Joe Pizzo didn’t need long to figure out which edition of his offense the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team has been running the past six weeks.
“Yeah, it’s probably version three,” the eighth-year coordinator for the Mocs said Tuesday. “I mean, you saw version one in the spring and most of camp, and then the first three games were kind of version two. I was trying to hybrid it, see what we had.”
Version three is the one that has carried UTC into the thick of the Southern Conference race. And with a pair of key receivers back on the field, a fourth version may be taking shape at the right time.
The Mocs (6-3, 5-1) host Mercer (7-2, 4-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday at Finley Stadium for homecoming, a SoCon showdown between teams in the Football Championship Subdivision national rankings. UTC is ranked 25th by coaches, while the Bears are ranked 11th by coaches and are No. 14 in the Stats Perform Top 25, and both are among four teams in the SoCon with one league loss.
The offense UTC built this calendar year was designed around Will Jackson-Linkhart, a hybrid receiver/tight end who went through spring practices with the Mocs after transferring from an NCAA Division II program. He was declared ineligible by the NCAA six days before the season opener, filed for an injunction that wasn’t granted, and has since left the program.