Expectations high for football

Toreros primed for another successful season as they look to capture their fourth consecutive PFL title

Given the success of the University of San Diego’s football team in recent years, it could be easy for the Toreros to rest on prior accolades when considering the season ahead of them. USD’s coaches’ office is adorned with an impressive array of Pioneer Football League (PFL) championship trophies, the most recent of which commemorating first-place marks in each of the last three seasons. This trio of successful campaigns includes last year, in which the Toreros went 10-3, and reached the second round of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs. These golden footballs perched atop opulent wooden pedestals line the shelves of the USD coaching staff’s humble workspace, and make one thing clear — the Toreros are a force to be reckoned with in the PFL.

Still, USD head football coach Dale Lindsey is blunt when assessing his Toreros chances at another PFL title this season, placing an emphasis not on years past, but instead on staying in the moment.

“The way we deal with everything around here is worrying about today,” Lindsey said. “We’re not worried about tomorrow — we’re gonna try to prepare for it, but we’re only concerning ourselves with today.”

Despite Lindsey and his team’s focused attitude, expectations remain high for the Toreros as the 2018 season draws nearer. For the eighth consecutive year, USD was picked to win the PFL regular season title in the PFL preseason coaches poll, and four of their players, (Anthony Lawrence, Zach Nelson, Daniel Cooney, and Connor Spencer), were named to the 2018 Preseason All-PFL team.

Lindsey spoke about what the preseason hype surrounding his team means (or doesn’t mean) to him and the Toreros.

“What (the amount of Toreros selected to the preseason All-PFL Team) means is that we lost a lot of good players,” Lindsey said. “I think last year we had quite a bit more that were selected preseason. Personally, I don’t pay any attention to that because that’s last year. That’s yesterday’s news.”

This fall, USD will have gaps to fill in their roster after 16 seniors graduated last season, including star players Justin Priest, Jonathan Petersen and Ross Dwelley the latter of whom has since moved on to play in the National Football League with the San Francisco 49ers. According to Lindsey, his outgoing seniors will be sorely missed, and perhaps will leave a void that USD will struggle to immediately fill.

“There’s some missing parts,” Lindsey said. “We got four offensive linemen, a tight end and a wide receiver, gone. That’s a lot of people to replace. I think you get (players like Priest, Petersen, and Dwelley) like once in a lifetime. Those three guys, I think they accounted for 120 receptions a year. Right now, there is nobody, in my opinion, that is at that caliber at those positions. We have some guys that have potential, but they have not done it for 11 games.”

With or without their star players of last year, the Toreros will attempt to continue their positive momentum into the 2018 season. They cruised through their conference schedule last year, going a perfect 8-0 in PFL play, only losing to UC Davis and Princeton University in the regular season.

Beyond their conference slate this year, USD will not have a rematch with Princeton, but will take on UC Davis once again. Lindsey gave his outlook on the Toreros’ 2018 schedule.

“Outside of our conference, we’re playing UC Davis, which is a scholarship school,” Lindsey said. “That’s certainly a step up for us. We’re also going to Harvard. Harvard has a great deal of access to certain things in their program that we don’t have, though they’re also a non-scholarship school. So those are two jump ups in my opinion. Those two, right there, will be a good test for us early before we get into league play.”

Last year, many of the Toreros’ games were high-scoring affairs, characterized by big numbers from USD on offense. Lindsey stated that he hopes his team will be able to continue their success in this regard.

“I don’t know if we’ll be high scoring or not, but I would certainly hope so,” Lindsey said. “We’ve done that for two years, and it’s been basically because we’ve been good up front, and we got a quarterback who’s unselfish, not worried about his stats, he wants to win.”

The Toreros’ aforementioned quarterback, Anthony Lawrence, who hails from nearby La Mesa, Calif., is coming off a career-best season in which he was named the Pioneer Football League Offensive Player of the Year after completing 245-of-347 of his passes (.665) for 3,131 yards and 33 touchdowns in 2017. He was recently named to the STATS FCS Walter Payton Award Watch List for the 2018 season. Lindsey described his senior quarterback’s work ethic, emphasizing that he is competitive in all facets of the game.

“I looked through some competitions that they have in the weight room in the quarterback slot, and (Lawrence) won every one of them,” Lindsey said. “Anthony, when you go do something, drills, whatever on the field, shorts, any sort of practice, he wants to win — and does. If you’ve got a quarterback, you’ve got a chance. Now, we just have to find the other 10 parts.”

While Lindsey was hesitant to name specific players who could try to step up and be those remaining “10 parts,” he did offer more insight into his approach heading into the season.

“We’re going into the fall, and we won’t really have lineups etched in stone until the third week of training camp,” Lindsey said. “We want to run the ball on offense, and we want to stop the run on defense. We’re trying to remain two dimensional on offense, and on defense we’re trying to make you one dimensional. We’ve done a good job of that, and if we can continue to do that, we feel like we have a chance to be successful.”

He gave two areas in which he would like his team to improve next year.

“Defensively, we’d like for our secondary to be a little tighter in coverage,” Lindsey said. “And offensively I think we’re going to open it up and throw the ball a little bit.”

The Toreros’ overall goal for the season remains the same: win the PFL championship.

“Our goal is always to win the PFL, get in the playoffs, and then see what happens from there,” Lindsey said. “We’ve been fortunate that we’ve been in three of the last four years, gone two rounds, and get knocked out by the guys who win it. If we had a goal beyond that, we’d like to get into the third round.”

The “guys who win it,” more specifically perennial FCS powerhouse North Dakota State University has been as close to an achilles heel as the Toreros have had in recent memory. In each of the last two seasons, the Bison have succeeded in eliminating the Toreros in the second round of the FCS playoffs, and neither game has been close.

“It gets really tough just when you get into (the FCS championship),” Lindsey said. “We’re the only non-scholarship team in there. We’ve gotten to two rounds and we’ve played North Dakota State twice, and oh my god. It’s like playing Alabama. So we don’t like it that they beat us, but we don’t feel bad about it.”

As the Toreros 2018 season opener approaches, however, Lindsey and the Toreros’ mindset is rooted in the short term, far from worrying about who they may potentially play in a playoff game in mid-December.

“Two things happen to you every day — you either get better, or you get worse,” Lindsey said. “If you don’t grind, you don’t shine.”

The Toreros begin their 2018 season with a home game against Western New Mexico University on Saturday, Sept. 1 at 2 p.m. at Torero Stadium. Tickets are free of charge for all USD students.