He was written off time and time again: John Bonamego was one of the "worst" hires as a head coach. He hadn’t coached at the collegiate level since his assistant gig with Army from 1993-98, and was a wandering special teams coach in the NFL since thing. But he came back to his alma mater after Dan Enos ran off to Arkansas just two weeks before National Signing Day circa 2015.
There was some question of how the team would do without Thomas Rawls and Titus Davis to help out their offense, but they still had Cooper Rush entering his third year as a starter, and the defense was expected to be pretty good, but that side of the ball proved to be more legitimate than expected after they held Oklahoma State to 24 points when the Cowboys were expected to win by 23.