It’s been a crash course for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga defense this football season, with a lot of moving parts early on due to injuries and inexperience on the field playing a part in the team’s 1-4 record as October began.
Now it’s nearly November, and the Mocs are on a three-game winning streak heading into a huge Southern Conference showdown with Western Carolina at 4 p.m. Saturday at Finley Stadium. The Catamounts (5-3, 4-0) and the Mocs (4-4, 3-1) sit behind first-place Mercer (6-1, 5-0) in the SoCon standings with the regular season down to its final four weeks.
The Catamounts feature one of the most prolific offenses in the Football Championship Subdivision this season, led by redshirt freshman quarterback Taron Dickens. The 5-foot-11, 180-pounder from Miami was a preseason FCS All-American, and he has lived up to the hype this fall.
Meanwhile, UTC’s defense is still young and inexperienced, which has shown up with some inconsistency and mistakes, but it’s also a hungry group, which has shown up in effort and in making needed plays at times.
“I don’t know, man. We’ve got a long way to go over there,” UTC head coach Rusty Wright said of a defense that has 11 freshmen and sophomores on the two-deep chart. “It’s not fair to the kids; they’re fighting their tails off. We’re not old enough and strong enough over there right now, but we’re doing a better job of being where we’re supposed to be, and if we’ll continue to do that, we’ll have opportunities.
“It’s the thing I’m most proud of, is it doesn’t matter who’s been in there the last month, is that even if they’re getting run over, they’re in the right spot, and I can live with that.”
It was actually against the Mocs a season ago that Dickens got his first college start, throwing for 431 yards and five touchdowns while also leading the Catamounts with 41 rushing yards in their 38-34 win that stunted UTC’s hopes for what would have been a second straight at-large berth for the FCS playoffs. And he’s been even better this season, throwing for 22 touchdowns with just one interception after missing the first three games of the season due to what has been reported by multiple media outlets as an academic eligibility issue.
“They’ve got a great scheme,” UTC defensive coordinator Mike Yeager said. “They challenge you in terms of what they do run-wise and pass-wise; it complements each other really well. The quarterback’s outstanding. He’s accurate, he can throw it, he can get out and away from pressure. They’ve got a great run game, the running backs are solid, they’ve got a great offensive line. They don’t have a weakness, that’s the problem, and you’ve got to cover them vertically, horizontally, and then you’ve got to stop the run.
“Then you’ve got to stop the quarterback run, the quarterback scramble. You just have to do everything very, very well.”
UTC’s defense has played pretty well during the winning streak, although it’s been a while since the Mocs have been challenged like they will Saturday.
Virginia Military Institute on Oct. 4 and Samford last Saturday each finished with less than 100 rushing yards against the visiting Mocs, and UTC’s defense was able to secure at least one takeaway in each game. East Tennessee State University had a lot of success on the ground, but the Mocs did limit the Buccaneers to 33 total yards on their three final possessions after they had taken a 17-point lead. That allowed the UTC offense to rally late for the 42-38 home win on Oct. 18.
The Catamounts lead the FCS in passing offense with an average of 340.0 aerial yards per game, and for UTC’s young defense, the challenge will be both physical and mental.
“We know that if we allow them to, they’re going to extend the play and eventually they’re going to make a big play,” junior linebacker Zion Rutledge said. “We know that there’s going to be some things that they do that are good, and we just have to respond. That’s a big thing that Coach Yeager is hammering into us is just respond, respond, respond. They make a big pass down the field, respond, get a stop. We miss a sack and he gets a 5-yard gain, respond, get a stop after that.
“That’s all we care about, getting better every day and just responding to the challenges that they’re going to present us.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.