The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has established itself as a perennial top-20 defense in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision.
Yet the UTC defenders still have a number of things they can work on.
The Mocs have given up an average of 227.3 yards rushing in their last three games after allowing a total of 430 in the first six. It could be due to multiple reasons, but it’s something the coaching staff and players are looking at fixing during this off week.
The last three games have presented three completely different results. The Mocs were solid against The Citadel, who while rushing for 348 yards did so on 77 carries with a long of 15 yards. Virginia Military Institute rushed for only 11 yards on 23 carries with six sacks.
But against Western Carolina last Saturday, the Mocs allowed 329 yards on 42 carries, with tailback Detrez Newsome rushing for 277 – the most yards ever allowed by a UTC defense. Newsome had touchdown runs of 75 and 95 yards, the latter the longest run from scrimmage allowed by a Mocs team.
“We didn’t fit gaps,” UTC coach Russ Huesman said. “The first play, they hit us on the trap. We got that figured out, but I guarantee we’ll be sick to our stomach when we look at it and see who didn’t fit the gap correctly. The bottom line is, we’re not tricking people. They know where we are, and we’ve got to be in our gap when we’re supposed to be in our gap, and that didn’t happen.”
The Mocs also dealt with a number of missed tackles that helped spring opponents to big gains in recent weeks. Linebacker Nakevion Leslie said it was because of a turnover-hungry defense that hasn’t forced one since Oct. 8 against Mercer after at least one in five of the first six games and 11 total.
“We try to go after the ball a lot, so nobody really tackles,” Leslie said. “We just try to get turnovers and stuff like that. We’ve got to give congrats to those guys for taking care of the ball; sometimes we may get some, sometimes we may not, but it’s just the way the ball falls.
“We’ve got to practice what we’ve been coached: The first guy in wraps him up and makes sure the tackle is sealed, and the next man in come get the strip, but what we do a lot is the first guy goes for the ball and (the runner will) break it and keep going. We’ve just got to keep working on what we’ve been coached to do in practice.”
The Mocs have had a number of opportunities for turnovers. The Citadel fumbled a snap and a pitch but recovered both. The latter bounced around cornerback C.J. Fritz, who couldn’t get a grip on the ball, and the Bulldogs recovered and scored two plays later in a 22-14 win.
Lucas Webb, tied with Huesman for 10th all-time in UTC career interceptions with nine, is one of the guys hungry for a takeaway, but his approach is to keep playing hard and believe the results eventually will come.
“It’s frustrating because we want to see all the hard work pay off,” Webb said. “We’ve got great guys up front, and sometimes other offenses may scheme us in a way where we may not get that many opportunities, but we have to come out each and every week and just keep playing.
“When those opportunities come, we’ve got to capitalize.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.