Down Day on Defense
The offense looked good.
And Armanti was fine.
The defense?
Well, the offense looked good. And Armanti was fine.
Appalachian State had some issues stopping McNeese State on Saturday, and lost a game it didn’t think it would.
No shame in losing to McNeese – a top 25 team in FCS rankings, even though that was in question following a squeaker of a win over Division II Henderson State last week.
But Coach Jerry Moore acknowledged that his Mountaineers have serious “roll-up-your-sleeves” work to do before beginning Southern Conference play in two weeks against dangerous Samford.
“I think we’ve played two pretty good football teams,” said Moore, whose team is an unexpected 0-2 after losses to East Carolina and McNeese. “It’s not like we went out and lost to two inferior teams. We don’t have that kind of problem. I think the problems that we have right now are correctable.”
And Moore said that some of the problems fall on him and his staff, and some fall on his players.
“I think if you prepare a player to go out and play a game and he sees those things and doesn’t do them, then it falls on him,” he said. “I think as a coach, if you haven’t prepared them to see those things, then it falls back on the coach.”
Moore said McNeese didn’t do anything unexpected.
Other than rip the Mountaineers’ defense – expected to be pretty strong with nine starters returning from last season’s team – for 522 yards and nearly 40 points. The Cowboys were 10 of 16 on third- and fourth-down conversions.
Ed Gainey, a cornerback from Winston-Salem, said that it was a lesson learned.
“We can’t just walk out there and win,” said Gainey, who said that the defensive unit lacked focus Saturday.
“I don’t think we’re going to let this happen again.”
For the Mountaineers, they best not with Samford looming.
Moore heard a couple of his players talk about lack of focus after the game.
“That’s a term that’s used a lot,” Moore said. “Now if it’s reality, it’s one thing. If it’s just a term that you use, it’s just camouflage. I think that’s where my role starts on Monday – on the focus part, that we’re focusing on the right thing.
“It’s not like we don’t have good players or that we’ve got internal problems or anything like that. We don’t have that. We’ve got good players and there’s not a thing in the world that’s going on inside our team that’s an issue. With that in mind, I think you do a better job coaching and you do a better job as a player, understanding what coaches want and then go do it.”
And Moore heard Armanti Edwards’ response about being 0-0 – instead of 0-2 – in what really counted. Edwards was talking about conference play. Moore glanced at him and said, “Great answer.”
“I think we’re in the same place we were in ’05,” Moore said. “We lost to LSU and we lost to Kansas. And we lost to Furman. We had three losses and wound up winning the championship.”