Leonard Farrow took the opening kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown Saturday, and after a Texas Southern field goal he took the next one 92 yards for another; Wilky Denaud added a 31-yard fumble return, and FAU led 21-3 before its offense had run a single play. The Owls won 66-10. Then Zach Kittley stood up afterward and talked about what had gone wrong. "We've been missing tackles tonight, which shows up, and that's when those explosive plays happen," he said, pinning Texas Southern's chunk runs on tackling rather than scheme.
That is the sentence to carry into the open week. FAU is 4-1 with four straight wins, including victories over FIU and Louisiana-Monroe, and the Owls have no game in Week 6. Nobody else's result on Saturday changes anything for Boca Raton. The useful work this week happens in practice, on the tackling problem the head coach just volunteered.
Why a 10-point game still bothered the coach
Look past the final line. Texas Southern held the ball for 42:22 to FAU's 17:38 and ran for roughly 150 yards, with Athean Renfro Jr. going for 101 and a touchdown, and the Tigers still managed only 312 total yards, one offensive touchdown and 4-of-17 on third down. A 1-4 FCS team controlled the clock for two-thirds of the game against FAU's defense. The points allowed stayed low partly because Texas Southern kept stalling out.
Fans have a reason to be sensitive here. FAU's 2025 defense allowed 36.3 points and 201.3 rushing yards per game while opponents converted 45.4% of their third downs. That specific failure wasted a prolific passing team and left Kittley's first season at 4-8. Kittley kept all 10 full-time assistants for year two precisely so the fixes could be coaching fixes rather than another reset. Missed tackles in October are a coaching-and-execution problem, not a scheme mystery, which is the version you would rather have. It is still a problem.
The three games that will actually answer this
Kittley himself has pointed to Navy, Rice and UTSA as the option-based conference offenses on this schedule, and option football is the sport's most direct punishment for poor tackling. Every snap asks a defender to make a decision and then finish it one-on-one in space. FAU already survived Navy 38-30 in September. Rice visits Boca Raton in Week 8, UTSA in Week 10, and the American road opener at Army on Oct. 17 adds a fourth run-heavy test immediately out of the break.
The simulations give FAU a 17% chance at Army, 76% at home against Rice and 36% against UTSA. Rice is the game FAU is expected to win, and it is the game most likely to be decided by whether tacklers finish. The Army trip is the long shot. UTSA at home is the swing.
What continuity has actually delivered
None of this cancels the good news. Caden Veltkamp went 13-of-16 for 247 yards and four touchdowns against Texas Southern, three of them to Kelby Valsin, who caught seven for 126, and he has now gone four straight games without a turnover, with 11 touchdowns and no interceptions in that span. For a quarterback who threw 17 interceptions last season, that is the single clearest sign that year two of the same offense is working.
Just don't over-read Saturday. Veltkamp threw 16 passes, the game was decided by return units and a fumble recovery before he warmed up, and Kittley emptied the bench at halftime. Even so, the run became FAU's longest since 2020 back at Louisiana-Monroe, before Texas Southern padded it.
FAU has not posted a winning record since 2020 and has not been to a bowl since the Montgomery Bowl that December. Four wins in five games puts the sixth within reach by early November. Getting there probably comes down to whether a defense whose coach just said it is missing tackles can tackle Rice's and UTSA's ballcarriers in open space. Two weeks of practice is the window.
The interactive guide has the full remaining schedule and the odds behind every number above; the methodology explains how the simulations are built.