Rusty Wright and Joe Pizzo have on numerous occasions harped on how the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga offense isn’t complex.
This is UTC’s fifth season with Wright as head coach and Pizzo as offensive coordinator, and in that time the Mocs’ scheme on that side of the football has always been built on players doing their job — and getting rewarded for doing so.
Week to week, the game plan might change a bit, but what doesn’t is a mentality that Pizzo made clear last year when he said this: “I’ve never claimed to be a genius or a guru about offense. I’ve always felt like you just get the ball in the hands of the guys that can make plays and score touchdowns.”
At the time, though, the Mocs were coming off a 2021 season in which the offense had only two guys who could consistently make plays and score touchdowns, and both of them were running backs.
That’s no longer the case. Pizzo still has one of those backs — Ailym Ford, who is creeping up on the school’s all-time rushing record — along with some capable depth for the ground attack, but he also has a trio of receivers capable of affecting the game.
Egos could come into play. But in this offense, that hasn’t been the case.
“They had to learn that,” Wright said of the attitude needed for an unselfish approach intended to benefit the whole offense
“I don’t think it happened from the beginning of the year. I had to tell them that it was all about how they are being defended week to week. They are going to take away somebody, they’re going to leave somebody else more opportunities, and I think they’ve learned that some weeks, it’s their time to shine because of what I’m getting, and in other weeks, I’m the decoy.
“Plus those guys came in together, they’ve been playing together a long time and they’re friends, and I think that’s what helps the most is they like each other.”
Staff photo by Olivia Ross / UTC football coach Rusty Wright, shown during a Sept. 16 game against The Citadel at Finley Stadium, said the friendship among the team’s top receivers has helped them embrace an unselfish approach when it comes to targets in the passing game.GROUP EFFORT
It’s not hard to find an example of what Wright is talking about when it comes to UTC’s receivers.
Javin Whatley, who was targeted 19 times and had 11 catches for 231 yards and four scores during last week’s 52-50 loss to Western Carolina, was targeted only once two weeks prior and is third on the team in targets this season with 45. Fellow redshirt sophomore Sam Phillips, who leads the team with 37 catches on 58 targets, saw the ball come his way just twice against The Citadel in a 48-3 win on Sept. 16.
But the receivers will tell you they truly don’t care about their individual statistics as long as the overall results are positive for the offense and the team. They’ve always considered themselves a blue-collar group, one with a collective chip on their shoulder that might have been enhanced when the preseason All-Southern Conference team didn’t include a single UTC receiver.
With the regular season halfway over, they’ve proven to be among the league’s best. In terms of overall catches, Phillips, junior Jamoi Mayes (31) and Whatley (29) are three of the top five receivers in the SoCon. In receiving yardage, Whatley (546) is second, Mayes (526) is third and Phillips (362) is seventh. In touchdown catches, Whatley’s six are tied for first and Phillips’ three rank sixth.
The Mocs (4-2, 3-1) will face Mercer (4-2, 2-1) on Saturday at Five Star Stadium in Macon, Georgia, and the Bears have two of the three first-team receivers from the preseason All-SoCon list: Ty James (32 catches, 602 yards, three touchdowns) and Devron Harper (25 catches, 287 yards, one touchdown).
For the Mocs, whose passing attack is ranked in the top three in the SoCon in all major categories, the value of having multiple options is obvious.
“You never know who the ball is going to each week,” said Mayes, whose 46 targets rank second on the team. “One week, it might be me, one week it might be Sam, one week it might be NuNu (Whatley), one week we could have a shared amount of catches and the running back could have 300 yards, so for us to be unselfish, we’re more of team players than stat players.”
Staff photo by Olivia Ross / UTCs Chase Artopoeus hands off to Ailym Ford during a SoCon game against The Citadel on Sept. 16 at Finley Stadium. While Ford remains an essential part of the offense, the senior running back’s role has not been as magnified as in past season, with Artopoeus helping elevate UTC’s passing game.FREQUENT FLIERS
With quarterback Chase Artopeous having completed nearly 64% of his attempts, UTC has averaged 293.8 passing yards per game. That’s 44.9 more passing yards per game than where the Mocs finished in 2022, which was 53.1 more than any other season in Wright’s tenure. On top of that, with the Mocs having averaged 149.7 rushing yards per game this season, the gap of 144.1 yards per game between the ground and air averages is by far the largest under Wright, whose debut season ended with a gap of just 5.5 yards (and in favor of rushing).
This season, UTC is fifth in the nine-team SoCon in both rushing yards per game and per carry, and Ford — who is 162 yards from breaking Jacob Huesman’s UTC career rushing record of 4,051 — has only one carry of 20 yards or more (the Mocs have two as a team, as Gino Appleberry had a 41-yard run to seal the win against Wofford on Sept. 30).
So until the ground game gets going, the passing attack will remain more vital for the Mocs.
Luckily for them, quarterback Chase Artopoeus has plenty of good targets, and they don’t care who gets the credit.
“I think these guys realized that they better get ready, because they realized that today may be my day based on what they do for us, and I better be ready to go play at a high level,'” Wright said. “I never would have thought of it any other way just because of the type of guys we’ve got, and I think they have an understanding of what those coaches on offense try to do is put them in the best position to be successful on Saturday.
“Last Saturday we went back to some calls we haven’t called since fall camp, and they went out and executed and got them done. They know that we don’t care who it is getting the throws, getting the catches, getting the carries, and they better not care either. They’ve just got to be ready to go when it’s their time to go, and to their credit, for the most part this year, we’ve done that. I think it’s a collective of doing that together. They act like there’s egos in there, but there’s not a lot of egos in those rooms. They’re just trying to figure out ways to go be successful and go be productive, and they’ve done that.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.