Incoming transfer linebacker Jamal Morris and receiver Joseph Manjack will try to lift Houston to the next level this season. There is a lot of excitement in and around the program about what it can achieve. Moreover, there should be. This is legitimate hype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key Personnel Lost<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Defensive end Logan Hall is a top-35 NFL draft pick. Cornerback Marcus Jones was a top-85 pick, while Damarion Williams was also taken in the draft. Center Kody Russey, defensive end David Anenih, receiver Jake Herslow, and tight end Seth Green were all undrafted free agents who will get their chances to make NFL rosters. Houston had a lot of material to work with last year and needs to replace it this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Important Incoming Freshmen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Receiver Matthew Golden is a four-star recruit. Offensive lineman Demetrius Hunter chose Houston over the Oklahoma Sooners. These new freshmen give Houston a real chance to reach a higher standard in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Key Position Battles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As Houston accumulates talent and speed as a result of its gains in recruiting, the main challenges seem to exist along the two lines, especially on offense. If Houston can cultivate an offensive line which stands its ground and doesn\u2019t get beaten at the line of scrimmage, the Cougars have a quarterback, a set of running backs, and a group of wide receivers which should do a lot of damage this year. They have skilled players on the edges, but the interior line play needs to be good enough to allow the skill players to run wild this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biggest Offseason Goal(s)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Cougars have stockpiled talent. Now they need to put the pieces together and take advantage of a situation in which Cincinnati won\u2019t be as good this year as it was last year. Houston needs to identify the best linemen on its roster and generate enough quality depth up front so that it won\u2019t get caught short during the regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Houston Cougars had a strong 2021 season under head coach Dana Holgorsen. Houston is one of the biggest, best,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaaf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22613,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22610\/revisions\/22613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}