After losing four times in five games before the calendar flipped to October, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team was written off even by some of its own fans.
It was a 1-4 start that included two losses to teams that are currently a combined 15-0 and nationally ranked among the top 10 in the Football Championship Subdivision (Tarleton State and Tennessee Tech); another loss to a Football Bowl Subdivision team that later appeared in the Associated Press Top 25 after a 6-0 start (Memphis); and a Southern Conference opener against a team with an option offense few current UTC players had ever seen (The Citadel).
And it happened with UTC relying on a roster overhauled in the offseason due to significant personnel losses to graduation and the NCAA transfer portal — as well as a lineup including 20 new starters and multiple players who sat out the 2024 season.
Now, though, with back-to-back victories in SoCon play heading into this weekend’s game at Samford, make no mistake about it, the Mocs — are back?
It could be so. At the very least, there’s a feeling of excitement circulating around the program after the wins over Virginia Military Institute and East Tennessee State University, the latter in improbable fashion.
Despite the frustration of starting 1-4, there was never panic within the program like there may have been had the offseason attrition not happened. After all, without that, the Mocs could have returned a first-team All-SoCon running back, all three starting receivers, an All-America center and eight starters on defense for Rusty Wright’s seventh season as head coach.
The team Wright does have dominated at VMI on Oct. 4, beating the Keydets 21-14 in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. Then, after an open date halfway through their 12-game schedule, the Mocs used a 21-point fourth-quarter rally against ETSU last weekend at Finley Stadium to win 42-38, improve to 3-4 and remain in the SoCon title hunt at 2-1 with only Mercer (5-1, 4-0) and Western Carolina (5-3, 4-0) ahead of UTC in the league standings.
“It’s a lot easier to come in after a big win like that than it is to come in after losing an 11-point lead and letting them rattle off 28 straight,” noted quarterback Camden Orth, who said the Mocs had a “0.9%” chance of winning when they were down 38-21 with 10:17 to play against the Buccaneers. “The ups and downs of the game as well as the season, a lot of these younger guys haven’t seen it, and just for them to realize there’s always a chance no matter how slim it may look, but we were never out of it and you’ve just got to keep chugging along no matter what.”
If last season’s team had looked as bad as UTC looked against Tennessee Tech or The Citadel, sure, there would be cause for concern, but to Orth’s point, this UTC team was figuring out who it was — and in some ways, it still is. Despite that, a win Saturday at Samford (1-6, 1-4) — kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. Eastern at Pete Hanna Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama — would add even more weight to next weekend’s home game against Western Carolina.
That will be followed by another home game against Furman (4-3, 2-2) before closing the regular season with road games against Wofford (2-5, 1-2) and reigning league champion Mercer, the only SoCon team currently in the FCS national rankings.
“For this group, it’s huge,” senior kicker Jude Kelley said of the win against ETSU. “The belief that we still have everything to play for in front of us is something that you can see in the guys, and those kind of games, a couple different things happen and you just don’t know where they’re going to fall. So for them to fall the way they did, I can’t stress how important it is that we take something from it and use it to kind of propel us forward.”
Samford is obviously struggling; last week’s 24-22 win at VMI ended a six-game losing streak to start the season, and even with that victory, the program has lost 10 of its past 12 games dating to last year. Still, it’s worth noting that despite UTC’s 34-12-3 lead in the all-time series, the Bulldogs have won two of the past three meetings, picking up victories in Chattanooga in 2022 and last year.
To his credit, Wright preaches nothing but consistency — doing the right things every practice, every day, every game — so his message this week is really no different than it might have been if the rally fell short, though it’s probably easier to deliver after beating the Bucs.
For him, it’s never about flash (although he’s been more aggressive in some instances with in-game decisions than in years past). One of Wright’s favorite sayings early in the season is “nothing is as good as it seems or as bad,” and he knew this was a team that was talented but needed to experience some success.
The Mocs have tasted it, and now they enter the game against the Bulldogs with a chance to further cement themselves in the conference title discussion.
“I mean, they know that,” Wright said. “I don’t have to tell them that, and I challenge them that we have to continue to get better. I mean, old, young, whoever you are, nobody’s a finished product. Let’s see how far we can push this thing and push each other and see what we look like when it’s all shaken out, and whatever it is, whatever it’ll be, I can’t predict that for them or me, but I’m like, ‘Let’s go see what that looks like.’ We’re guaranteed 29 more days, so let’s go fight and figure it out and see what we look like, and see if we’ve gotten better from week one to whatever, week 13, and see.
“But they know that every time you play now, we’re running out of opportunities, and you’ve got to fight your tail off and stay in it and do all that. Technically, everything we want is still right there in front of us and we play everybody in front of us.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.