Whether you’re excited for the 2026 football season, or just excited to get it over with, we’re back to preview and predict how we think the Bulldogs will perform this year. We’ll provide our best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and more!
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s talk about what our typical weekly schedule will look like:
Sunday
– Updated Scorigami
Monday
– Previous game’s Playchart
– @gtpdd_stats: Advanced Box Score
Tuesday
– Nathan’s Stat Attack post on BleedTechBlue
Wednesday
– Recap & Preview Podcast
– @gtpdd_stats: Weekly NFL Player Stats
Thursday
– @gtpdd_stats: Record Predictor
Friday
– Evan’s Three Keys to Victory post on BleedTechBlue
– Weekly Blog Post
Saturday
– Gameday! (As it should be!)
Of course, there will be more fun stuff on our Twitter @gotechplsdntdie as well as some additional content added throughout the season on our stats page @gtpdd_stats.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to the preview!
Best Case Scenario
Tech’s ceiling this year is interesting. There are two “sure thing” losses right at the start of the season with LSU and Baylor in quick succession. Can the Bulldogs shock the world and win one of those two? … I guess? But it seems extremely unlikely, even in our wildest dreams. So with those two games out of the way, it feels like the absolute best case scenario would be to run the table in our G5/FCS matchups to go 10-2.
But because we’re Tech, I’d put the best-case at 9-3 with a loss to one of our Sun Belt foes. That would be good enough to make the conference title game, so sure – let’s win that too! 10-3 won’t be good enough for a playoff berth, so I’ll stop there.
I’m trying to temper my best case scenario dreams with the crushing weight of reality like I did before last season. But what is the off season without delusion? Well my delusion is that we beat who we’re supposed to beat and don’t embarrass ourselves in our expected losses. Looking to the great oracle that is the ESPN preseason matchup predictor, it looks like we’re in for a 5-7 regular season, with wins over Northwestern State, Army, ULL, ULM, and Arkansas State.
Now I don’t like that prognosis very much, so it’s time we bring in some delusion. I’m going to choose to believe we win over all our rivals and all our home games while picking up an additional road win. That puts us at 8-4 and honestly a pretty good inaugural season for the Sun Belt. With all the questions we have about the team, that’s a pretty optimistic outcome.
I actually think Tech has a lot of unnoticed advantages going into the inaugural season of Sun Belt football compared to recent years. For starters, we have known for a while who will be going out there and throwing the football to whoever is running routes. Blake Baker was 4-1 as a starter last year when he started and finished in the same game, averaging 224 passing yards per game in that stretch. It was clear he was the better arm but got hurt, which really limited Tech’s offensive abilities later in the year. The goal is have him not run into a defender every other play and go one season without breaking something. We’ll see what happens.
In addition to Blake, we learn that we are returning plenty of defensive talent even with a plethora of outgoing DB transfers. Luke Olson is still here and has a stacked LB room to build his 3-3-5 defense on. Jakari Foster is also helping coach the safeties and while our corner talent is definitely up in the air, I think the team did well filling the holes during the portal period. I’m curious to see if highly touted freshman AJ Tarvin gets any starts. Our pass catchers are looking better and better, especially Eli, Jalen Mickens, and Marcus Calwise. The running back room will likely succeed under this offense as well, they don’t worry me yet.
This is a team that can win a lot of games, especially in jacked up home environments on Saturdays in the fall. I’m gonna say best case does end up being 10-2 with a miracle one point win against Baylor and two losses to LSU and Troy. We get picked for the Cheez It Citrus Bowl after they abolish their conference tie-ins just to allow our team to personally receive 5 tons of free cheez its.
In recent years, it was always difficult to talk about Tech’s ceiling without mentioning just how atrocious the schedule was. Using MasseyRatings, the Bulldogs faced seven teams ranked 105th or worse, and the highest-ranked CUSA team they faced was #88 WKU, which was a loss. In fact, Tech didn’t beat a single FBS school ranked better than #105 and still finished 8-5.
That won’t be possible this year in the Sun Belt, as only four teams on the 2026 slate rank 105th or worse. This team will need to be demonstrably better to keep the new bowl streak alive.
But the Sun Belt is not a P4 conference either. Loosen the criteria from 105th-or-worse to 96th-or-worse and seven opponents fit the bill, so the improvement over last year doesn’t need to be insanely drastic.
In a best-case world, Tech wins those seven (ULL, ULM, South Alabama, Troy, Southern Miss, Arkansas State, Georgia Southern), handles the FCS opener against Northwestern State, banks the winnable ODU home game, and steals one of LSU/Baylor/Army. Add it up and you’re comfortably into bowl territory. Let’s call it 9-3.
Worst Case Scenario
The worst case for this season is absolutely a 1-11 finish. I don’t see Cumbie and Tech losing to an FCS foe; Cumbie hasn’t done it yet and the last time we played Northwestern State was very one sided. Every other game on the slate is absolutely on the table for an embarrassing loss. Yes, we can meme about playing ULM, but would it surprise you to see them play their best game of the season against us? Wouldn’t necessarily shock me to see them punch us in the mouth while we struggle to recover. That game could even be on the end of a 4-game skid.
We’re not winning the P4 games, Army will be hell, and the rest of the conference looks decent enough (idk I haven’t been keeping up with CFB much lately), so a real awful year is absolutely in play.
To be frank, this category feels a lot closer to the truth than the dream journal I quoted from above. For this category, I went forward in time to view alternate futures, to see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflicts. There were 14,000,605 futures – and in none of them do we lose to NSU. They’re that bad. So even in the worst timeline, we start 1-0 this year.
But after that… things take a turn. The injury bug hits and we can’t get off the ground the rest of the way. That NSU game will feel like a huge anomaly as we only find one more victory and finish up 2-10 on the year.
Struggling in the first year in a new conference would not be shocking, especially with what should be a lame duck head coach if it weren’t for poultry prices in this economy.
But struggling would only be a bad case. A “worst” case would be falling on our faces against a Northwestern State team desperate to find redemption from the loss to Louisiana Christian, predictable losses to LSU, Baylor, and Army, then a demoralizing defeat to Louisiana-Lafayette that loses Cumbie the locker room. From there the floor drops out, and a single ULM win is all that separates Tech from a winless season, a grim 1-11.
What sucks is that while many people can agree that this team is probably better than last year, they have a hostile, way more challenging road ahead than last year too. Yeah they maybe could beat a lot of those teams on the schedule, but they probably won’t beat the best ones.
It’s genuinely hard for me to be super negative with this admin so know that I say this with sadness: in the worst case, Louisiana Tech Football only wins three games, and two of those wins come from schools within an hour and a half of Ruston. Regardless of every reality known to man, I don’t think there is any world where those mustard buzzards walk out of Ruston with a win. They are going to be so beyond pure steaming hogshit this year.
Most Winnable FBS Game
You know, I’d love to say USM here. They’re in complete rebuild mode after Charles Huff rented a hotel room in Hattiesburg for a minute. But we’ve seen what a USM team in shambles can do to the Bulldogs. ULM also looks awful this year, but they’re going to want to beat us more than they’ve ever wanted anything. It won’t matter much though – let’s go with the Warhawks.
Despite what I wrote above, the most winnable game is still probably ULM. Yeah, they’re not breaking in a new coach, but they ended last season on an 8-game losing streak to give Coach Vincent a worse record than the season before. And they went from a 3-5 conference record in 2024 to 1-7 in 2026. That is not indicative of progress.
Even if Evan has his scars and doubts regarding Southern Miss, I think that football program is in RUIN. Their time and care goes to baseball and that is quite evident after being completely unable to maintain a half-decent head coach and participating roster for more than 9 months. We will not lose against Southern Piss in the Joe. We will win.
I mean, it has to be ULM, right? Nothing in life is a guarantee, but they’re the lowest-ranked FBS team on the schedule, and even though it’s on the road, it’s close enough that you could probably leave at halftime, drive home, make a sandwich, eat the sandwich, contemplate just how delicious that sandwich was, and drive back before the third quarter kicks off.
Most Losable Game
Side-stepping the obvious ones (LSU & Baylor), I’m going to choose a Sun Belt game. There are two games that stand out – at Troy on November 7th and vs ODU for Homecoming. ODU is looking to compete with JMU for the East this year, so I’ll go with them.
Like Evan, I’m not going to pick one of the body bag games for us. I will stay out of conference and pick Army here though. Playing an option team is a special kind of hell and our recent track record against them shows it. Sure, we get them after a week off, but a hard to prep for opponent in a game that really doesn’t matter much for our season aspirations leads me to think this one will be a guaranteed loss.
I really think there are few Sun Belt teams on our schedule with definite successful promise but most of them do have great positive upside. Troy is an exception in that they have a great coaching staff with a solid football team coming back to try and make a repeat appearance in the Sun Belt Championship. I think that game is the easiest for Tech to lose apart from the 4-hour drive down to the party school.
I see that everyone else answered in the spirit of the question, but I’ll take the easy route and say LSU. C’mon reverse jinx, work for me here!
Biggest Question Mark
Can I take the easy route and say coaching? Cumbie has (hopefully) already bottomed out and each season has been an improvement off record alone, but is that trend going to continue? And I don’t mean by record alone this year.
We’re breaking in a new OC, so will we finally see the high flying offense like we were promised in 2022? Will our defense continue to be excellent? Can Cumbie keep the locker room together after tough losses, especially the likely back-to-back ones in the beginning of the season? The real question is was last season an outlier, or are we going to see progress from the top down?
I have yet to hear a whole lot about our interior defensive line, which really ends up playing a very key piece of the 3-3-5. Emmanuel Oguns will likely produce well on the edge but we have been in need of a great nose tackle ever since David Blay went to Miami to get 2.5 TFL’s and zero sacks. The linebackers will likely end up making up for interior pass rush but you can really benefit a lot in this scheme if you can find a guy who requires multiple interior lineman to dedicate their craft to stopping him, which can open an A gap for a blitzing linebacker. Other than that, our corner production is going to take a second to start looking solid with so many new faces filling holes.
I mentioned this on the preview podcast as well, but will Blake Baker take that next step up. When healthy, he has been a good QB in the past. But will another year in the system have him ascend into a truly great (for this level) one.
Is it fair to say the entire offensive skill position group? There are a lot of new faces in the receiver and running back rooms. Surely someone will step up – but how quickly? Honorable mention: Nathan Young’s debut season as full-time playcaller.
Breakout Player of the Year
Early practice reports have mentioned RB Jaden Miller as being impressive, so let’s go with him. I’d really like to see a strong running game develop, especially as we move into conference play. He was an all-conference player at his previous team and my guess is that he can continue that level of play going forward.
With a completely new secondary taking the field for Luke Olson in 2026, there’s a lot of potential for breakout players here. Jakari Foster went from relatively unknown to a literal All-American in Olson’s first year. Can he find that magic again? His scheme puts a premium on ball-hawking safety play, so I’m looking for DB Sam Fongang (188 snaps in ‘25, 22 tackles, 2 PBUs) to be that dude in ‘26.
If QB Blake Baker qualifies for this, it is him for me. I know that is not really a breakout though, since he has been here so long. It really seems like Jaden Miller is poised to replace the backfield playmaker talent that we had with Clay Thevenin last year, alongside his fellow former Keiser player Andrew Burnette able to return and create a fun thunder and lightning duo. I like what I see out of him and I think he will move the ball down the field well.
I mean, someone from this receiving room has to break out, right? If Blake Baker is able to improve, he’ll need more than just Eli Finley to get the ball to. I’m just going to throw a dart and pick WR Marcus Calwise, the transfer from Eastern Kentucky.
Final Predictions
Another season with Cumbie at the helm and another season that could go any which way. I feel like I never know what to expect out of his teams (and maybe neither does he). That said, I think it’s fair to try and strike a balance between predicting a great season and a terrible one. I’m hedging my bets in a sense.
I like the continuity we have on defense and I expect another great year out of them. We’ll hopefully end up with a few all-conference players on that side of the ball and probably a few attempts from bigger schools to lure Coach Olson away. As for the offense, I would really, really like to see some consistency. It appears that Blake Baker will be QB1, so I have some more faith in the passing game this year. Kukuk really put the team on his back to end the last season and I hope we can keep him involved in the offense; he is more than capable of picking up yards when we need it. We’ll need to develop a strong running game to be competitive in conference and I’d really like to see one of our backs become The Guy for the offense. It might take some time for the offense to find itself and get going, so I do expect some early struggles. Special teams sounds like it might be a disaster though. No matter how good your offense and defense are, if you have horrendous special teams, you aren’t winning a lot of games. I hope the coaches can get them up to a serviceable level quickly. Nothing worse than watching your team give up huge chunks on punt returns.
Parsing through the schedule here I see an obvious win against NSU followed by two guaranteed losses to LSU and Baylor. I don’t even remember the last time we beat a power team in the regular season. I know we’ve beaten Kiffin before, but this doesn’t seem like the team nor the year for it to happen. I expect that game to be an ugly one. Baylor feels like the kind of game that is close through the middle of the third, but then the difference in depth pieces really starts to show. The kind of game that leaves both teams unhappy. Army will be a challenge and I’m skeptical that we can manage a win, even if it is at home after a week off. After that we get into conference play and I’m sure every team has us on the bulletin board (at least the fans do). My guess is that we really open up the playbook and rip off three in a row vs ULL, ULM and ODU (finally, revenge). Going on the road after that to both South Alabama and Troy is not easy and I’m seeing those as losses. It sounds like Southern Miss is in year one so I’ll take a big W at home here. We also get Arkansas State at home right after and I refuse to see the Bulldogs lose to Champion of Life Butch Jones. Finishing the season on the road at Georgia Southern smells like a loss to me; it’s another road game in a new conference.
Final prediction: 6-6 (5-3 for 3rd in the west) plus a bowl win over a CUSA team just to rub it in their faces to end 7-6.
Like I said before, this is an improved team that really can beat every Sun Belt team on the schedule I think. Due to the lack of known contributors at positions that are very hard to play in a physical league like the Sun Belt, I think we are gonna face adversity pretty quickly. Lucky for us, our home games feature some harder opponents and they are on Saturdays. I think people show out and some of these visiting teams are not ready for an excited Ruston ball club in Joe Aillet. I was there when we had a record student turnout against Southern Miss. We made their QB very mad and he made key mistakes on third downs to allow us to maintain our lead. I think we will win our home games.
Start off with a 35-3 win over NSU, pick off Sam Leavitt twice but still lose by 40 to Kiffin and keep it a close loss against the Lagway Crusaders. We are gonna beat Army in the most boring game of all time where a single INT on 3rd and long ends up being the difference. We win a thriller against ULL and take over the ULM stadium that no one will know the name of anymore because of their brand deal to win that game too. ODU comes to town without elite quarterback play and we rally the homecoming crowd to raise hell for whatever a monarch could mean as a mascot. The Alabama teams take wins, especially with a decisive Troy win and a close loss to Major Applewhite in Mobile (although I’ll be able to go to the beach after). We beat Southern Piss handedly, lose to Arkansas State, and then because I’ll be the lone Tech fan in Statesboro, Georgia, we will beat those feathery frauds to end the year 7-5. I do think we win either the A-State game or the GSU game and not both.
Final Prediction: 7-5 (5-3 – 3rd in SBC West), 8-5 with a Myrtle Beach Bowl win over 6-6 Rutgers to show Clay Thevenin he made the wrong choice. I will be there to revel in another 8 win season.
I’m an optimist at heart, but I’ve been hurt before. There are a lot of question marks on the offensive side of the ball, and a lot of potential depth problems on both sides of the ball. With this being our first year in the Sun Belt – a conference we Tech fans have talked a lot of shit about over the years – we will have a HUGE target on our backs. Do we have the team to overcome that this season? Only time can tell, but sure, I’ll make a prediction anyway.
We’re going to curbstomp NSU, lose the P5 matchups, then find our footing in October with three straight wins over Army, ULL, and ULM. The going gets tougher with a close Homecoming loss to ODU, a road win over USA, a loss at Troy. WIth a bowl berth on the line, we’ll end the season on a win streak over USM, Arky State, and Georgia Southern.
Final prediction: 7-5 (6-2 – 2nd in SBC West), 8-5 with a New Orleans Bowl victory over a CUSA program.
On the prediction episode of the podcast, I had the Bulldogs going 7-5, with Blake Baker and the offense making meaningful steps forward to counterbalance the tougher conference schedule. All of us on the show had Tech at at least 6-6, and that seems to be the case in this post as well.
But six wins is far from a sure thing this season. I think two straight Independence Bowl berths has us in the headspace that we’ll have another similar season hovering around bowl eligibility and somehow find ourselves playing in December.
I think we’re due for a backslide, and I think the tougher schedule is enough to dip us below .500. It won’t be a disaster of a season. We’ll pick up wins over the teams we’re heavily favored against (NSU, ULM, Southern Miss) and grab two more over ULL and Arkansas State, but we’ll end the season with a loss at Georgia Southern and fail to reach bowl eligibility.
So that’s 5-7 (4-4, 4th in SBC West).