Defense - was much better in 2016 than anyone thought despite youth and several guys learning new positions. Returning strengths at LB and Corner and good options to fill holes at DL and Safety. Depth at DL is good. With Tuiaki taking over coaching the DL I'm curious to see what impact he has on the pass rush.

OL - Coach 2J started the ball rolling with better recruiting before he left and Sitake and Empey have built some momentum. Guys in the starting group in some cases are 3 or 4 yr starters with a significant number of starts (Lapuaho, Koroma and Kanuch) with backups also having 2-3 yrs limited experience. According to Phil Steele, the number of starts of a returning OL unit is a critical indicator for success.

Offensive skill positions - I'm comfortable with who we have at QB and with our depth and talent at RB. Even if we do a RB by committee approach I feel we're going to be good there. I like the improvement we're seeing at the TE position and the addition of Bushman and MLP. I'm not worried about our WR group and think that we'll see a couple emerge as go-to guys (Talon Shumway and Simon maybe?). They might not be loaded with superstars but I think we'll see quite a few guys who prove themselves reliable targets in an offense designed to spread it around.

Coaches - Year two we'll see improvement with game management and prep.

Overall - Last season we lost 4 games by a total of 8 stinkin' points. Some might think that the flip side is we also won several really close games but when I look at the mistakes that cost us in some of those games, they were mistakes of inexperience. In the Utah game we spotted Utah with a 7 pt lead seconds into the game with a poorly thrown pass to a very green WR (who was wide open) who then batted the ball up into the air and into the arms of the late arriving LB with a full head of steam running towards the ute goal line. Taysom couldn't ever seem to get on the same page with his WR's all year. That theme played out in every loss, I think we'll see better chemistry this year between the QB and receivers.