AAC Football Preview Series: East Carolina Pirates
A talented defense and a forgiving schedule makes a major bounce-back feasible.
Once upon a time, East Carolina was perhaps Conference USA’s most steady program.
From 2006-2014, the Pirates made eight bowl games, recorded seven winning seasons, and captured two conference championships. They defeated #24 Boise State in the 2007 Hawaii Bowl, scored thrilling upset victories over #17 Virginia Tech and #8 West Virginia in 2008, and reached an AP Poll peak ranking of #14. Only Southern Miss, Houston, and Tulsa matched ECU’s year-over-year consistency in the pre-realignment C-USA landscape.
Skip Holtz, the orchestrator of East Carolina’s rise to relevancy, was hired by South Florida after the 2009 season, but the coaching change barely rocked the Pirates’ boat. Under the hand of beloved alumnus Ruffin McNeill, ECU earned four more bowl berths and an invitation to join the newly formed American Athletic Conference. Despite never reaching the same heights as the era’s most prominent Group of 5 teams, East Carolina was one of the nation’s surest things for almost ten seasons.
That’s why the events of the last decade have been so bizarre.
In a deeply unpopular move, ECU AD Jeff Compher fired McNeill after the Pirates posted a 5-7 season in 2015, a decision which multiple outlets described as “baffling.” At the time of his departure, McNeill’s teams had posted a 62% conference winning percentage, captured the school’s first ten-win season since 1991, and beaten each of Virginia Tech, NC State, and North Carolina twice in a row.
To replace one of the most successful coaches in program history, East Carolina hired Duke OC Scottie Montgomery, who promptly posted three consecutive 3-9 records. Montgomery probably never stood a chance — his tenure overlapped with a well-documented period of turmoil within the ECU administration that ended in Compher’s resignation — but his failure made the school’s firing of McNeill even more bewildering.
Montgomery was dumped just as unceremoniously as his predecessor, let go with a game remaining in the 2018 season to allow ECU to pursue current head coach Mike Houston, who was planning to take the Charlotte job at the time. Houston’s first two Pirates teams struggled, but a breakthrough 2021 season led to a bowl victory in 2022, East Carolina’s first in almost ten years.
But much of Houston’s accumulated goodwill evaporated last season when the Pirates cratered to a horrific 2-10, won a single conference game, and fielded arguably the worst offense in school history. Some bad luck was involved — half of the Pirates’ losses were by ten points or less — but ECU was inarguably bad, finishing 111th in SP+.
Hope isn’t lost heading into 2024. Several factors point to an East Carolina bounceback, most notably the ease of their schedule; college football analyst Adam McClintock’s model gives the Pirates an 80% chance to reach bowl eligibility. But the Mike Houston era has failed to break ECU out of the post-McNeill slump; while winning six games will keep him from being fired, fans likely won’t be satisfied with anything less than an emphatically successful season. A flawed yet intriguing roster gives Houston the chance to produce just that.
Defense
Let’s start with the positives: East Carolina fielded one of the conference’s best defenses last season. There’s a chance it gets even better in the fall.
Much of ECU’s 2023 success came from their fantastic run defense, which ranked third in the entire nation in EPA and second in success rate, just ahead of schools like Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, and Penn State. The ECU D turned in several comically lopsided box scores, holding FAU to 21 yards on 31 rushing attempts and SMU to 58 yards on 23 attempts; the Pirates even bottled up Michigan’s Donovan Edwards in a September visit to the Big House.
In the trenches, East Carolina returns all-conference defensive linemen D’Anta Johnson and Chad Stephens, who combined for 7.5 sacks and 21.5 tackles for loss last season, and veterans Elijah Morris, Suirad Ware, and JD Lampley. The Pirates lose several linebackers, but return the productive Mike Edwards III and bring in transfers from Ohio State, Missouri, and Louisville to bolster the front seven. For the second consecutive season, it’ll be hard to run on DC Blake Harrell’s unit.
Most opponents will have to turn to the air, where the Pirates are more vulnerable. In 2023, East Carolina ranked 106th nationally in EPA against dropbacks, six spots worse than UAB. ECU didn’t struggle to defend passes at the level that Temple or North Texas did, but the Pirates had a bad habit of allowing chunk plays and were susceptible to the long ball.
Some of that can be attributed to ECU’s front seven, which was ferocious against the run but less effective in pass rush scenarios, posting an unimpressive 4.71% sack rate, and some of it can be attributed to coverage struggles. However, the Pirates add transfers from UNC, WVU, and Maryland to their defensive backfield, return most of their DB production from 2023, and bring back all-conference cornerback Shavon Revel, a physical, versatile ball of havoc.
The loss of first-team all-conference safety Julius Wood hurts, but it’s almost a sure thing that this defense will be good. The question is: how good? If all goes to plan, East Carolina could feasibly sport a top-60 unit in the nation, but they’ll need to step up on the other side of the ball.
Offense
It got really, really ugly in Greenville last season.
East Carolina ranked 128th in offensive EPA and 132nd in the country in offensive success rate, ahead of only moribund Iowa. The Pirates weren’t effective on the ground or through the air: quarterback Alex Flinn threw for 6 touchdowns against 12 interceptions, running back Rahjai Harris ran for just 485 yards on 129 carries, and the ECU offensive line allowed 2.58 sacks per game, a bottom-30 mark in the country. East Carolina fielded the least efficient offense in the AAC by almost every conceivable metric.
Mercifully, reinforcements are on the way. Former offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick was let go shortly after the Pirates’ season ended, making way for the hiring of 33-year-old John David Baker. A young, up-and-coming offensive mind, Baker spent the last three seasons as the passing game coordinator and co-OC at Ole Miss, where he helped turn the Rebel attack into one of the most productive in the nation. At ECU, he’ll be handed sole playcalling duties for the first time in his career.
Baker’s first order of business is straightening out the quarterback room, as Flinn retired from football in the offseason. Redshirt freshman Raheim Jeter, who attempted just two passes in 2023, is the Pirates’ only returner at the position, while Georgia State transfer Bryson Harrison was added to the roster less than a month ago.
However, neither are likely to win the job in the face of two pedigreed incoming transfers: Missouri’s Jake Garcia and Michigan State’s Katin Houser, both of whom were four-star recruits coming out of high school. Garcia was Miami (FL)’s second-leading passer in 2022, while Houser served as MSU’s starter for most of last season. Although their situation isn’t ideal, ECU has more talent and experience to work with than most other QB-starved AAC teams.
Aside from Flinn, ECU returns over 60% of last season’s offensive production, including lead running back Harris, promising sophomore RB Javious Bond, and leading receiver Chase Sowell, but continuity alone won’t be enough to improve a unit that put up just 208 points in 2023. The Pirates looked to the transfer portal to bolster their skill position depth, adding NC State WR Anthony Smith, Florida State WR Winston Wright, Jr., and Penn State RB London Montgomery, and signed several talented high schoolers, including four-star WR Yannick Smith.
This is still an offense with a boatload of questions to answer; the pecking order of the line, in particular, is up in the air, with several returners sliding into different positions. It’s unlikely the Pirates field an attack with an SP+ rating better than 100th. But in a weak AAC, even slight offensive improvement could net ECU several more wins, and there’s optimism that a new coordinator and a new quarterback will lead to progress.
TL;DR
Three Best Players:
CB Shavon Revel
DL D’Anta Johnson
DL Chad Stephens
Three Burning Questions:
Can new coordinator John David Baker revitalize a dismal offense?
Can someone be the hero at quarterback?
Can ECU capitalize on their forgiving schedule?
Outlook and Prediction:
Let me say it again: East Carolina’s most important asset is their schedule. The Pirates open the season with two winnable games against FCS Norfolk State and Old Dominion, widely projected to be one of the worst teams in the Sun Belt. However, ECU will proceed to take on Appalachian State and Liberty, matchups where they’ll be pronounced underdogs.
The good news? The Pirates have perhaps the easiest conference slate of any team in the AAC, dodging Memphis, USF, and Tulane; of the league’s upper echelon, ECU will only face UTSA. The rest of their AAC schedule consists exclusively of teams inferior to them in SP+.
East Carolina simply must show offensive improvement, and that’s not a given — despite the additions of several promising newcomers, it’s feasible, if not downright likely, the Pirates are stagnant again. But even marginal progress will allow ECU to dream big in a weak conference. A bowl-eligible season is well within reach; however, East Carolina could do much more than simply bounce back. If Mike Houston wants to emphatically redefine the narrative around his tenure, this is the year to do it.