No one saw this coming. If you see that sentence and say, “No, I did,” you’re a liar.

Lindenwood was supposed to be a routine rout of an FCS team. But for the third straight season, App State was in a competitive game with an FCS team in the third quarter.

And the video and sound presentation had as much thought put into it as the Cookout drive-thru voice box. So much for that hype.

To me, it seems like Dowell took “Charlotte” off last week’s game plan and put “Lindewood” in its place. And he thought he could get away with it if the players flexed their talent because we had the FBS initials and they had FCS.

The only difference week to week was that the offense seemed to abandon the intermediate passing attack and tried to force it deep to blow the top off, over and over again. A team needs to throw deep a few times a game to spread the defense. But it didn’t work.

Outside of the first quarter, there was an issue: the WRs couldn’t catch the ball. Give the WRs half the drops and this game is a 3-4 score win.

A.J. Swann was OK. He’s timid running the ball tho, which will make him more one-dimensional and allow defenses to formulate game plans around him.

There were more illegal formation penalties (four) than tight end catches (two). And it wasn’t because the tight ends were dropping the ball.

Add on the fumbles and a bad interception and it led to a near-disaster.

The defense will get plenty of praise for eight sacks, only allowing three first downs on 17 third-down attempts, getting two interceptions and only allowing 216 total yards. What they probably missed was being in zone defense a good bit, leaving the flats open for short passes.

Looking at the offense, the loss of Kanye Roberts is showing. Rashad Dubinion had 25 carries for 194 yards, but fumbled twice. The second-leading rusher was AJ Swann. No one else had two carries. A true RB2 needs to step up because Dubinion can’t do it all by himself on the ground for the remaining 10 games.

If Dowell couldn’t enjoy the Charlotte win because of the mistakes, he really couldn’t enjoy this one. And based on his post-game demeanor, he really didn’t enjoy this one. He already pulled the “we gotta practice harder” card last week. Hopefully that 93 years of NFL experience can motivate the players to hold onto the ball somehow.

Going to Hattiesburg to face Southern Miss with the Marshall coach and Marshall QB that tormented the App State defense last season will be a chore. But if there’s a silver lining to Lindenwood, it’s that you won a game with all those mistakes, so you’re 2-0. Get in and out of Hattiesburg with a win and then you’ve got the early bye week before the Boise trip. And that game can be won as ugly as possible.