Our secondary was decimated last year. Like Southernfriedcougar said, we were starting walk-on, not DI caliber talent at secondary. It's miraculous that we didn't give up more touchdowns than we did. Add to that the fact that many of those injured players also played special teams (i.e. punt returns and kickoff defense)(this was a factor that apparently killed us vs. Washington) and both our defense and special teams stand to improve substantially over last year.

Another very important fact is the new set of wide receivers. We had Hoffman last year, and the rest were all hurt, which supposedly was a key factor in the bowl game loss. Now, we don't have Hoffman, but we're getting a transfer who's been proven at the DI level and is even one of the leading catchers in the nation (Leslie) as well as some other big transfers (Blackmon, Kurtz). Combined with our injured starters who missed much of last year returning, and we have an almost completely different set of weapons on offense, and at that one which gives us hope to be more consistent and to provide a more multi-faceted attack. Yes, the Oline is the same, but that's a more complicated issue. They stand to improve because experience is key for an Oline in an offensive system, something they didn't have last year, and they also need to be conditioned. With that experience and more time to work on stamina to sustain the fast tempo of the offense, the Oline should be better as well.

Those are some reasons to believe this isn't actually the same team we saw last year.