On both offense and defense, most of the players who provided any significant statistical production for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program last year had to be replaced ahead of this season, which began with back-to-back games against talented opponents.
That makes UTC’s current situation — still looking for answers and off to an 0-2 start for the second year in a row — less surprising.
It does not make it any more pleasant for the Mocs — who were outscored a combined 90-27 in the opener at Memphis (a Football Bowl Subdivision program) and last week’s game at Tennessee Tech (a nationally ranked Football Championship Subdivision program) — or Rusty Wright, their seventh-year head coach.
Asked this week what he hopes to see from his team in the home opener against Stetson (1-1), which is set for a 6 p.m. kickoff Saturday at Finley Stadium, Wright’s answer showed some frustration not just with the results but the effort, at least where the most recent game is concerned.
“We’ve got to win. We’ve got to win a football game,” Wright said. “We’ve got to go execute no matter what’s going on, what’s being called, and they’ve got to go play at a high level to go execute those things. You get in a game like last Saturday, it’s hard to call offenses and defenses when it doesn’t look like there was a whole lot of fight on our side. You’re trying to put them in the right spots, and then all of a sudden nothing’s working because they’ve got to have some fight in them to go get it done.