Edwards is Ready
Armanti Edwards, limited since spraining a medial-collateral ligament in his right knee against Elon on Nov. 14, says his knee is a lot better now.
“Definitely,” Edwards said Wednesday morning. “We get to run any play in our offense this week. I ran the ball yesterday in practice and cut on it with no problem.”
Appalachian State will play at Richmond Saturday in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Edwards said that he could have run the ball more last week in a first-round victory over S.C. State if he had needed to, although no plays were called designed for him to run.
“One time there was a big hole and I took off running and it didn’t bother me,” Edwards said. “After that I told the coaches I could run if I needed to.”
Edwards apparently is in much better shape than he was a year ago when the Mountaineers played Richmond in the quarterfinals. He was hampered with knee and hip injuries then, and said he was basically unable to run in that game. Edwards rushed for just three yards in that game and the Mountaineers, also hampered by injuries to running backs, totaled just 39 yards rushing.
Edwards passed for 323 yards last season against Richmond but threw a career-high five interceptions in a 33-13 loss that ended the Mountaineers’ three-year national title streak.
He ran for a school-record 313 yards in a semifinal win over Richmond in 2007.
“He’s such a tough kid, no one knew how bad he was hurt last year,” Coach Jerry Moore of the Mountaineers said Tuesday. “He had to have that knee scoped after the season was over, and he also had a hip pointer that hurt him just as bad as that knee. We didn’t really know that. He’s not a guy that’s going to go hang out in the training room.
“In some ways, I’ve thought if we had known that we might have been better to play (backup DeAndre Presley) last year…. We could have spotted him in there, we could have done some things with DeAndre to relieve some of the pressure.”
It doesn’t sound as if Moore will face that dilemma this time around.
“There’s no question Armanti is better than he was this time a week ago,” Moore said.
Edwards said that last year’s loss, and given that he wasn’t at full speed and threw five interceptions, adds personal motivation for this year’s game.
“It’s going to play a lot into it,” Edwards said. “(It’s) a playoff game, we don’t want to go home, and at the same time we get to face the team that put us out of the playoffs last year. There’s a lot of motivation for those two things.”