When are team to make public game depth charts?





GO BOBCATS

I'm gonna guess never.

I don't keep up with when they release game notes to know what they've usually done, but probably Thursday or Friday.

Game Notes are usually up on Tuesday for Saturday games. Ohio and Nebraska Game Notes are linked in the official game thread. Although it's my understanding that the 2-deep is usually an SID guess and not done by the coaches.

They're up.

https://ohiobobcats.com/documents/2026/9/1/Football_Notes...

Of note, is Rodarte isn't aren't it. I'd say that confirms that he left the team.

Probably nothing to be concerned about these days, but how can Ty Neubert, Dom Dorwart. Charlie Christopher and Ike Ackerman all be listed as freshman on the depth chart? If I'm not mistaken, all played significant minutes last fall.

Also, I recall in the summer of 2024 at a intrasquad scrimmage in Peden hearing glowing reports of a then-freshman corner by the name of Tony Mathis. The depth chart has him at 3rd-string strong safety and a redshirt sophomore. Hopefully this is the year he finally displays some of his potential talents.

This is a good question. However, unless I am mistaken, I don't think it matters anymore, and everyone is on a 5/5 clock. I wonder if they'll eventually ditch the freshmen, sophomore, etc., nomenclature and revert to Year 1, Year 2, etc.

It is probably just a typo. A lot more work needs to be put into the week 1 game notes than future weeks since a lot of it is done from scratch. In future weeks, some of the sections are the same or with just minor edits. Even in later weeks it isn't uncommon for a 2nd version a few days later to fix errors.

None of the guys you mention are freshmen. Mathis played a lot on special teams in 2024 and got on the depth chart at corner after an injury or two. If I recall, he was injured last season.

My thoughts:

Brack Peacock is the starting kicker again even after we brought in some new kickers. He better do better than last year. He couldn't really do worse. I know not every missed kick is entirely on the kicker but Nick Hemer is still the long snapper as well. We might really regret that Cooper Heimbach pulled his verbal and went to Marshall.

Michael Molnar is basically listed as a co-starter with Jack Fries and Charlie Christopher at both LB spots.

DJ Walker moved from SS to FS and his backup from 2025, JT Haskins, is the SS. The defense has far more returning starters. LB is probably the unit we should have the most confidence in followed by the secondary.

Dom Dorwart replaced Max Rodarte as a starter last season. We apparently don't have Rodarte back so essentially there are zero returning starters on offense. Since Dorwart started more than half of the games as a backup WR due to starter injury, then maybe we can almost claim that there is one. As I mentioned earlier in another thread, according to SP+ OUr offense easily has the least returning production of any unit, offense or defense, in the FBS. With Rodarte suddenly out it is probably even less than what Bill Connelly listed for SP+ metrics.

If the WRs positions are listed in the same order as the past four or five years, and that's a real if given it is a new HC doing the chart and he came from the defensive side, Dorwart is in the same position as Rodarte/Dorwart started last year. Eian Pugh is in Harris's spot and Riley Neer is the "X" where Hendricks played last year and Sam Wiglusz was in 2023 and 2024. This position has received the most targets by a large margin over the last three years. I don't know if this was just a preference of Rourke and Navarro, an intentional part of Izzy's scheme, or just that the best WR happened to be lined up there. It should be noted that Hendricks was intentionally moved from his 2024 spot to this position last year. It seems that placing the best receiver here was intentional. But it also seems that Navarro especially tended to be very, very locked in on this WR as the read. When Caleb Gossett was forced to play at times last year, he was getting far more targets from Navarro than Harris. If we can trust the Depth Chart order, as the positions are no longer labeled as F, Z, and X; then we might see Riley Neer in this position and he might get a lot of targets. I have to wonder if Rodarte was the most experienced receiver and was supposed to be here but suffered a career ending injury or something this week and they didn't want to do some last minute rearranging as Dorwart had played one WR position last year and all of camp. If that is the case the loss of Rodarte might be an even bigger loss than we were thinking.

Some depth chart thoughts...

Offense
- So much chatter on Riley Neer this spring / fall camp and its at least paid off on the depth chart, excited to see what happens gameday.
- Who will step up and be the go to WR? or will it be by committee all season? Lots of promising names on the depth chart. I like Bowman to emerge.
- Nice to see two FR as backups on the OL (Mavrick & Blakely). Promising for development.

Defense
- Talk about depth on the DL. Love seeing Ackerman (Omaha Nebraska kid) as the starter this week. Gonna be playing with a chip on his shoulder for sure.
- Ty Neubert as starter is great to see given the loss of Austin Mitchell.
- IMO, our LBs will be best in the MAC with Christopher, Fries, Molnar and transfer Cody Raymond. Hopefully Minnis gets to see the field this year, I think he has a lot of potential.
- My biggest question mark is at SS. Is JT Haskins ready for the spotlight? What about transfer James-Hamilton? Tony Mathis? lots of hype around him since his arrival but has not made is impact felt yet. Time will tell.
- I like the CBs with Bannister who had experience last year, and solid transfers in Sejour and Dillon. Curious to see what Bobby Miller and Tyson Long do on the field.

Curious to see how they throw Bowman into the mix as well. Lots of praise on his play this fall camp.

I am interested to see how multiple our defense is this year. Mattix ran a 3-3-5 at SDSU, and it was outstanding, so I think it's possible we could see some 3-3-5 looks with all three of our top LBs out there.

Those Freshmen OLs are going to be dudes.

Just reading in the notes that we've gone 40-14 in the last four seasons is remarkable. It's easy to forget it's been that dominant a run over that time. A .740 win percentage is insane.

Say what you want… wish David Dellenbach kicker was back this year. For Weber St last week he was 3/3 fgs and 3/3 extra points… long FG was 44. More to it than just the kicker.

This football program the last five seasons has 29 wins in the conference. No school in the MAC has more wins than Ohio the last five years. Ohio 29, Miami 29 and Toledo 28 round out the top three. The last ten seasons the Bobcats, Toledo and Miami have 53 wins in the MAC. Western Michigan is behind the top three with 49 wins. It is almost like this football program is under appreciated.

Definitely the most surprised by Bowman not cracking the Top 3 WR. I had in my brain as SLWR / WR1 / WR2.

- Pugh. That's a pretty big rise. Played 4 games, 6 catches last season... to WR1. He's a big target. Should be fun to watch. I think he's got a lot of skill and had a couple good catches last year where I was like good grief, where did this come from? Then he disappeared back into the fray. So hopefully he can put it all together, because this is a massive opportunity.

- Did Dom shrink... or grow? 6'2" 208 on the 2-deep... 6'0" 200 on OU's online roster. I feel like there has always been a little hype surrounding him, so excited to see his one 1,000 yard season in Athens before transferring to Maryland. ;)

- Riley Neer... High IQ. Sneaky athletic. Some might say he brings his lunch pale to work everyday.

I think we're seeing who Poulus is most comfortable with as WR 1-3. Though I would be *stunned* if Bowman wasn't starting soon.

If Cooper Heimbach didn't purposely go radio silent on us, and then out of the blue say he wasn't really committed to us to begin with, then yeah, we could regret it.

OUr 10 year total is handicapped by playing only 3 games total in 2020.

20 year total (Warning: this was compiled by Gemini and neither compiled by me nor found on a stats site or press release and it says that it is regular season wins so it doesn't count the MACCG)

Toledo 103
NIU 100
Ohio 99
WMU 93
CMU 87
Miami 81
Bowling Green 77
Buffalo 76
Ball State 75
Kent State 69
Eastern Michigan 50
Akron 46

I mentioned how 2020 hurts us but were also aided here with respect to Toledo, NIU, WMU, and CMU by playing in the East which as this list makes clear, was easily the weaker division over the 2006-2023 time frame. Eastern Michigan in the first 10 years or so before Crighton got there and Akron over the last 10 years or so have both had extended runs of being almost entirely awful. Other than that I think there is decent parity. I'd guess higher in general than most FBS conferences without running any other numbers.

If we did MAC Basketball from about 1990-2020, I would almost stake my life on the MAC being the highest parity conference (probably found by the average of each year's standard deviation of ratings in a well-known computer ranking) out of all 31 D1 conferences over that year time frame. I don't think that it would even remotely be close. But parity in MAC football is definitely a thing of sorts.

Only nice if you're unaware that we've recently lost two starting linemen to season-ending injuries. Could get ugly for Pawwlous & Co. in Lincoln.

Who did we lose?

While this is a tremendous blow for the whole team, for the whole year... Powless being 7'4" could help alleviate some quick pressure. Certainly won't do much if the DL puts our OL immediately on their back, but he should be able to see the play developing much quicker than Navarro did. He doesn't have the wheels and the shift to make chicken salad out of chicken shit, but he can rip it. He can also tuck it. He's not a track star, but him being a statue has made everyone forget he has nearly as many career rushing yards and passing yards. If we can connect on some early deep balls it might keep the defense honest and allow Brune/Rosa to go to work on the clock. Who knows, but UMASS taking Rutgers out behind the woodshed is gonna change the tone of todays walk throughs for Nebraska.