Rusty Wright had no choice but to ask a lot of his football team this season, his seventh as head coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
To start with, he had to ask a mostly young group — of the 70 players who have appeared in a game for UTC this season, 34 are either freshmen or sophomores — to grow up in real time, and their first month of on-the-job training didn’t leave much room for easing into things. Before getting to Southern Conference play, which is two-thirds of their regular-season schedule and the portion most vital to making a run at a berth in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, the Mocs’ first four games included three tough opponents on the road.
They opened against Football Bowl Subdivision member Memphis (which moved into the Associated Press rankings for the first time this season at No. 23 in Sunday’s poll), and there were trips after that to Tennessee Tech and Tarleton State (each was in the FCS national rankings when UTC visited in September, and both are among the top 10 in at least one poll now). That trio is currently a combined 17-0.
As for injuries, it’s always going to be next man up in football, but that’s been tested this season. Show up at a UTC practice, and you’ll see anywhere from eight to 10 players on the sideline being held out for any number of injuries, some of them of the season-ending variety. Most of those are in the secondary, where two of the group’s five starters at this point are in their first season of college football.
The starting quarterback, Camden Orth, will never leave a game without being bloodied in some capacity. Usually it’s his knee, but it could also be somewhere on his upper body. That hasn’t stopped the graduate transfer’s competitive flair as he attempts to knock off the rust of not playing in 2024, with UTC his third college program after time first at Long Island and then at Bowling Green. His rushing has been solid, but he has been prone to turnovers through the air with seven interceptions, three of which have been returned for touchdowns.
Orth has fought, though, which has been indicative of a group that has been both tested and humbled in reaching the regular season’s midpoint with a 2-4 record that includes a 1-1 mark to start SoCon play. It’s also a group that has shown some type of improvement in every game except the conference opener, a 28-10 loss to The Citadel on Sept. 27 at Finley Stadium.
“We’ve played some really good football teams the first month, and then last week at home playing (against) the option, I didn’t give our kids a chance, and it was some different things and we’ll get better from that,” Wright said Saturday on UTC’s radio broadcast after the Mocs’ 21-14 win at Virginia Military Institute. “We were better today, and I know this is a different team than Tarleton, but we were better today doing the basic football things that we were supposed to do, especially defensively: being in the right spots, being in the right gaps.”
Wright then pointed out that the pressure to get the call right and for players to be in position is even greater because of the inexperience, with the Mocs lacking the “difference makers out there right now,” guys who could overcome a misalignment or a missed assignment.
“But if we’re doing the things we’re supposed to do,” he added, “we’ll give ourselves an opportunity to go win the ballgame.”
And now, for the first time in a while, the Mocs will rest this week before getting ready for at least six more games. As a whole, they’re battered and beaten up, but they’re also hopeful about what the future — both this year and beyond — may hold. Eight true freshmen have already played this season, and two of those (cornerback K.J. Sejour and safety Kamari Todd) have started games.
The youth movement has swept through a UTC program that’s attempting to figure out the best way to operate in the name, image and likeness era without much money to compensate its athletes compared to a lot of other FCS programs. With so much lost in the offseason, the Mocs have gone young, with 22 freshmen getting playing time this season so far compared to 18 seniors.
“We need a break, man,” said running back Justus Durant, whose 144 rushing yards against VMI marked the senior’s single-game high in his two seasons with the Mocs. “We need a break.”
Added junior defensive tackle Jamarr Jones, who had two sacks against the Keydets: “This bye week is going to be well long lived, for sure.”
In addition to having the tough nonconference trips under their belt, the Mocs’ longest SoCon trip of this season, to VMI, is not only behind them but goes down as a win. Three of UTC’s next four games are at home (with a short trip to Samford the exception), starting with a visit from rival East Tennessee State at 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 18 at Finley Stadium.
For now, though, they have a moment to not think about another team. Only themselves.
“This bunch is young. We’re beat up pretty good. We need to get a little bit healthy,” Wright said. “There’s a lot of things we can work on, but we’ve got to get to feeling better.
“But this bunch needs a break mentally. They need a little bit of a break to try and refresh and get their selves going and keep going in the right direction. Everything’s not awful when you lose and everything’s not great when you win, but it sure does feel a whole lot better when you win.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.