Very successful day for a first game for new players and moving parts. Coaches and players did a good job with a clean first game with no turnovers and three penalties. No substitution penalties played off. Mock game paid off which ironically was 72-0 with same yards per carry. After the game it was special for me thinking about dad watching the game and my brother here and it’s dad’s favorite day is always gameday and it’s a shutout. And dad was on all my staffs but one, that last year at USC. He was valuable at all my places. This is my first year without him.
A number of guys played well. We got up big in the past and felt bad about second half execution but not Saturday. That speaks to our depth. We’ll have better opponents including this one coming up. Last year they played Missouri down to the wire. Lot of work to do. A lot of our guys didn’t play a lot of snaps. Some defenders played in the 20s or even the teens. We need to work on playing more snaps, I guess. It looked more like a preseason game with so few snaps.
I thought helmet communication was great, advantageous. Really worked well. This would be the one game where it’s not fair because they didn’t have it. They don’t have them at that level unless they individually purchase them. North Dakota State did, but Furman didn’t. I thought it was very valuable.
Every game is independent as far as how long guys play. You can’t anticipate that. This was the largest margin out there, the largest in college football for the week. To expect that every week isn’t realistic. We thought it was good to play other guys in the second half. I didn’t love the throwing in the fourth quarter, but we had our reserves and needed to see them throw the ball some. I wasn’t trying to run it up; I was trying to evaluate. And going for it on fourth down at the end, it was worse to kick a field goal in that situation.
Matt Jones is unique because of staying places and fight through adversity. He was down in the service team as a walk-on and a couple years ago made our defense miss. We brought him up and he’s performed well. He’ll see more playing time because of it.
I thought the backs ran well. Protection was not clean. Got a little better after starting poorly mentally and physically. One middle backer came free. Got work to do there. They did protect the ball. No turnovers in a high play count game is great to see. Continuining ball security from last year.
Zxavian Harris I can’t comment on that and his situation. When we do have punishments we handle them internally. In this instance there was a punishment, but I can’t speak to legal details of his case.
A number of guys played well. We got up big in the past and felt bad about second half execution but not Saturday. That speaks to our depth. We’ll have better opponents including this one coming up. Last year they played Missouri down to the wire. Lot of work to do. A lot of our guys didn’t play a lot of snaps. Some defenders played in the 20s or even the teens. We need to work on playing more snaps, I guess. It looked more like a preseason game with so few snaps.
I thought helmet communication was great, advantageous. Really worked well. This would be the one game where it’s not fair because they didn’t have it. They don’t have them at that level unless they individually purchase them. North Dakota State did, but Furman didn’t. I thought it was very valuable.
Every game is independent as far as how long guys play. You can’t anticipate that. This was the largest margin out there, the largest in college football for the week. To expect that every week isn’t realistic. We thought it was good to play other guys in the second half. I didn’t love the throwing in the fourth quarter, but we had our reserves and needed to see them throw the ball some. I wasn’t trying to run it up; I was trying to evaluate. And going for it on fourth down at the end, it was worse to kick a field goal in that situation.
Matt Jones is unique because of staying places and fight through adversity. He was down in the service team as a walk-on and a couple years ago made our defense miss. We brought him up and he’s performed well. He’ll see more playing time because of it.
I thought the backs ran well. Protection was not clean. Got a little better after starting poorly mentally and physically. One middle backer came free. Got work to do there. They did protect the ball. No turnovers in a high play count game is great to see. Continuining ball security from last year.
Zxavian Harris I can’t comment on that and his situation. When we do have punishments we handle them internally. In this instance there was a punishment, but I can’t speak to legal details of his case.
