Although the final score might indicate otherwise, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga offense was only pretty good in the season opener against Shorter University.
Sure, the Mocs won 66-0, but it was far from picture perfect, as the offensive coaching staff spent the practice week hammering out mistakes they saw on video.
The players get a chance to prove their progress today.
Sixth-ranked UTC (1-0) hosts Big South Conference member Presbyterian (0-1) at 2 p.m. at Finley Stadium. A win would give the Mocs only their third 2-0 start since 1997, with 2005 being the last occasion.
Offensive coordinator Jeff Durden said there were 15 “BIJs” (“balls in jeopardy”) against Shorter. Those include a ball being carried in the wrong arm or the tip of the ball being down. In addition, he saw what he considered was a lot of “sluggishness” getting on and off the field; missing some blocks and making sure everybody’s eyes are in the right place.
They weren’t mistakes Shorter was able to capitalize on but issues a better program like the Blue Hose possibly could take advantage of.
“Great football teams improve a ton from the first to the second game, and we’ve identified problems and addressed them,” Durden said.
Quarterback Alejandro Bennifield threw an interception. Starting tailback Derrick Craine “missed a couple of runs and dropped a pass,” according to Durden.
With all that, the Mocs still had 284 yards of total offense in the first half, averaging 7-plus yards per play and scoring on seven of their eight legitimate first-half possessions. They finished with 441 yards for the game.
Bennifield threw four touchdown passes on only eight completions, while Craine ran for 38 yards on nine attempts. Eight receivers caught passes, led by Xavier Borishade’s 68 yards on three catches. Durden was real high on the backups, who came in and were just as dominating, with backup quarterback Tyler Roberson rushing for two scores and catching a TD pass, while Kyle Nalls and Chris Miller had second-half scores.
“Every time we got the ball we scored, and that’s something I think you have to look at as a positive,” Craine said. The fact we got up quick and early, it got some less-experienced guys some reps, and that’ll definitely help us on the back end of the season.
“We got out in practice, evaluate what we needed to do. We’ll learn from some of the things we did wrong, and we’ll learn from some of the things we did right and just build on it.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.