Despite a rough start to this football season, there’s hope for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The Mocs have shown improvement from the first practice until now, including growth given in glimpses during games, and all of the team’s big-picture goals for 2025 are still in front of them.
Yes, there have been beatdowns. Three of them, in fact, by a combined score of 142-51 — although they were all on the road, with one the opener against Football Bowl Subdivision member Memphis (which improved to 4-0 with Saturday’s win against Arkansas) and the other at the hands of a pair of fellow Football Championship Subdivision teams that remain unbeaten and have been nationally ranked all season (Tennessee Tech, which won 45-17 on Sept. 6 in Cookeville, is currently No. 12; Tarleton State, which won 52-45 on Saturday night in Stephenville, Texas, is No. 3).
In the midst of that there was a 63-0 home win over Stetson. on Sept. 13, and the Mocs got out of the first month what a team that went through the offseason they had — a nearly 100% flip of the starting lineup, largely due to transfers — could get out of it: a good idea of where they could be effective and a good idea of where they needed to get better.
The objective is always to win every game possible, but it’s the next eight games for the Mocs, their Southern Conference schedule, that are going to determine whether the early struggles of a second consecutive 1-3 start were worth it. It’s also the next two-month stretch that will play the biggest part in determining whether this UTC season ends like 2023 (in the FCS playoffs) or like 2024 (without a postseason berth).
And in order for the Mocs to win the program’s first SoCon title since 2015, it’s imperative they enter league play with a clear idea of who they are as a team to this point.
After the 45-10 loss to Memphis on Aug. 30, UTC seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright said of the Mocs, “This team will fight you,” only to see this team do anything other than that a week later at Tennessee Tech. Apparently it was then that, where the offense was concerned, UTC coaches figured out something about the 2025 Mocs: They aren’t a good passing team, at least not yet.
Over the past two weeks, though, they showed the ability with quarterback Camden Orth and their talented running back trio of Justus Durant, Ryan Ingram and Journey Wyche to have a legitimately great rushing attack. While it may be easy to scoff at 445 yards and five touchdowns rushing against overmatched Stetson, a nonscholarship FCS program as a member of the Pioneer Football League, the Mocs had 292 yards and three touchdowns rushing Saturday night against the Texans, whose deep pockets in terms of NIL money was pointed out by Wright when he was interviewed on UTC’s radio broadcast of the game.
UTC’s first four games were about building a foundation for the SoCon schedule that begins with this Saturday’s 6 p.m. game against The Citadel (1-3, 1-1) at Finley Stadium, and aside from the trip to Tennessee Tech, the Mocs have looked like a team to be dealt with in the league — just as they have throughout Wright’s tenure, when they’ve never finished below third place.
“Our kids never backed down,” Wright said after the loss to the Texans. “They tried to stand toe to toe with them. I’ve got freshmen out there playing and playing meaningful snaps, got guys playing in their fourth game, and it’s not an excuse — we’ve got to find a way to win football games, and that’s on me. We’ve got to do a lot of things better, because I can promise you, that one next week will be just as hard as this one was when it’s all said and done.”
The offensive line has settled into what appears to be a solid starting unit with Devin Lively taking over for B.J. Ragland at center, and that has allowed the group to get better over time with guys like Ragland and redshirt freshman Watts Alexander providing depth.
“It’s allowing us backs to just be more comfortable in the backfield and trust what we see,” said Durant, who has rushed for 193 yards and two scores over the past two games. “We trusted them before, but now seeing them jell and mesh together, it’s a great feeling.”
The list of things to fix include limiting turnovers for the offense and cleaning up a defense that allowed 8.0 yards per play in the three losses, but this youthful group seems connected a month into the season — and if the preseason work, the early struggles and the lessons learned from them lead to a championship, players and coaches will undoubtedly consider it all worth it.
“We didn’t do as well as we wanted to tonight, but there’s definitely views of us executing the right way that we need to do, and that’s going to help us going forward in the next week to start the conference play right,” left tackle Aidan Donald said Saturday night. “We want to let people know that we’re coming for that Southern Conference (title).”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.