Hawaii Rainbow Warriors Head coach: Nick Rolovich (18-22, fourth year) 2018 record and S&P+ ranking: 8-6 (103rd) Projected 2019 record and S&P+ ranking: 6-7 (94th) Five key points: For the third straight year, Rolovich’s team defied projections, this time in a good way. Projected in the bottom five, UH instead won eight games for the first time since 2010. QB Cole McDonald was a revelation during a 6-1 start, and he should have more than enough in the receiving corps to do damage. The good news: the defense has a lot of playmakers. Hawaii could rush your passer, and they played semi-efficient run defense as well. Just about everyone’s back. The bad news: the defense allowed a ton of big plays and ranked just 118th in Def. S&P+. Hard to simply assume that’ll improve. The schedule features nine games projected within nine points. Close-game performance and breaks could make the difference between 4-9 and 8-5.

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A Hawaii season is a journey, both literally and figuratively.

First, your non-conference schedule is going to be a strange cocktail of Pac-12 opponents (the Warriors have played 15 games against the conference over the last 10 years), trips to Big Ten heavyweights (Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State), service academies, FCS opponents from Duquesne to UC Davis, and whatever mid-majors are willing to schedule home-and-homes (lots of indies, from BYU to UMass).

If you’re head coach Nick Rolovich, you’re also going deal with constant roster shuffling as you bring talent to the islands — locals, transfers, unheralded high schoolers, unheralded JUCOs, etc. You’re also going to lose plenty of transfers and deal with unexpected attrition.

All the while, you’re going to travel more miles than anybody else. Your closest possible trip is to San Diego State, a five-and-a-half-hour flight. Most trips are much, much farther.

By Hawaii standards, 2018 was pretty straightforward. Looking at the progression of wins and losses — a 6-1 start, followed by an 0-4 lull (average score: Opp 50, UH 21), then two more wins after finally encountering a bye week — you get the impression of a team that started out hot, then ran out of steam.

This team definitely seemed to deal with fatigue in October and early November. But the quality of the opponents told as much of a story. Each of Hawaii’s first five wins came against teams that finished 101st or worse in S&P+, and three teams that pummeled the Warriors during their 0-4 stretch were in the top 50.

An extremely back-loaded schedule created impressions of a cold finish. Really, Hawaii was good against bad teams and pretty bad against good ones.

Hawaii in 2018 Opponent S&P+ range Record Avg. scoring margin Avg. yards/play margin Avg. postgame win exp. Opponent S&P+ range Record Avg. scoring margin Avg. yards/play margin Avg. postgame win exp. Top 50 1 W, 3 L -23 -1.1 16% No. 51-100 1 W, 3 L -9 -1.1 47% No. 101+ 6 W, 0 L +12 +1.0 78%

Narrow upsets of Wyoming (17-13 right before the losing streak) and at San Diego State (31-30) earned Hawaii an 8-5 regular season record and a second bowl in three seasons under Rolovich. But despite what felt like a roller coaster, this team had a pretty fixed ceiling.

By comparison, this has been the most stable offseason of Rolovich’s tenure. He didn’t randomly lose his quarterback to transfer; Cole McDonald threw for 3,875 yards and 36 touchdowns as a sophomore and first-year starter and will serve as the variously coiffed face of the program for at least one more year. Plus, for the first time, Rolovich didn’t have to replace his defensive coordinator. He brings back almost all of last year’s starters, plus most of the coaching staff and second string.

(Despite this increase in stability, Rolovich still added eight more JUCO transfers — it’s what he does, and it could both create more competition on the two-deep and insulate Hawaii from unexpected transfers.)

Really, there are only two buckets of cold water:

The non-conference schedule, which lightened up last year, features three Pac-12 opponents out of the gates (Arizona and Oregon State at home, then a trip to Washington), plus a season-ending visit from Army. Including a visit from FCS’ Central Arkansas, Hawaii would do alright by going 2-3. But that means the Warriors would have to go 5-3 in an improving Mountain West to finish above .500. Rolovich’s teams have a habit of defying expectations, good and bad. His 2016 team had poor projections and the most ridiculous travel schedule ever and went 7-7. His 2017 team looked like it had continuity and went 3-9. Last year, his completely rebuilt two-deep won eight games. Since the Warriors are set to improve on paper this year, it would be a good time for Rolovich to stop being so damn unpredictable.

Related The 2018 advanced college football stats glossary

Offense

Few things are more fun than a Hawaii offense with a flashy quarterback. Colt Brennan threw for more than 14,000 yards and led UH to 28 wins in just three seasons in the 2000s. While McDonald didn’t throw for 5,500 yards in a season like Brennan did, McDonald did pretty damn well for himself.

McDonald took over when Dru Brown transferred to Oklahoma State, and if he hadn’t missed the Wyoming game, he’d have definitely crossed 4,000 yards. And he was on a nearly 5,000-yard pace before suffering a midseason foot injury. He also showed exciting running ability, averaging 5.8 yards per non-sack carry.

Even with some later-season regression, Hawaii finished 28th in passing marginal efficiency and 40th in overall Passing S&P+.

Granted, John Ursua was part of the reason. He caught 89 passes for 1,343 yards and 16 touchdowns before declaring for the draft almost immediately after Hawaii’s bowl loss to Louisiana Tech. He was a wonderful security blanket in the slot, and he had big-play ability. Losing him, plus 50-catch wideout Marcus Armstrong-Brown, is a blow.

Hawaii at least has quantity in attempting to replace these pieces, and what we know about the quality is encouraging. Seniors Cedric Byrd and JoJo Ward combined for 130 catches, 1,845 yards, and 18 touchdowns as the No. 2-3 targets. Byrd was the most efficient of McDonald’s key targets, and Ward averaged an explosive 17 yards per catch. When Ward got loose, Hawaii won — he had 40 catches for 685 yards in eight wins and 11 for 180 in six losses.

Then comes the volume: former Cal blue-chipper Melquise Stovall joins the lineup, and Kumoku Noa, who played a large role when Ursua got hurt in 2017, returns to it. Senior Jason-Matthew Sharsh could take on a bigger role after catching nine passes for 152 yards last year, three-star redshirt freshman Eric Rooks brings much-needed size, and Rolovich signed both a pair of JUCOs (Jared Smart and James Phillips) and a pair three-star freshmen (Jonah Panoke, Steven Fiso).

Rolovich and coordinator Brian Smith leaned into Hawaii’s pass-happy reputation, both because it’s Rolovich’s identity and because that was the team’s strength. The two-deep at RB got nuked by attrition, and sophomore Fred Holly III, 250-pound LB-turned-TE-turned-RB Dayton Furuta, and freshman Miles Reed took turns manning the No. 1 RB spot.

The most successful rushers, by far, were McDonald and backup QB Chevan Cordeiro, though Furuta was efficient between the tackles.

Everybody’s back, and the line’s more experienced — Hawaii handed out 42 of 70 starts up front to freshmen and sophomores and lived to tell the tale. Freshman guard Solo Vaipulu, in fact, earned honorable mention all-MWC honors. If Rolovich and Smith wanted to run the ball more, they could get away with it. But this is Hawaii, and even without Ursua, they’re probably going to be good at pitching the ball around.

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Defense

When Rolovich brought in Honolulu product and former Lane Kiffin assistant Corey Batoon as his defensive coordinator last year, I wrote that Batoon was “an accomplished recruiter, and he’s spent a lot of time helping to design the type of aggressive defense that tends to work on the islands.”

At the very least, Hawaii’s defense was more fun. When the Warriors got a pass rush opportunity, they teed off, ranking 34th in sack rate and 33rd in passing-downs sack rate. They were particularly aggressive near your goal line and theirs, and it paid off at times.

It also got them gashed a lot. They gave up nearly two gains per game of 40-plus yards (122nd in FBS in the category) and ranked 111th in marginal explosiveness allowed. They were equal-opportunity, too: 111th in rushing marginal explosiveness, 102nd vs. the pass. Technically, they improved overall — from 123rd to 118th in Def. S&P+ — but only because the bar was so low. They did, after all, give up 29.6 points per game in wins.

But a lot of the best players were freshmen and sophomores. Nose tackle Blessman Ta’ala, linebacker Penei Pavihi, and safety Khoury Bethley were key contributors, and all have at least two more years of eligibility. So does linebacker Jeremiah Pritchard, who recorded 6.5 tackles for loss in 2017 before redshirting last year. Plus, most of their best havoc creators — end Kaimana Padello, linebackers Solomon Matautia and Pavihi, corner Rojesterman Farris II — are back.

Continuity is a strength here for once; we’ll just have to see if that talent is up to par.

The front six should be decent. Everybody but end Zeno Choi and linebacker Jahlani Tavai return, and Pritchard should offset the Tavai loss. Plus, three JUCO transfers and a pair of three-star redshirt freshman ends (including Jonah Kahahawai-Welch, one of the more well-regarded 2018 signees) join.

The 310-pound Ta’ala could further a solid partnership with the quicker Samiuela Akoteu at tackle, and I’m curious what sophomore linebacker Paul Scott might do, given more opportunities.

The secondary struggled again last year, but it’s more experienced than it’s been in a while, led by a trio of seniors safety Ikem Okeke and corners Farris and Jalen Hicks. There should be roles for younger players like Bethel and redshirt freshman Kai Kaneshiro, but there at least might be a hair more stability.

Special Teams

After a total collapse in 2017, UH rebounded a bit last fall. Ryan Meskell was a rock, making almost all of his shorter kicks, plus three of five FGs over 40 yards. Place-kicking carries the heaviest weight in the Special Teams S&P+ formula, so having Meskell is huge. But the rest of the unit still has plenty to prove, to put it politely.

2019 outlook

Man, this could go in so many different ways. First, there’s the sociopathic “do the opposite of whatever the numbers say” thing.

But if the Warriors end up closer to their projections than normal, there are tons of potentially close games on the schedule. A few good breaks or new contributors could make the difference between a 4-9 record and 8-5.

S&P+ projects six Hawaii games within seven points and another three within nine. There are a couple of likely losses (at Washington, at Boise State) and a couple of likely wins (Central Arkansas and SJSU), and everything else is, to some degree, up for grabs.

Good. All I ask for from a Hawaii season is a pass-happy offense, a havoc-heavy defense, and lots of close-game instability. We could go 3-for-3 this fall.

Team preview stats

All 2019 preview data to date.