By Denny O'Brien
©2011 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.

Barring injuries or other unforeseen misfortune during his upcoming senior year, Dominique Davis will shatter the single-season East Carolina passing records he established last season.

That’s about the only prediction I care to publicize for the Pirates’ upcoming football campaign. It’s also about the only one that I feel confident in becoming a reality by year’s end.

Too many unknowns prevent me from extending my 2011 forecast beyond that. Because outside of the poise and steadiness of Davis and a handful of others, there just aren’t many guarantees entering this season.

Save for the difficulty of the non-conference slate.

What we can state with certainty is that Davis can’t be expected to carry the load alone. He’ll need plenty of assistance from every other phase of the team, much of which must be provided by players who are largely unproven in the roles they’ll be asked to fill.

That includes potential superstars such as Lance Lewis, who is expected to assume the label of go-to receiver. Though Lewis’s talent is not the question, duplicating last season’s productivity can’t be taken for granted without someone of Dwayne Harris’ talent commanding so much of the defense’s attention.

Some might assume that playmaker Michael Bowman can alleviate much of the pressure on Lewis, and perhaps he will. But again, we’re talking about a player who hasn’t managed the type of load he’ll be requested to handle this year.

The running game presents another glaring unknown, perhaps the biggest within a program attempting to rebuild the nation’s worst defense. The uncertainties here extend far beyond the abundance of inexperience at running back, what with an offensive line that lost key personnel and struggled to assert itself in short-yardage situations last year.

If the Pirates are unable to improve significantly in those scenarios, they will again struggle to extend drives, resulting in unneeded pressure on a defense that will surely experience its share of growing pains during yet another philosophical transition.

Any help the ECU offense can provide the defense — beyond just piling points onto the scoreboard — could prove to be the tipping point between a four- and seven-win season.

Defensively, the Pirates’ challenges have been well-documented and dissected. The overwhelming deficiencies in both size and speed last year can’t be expected to receive an overnight makeover, even with ECU’s shift from a 4-3 to 3-4 alignment.

Given the Pirates’ personnel and the areas in which they struggled last year, you can certainly see the wisdom in head coach Ruffin McNeill’s call to make the change. It will put players like Justin Dixon and Marke Powell in their more natural positions, and likely generate a more aggressive, attacking mentality.

But it’s much too soon to assume that any improvement defensively will be significant enough to help navigate the Pirates to their sixth-consecutive bowl.

My guess is we’ll have a decent idea of the Pirates’ defensive makeup Labor Day weekend when they face emerging powerhouse South Carolina. The Gamecocks are certain to be a double-digit favorite and have more recently adopted an offensive philosophy that exposed ECU’s defensive flaws during the latter half of 2010.

Bruising running back Marcus Lattimore is a preseason Heisman candidate, so you can rest assured that the ‘Ol Ball Coach will be looking to expose the Pirates’ defensive interior much like Central Florida, Navy, Rice, and Maryland did last year.

How well or poorly the Pirates respond could provide an early indication as to how much the defense has grown since last year. ECU desperately needs for that answer to be significantly for the better.

Right now we’re kidding ourselves if we are certain that it will. About the only thing we can express with confidence as the season approaches is that, with Davis, the Pirates are as stout at quarterback as they’ve ever been.

But ECU will need a lot of elements other than just Davis to fall into place if it is going to contend for its 3rd Conference USA crown.