UTC offense not moving the ball consistently

UTC quarterback Nick Tiano, with ball, was sacked five times in Saturday's home loss to UT-Martin. The Mocs finished with negative-17 rushing yards, their worst performance on the ground in 17 years.
UTC quarterback Nick Tiano, with ball, was sacked five times in Saturday's home loss to UT-Martin. The Mocs finished with negative-17 rushing yards, their worst performance on the ground in 17 years.

To say the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga struggled on offense in the first half of Saturday's home game against UT-Martin may be a reach.

But that's only because the Mocs would have needed to improve to reach the level of "struggle."

They had five drives totaling 15 plays, or the equivalent of five three-and-outs, in the 21-7 loss that dropped them to 0-3. Their longest play was an 8-yard run by quarterback Nick Tiano in which he faked a handoff, realized there was nobody there and barreled ahead.

When there were positive plays for UTC's offense - for example, a 9-yard run by Darrell Bridges on the first play of the second drive - a yellow flag usually followed, such as the face-mask penalty that turned what should have been second-and-1 into first-and-20.

The Mocs lost the battle for field position all game long, with their possessions starting on average at the 20-yard line. Couple that with an inability to run the ball or move it at all - six of their 11 drives lost yardage - and the overall result was of little surprise.

They ended the game with 150 yards of total offense, with only 6 coming on the ground. The rushing performance was the worst by UTC since 1999, when the Mocs had negative-17 rushing yards in a 58-30 loss to Louisville. In that game, Mocs quarterback Chris Sanders threw for 367 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for another.

"We need to come out with confidence," Tiano said. "We're coming out and kind of feeling our way around instead of coming out and saying, 'Let's go pound this ball downfield,' and that's a lot of what it is.

"We need to get a win. We need to come out, put points on the board and get a win to get that confidence and get everybody to wake up and get going early in the game."

The Mocs' best offensive possession this season was their first in the 45-10 loss at LSU on Sept. 9. They were methodical, moved the chains, and although the drive stalled in the red zone, they were able to put points on the board with a field goal against a Southeastern Conference defense. More of that was expected against UT-Martin, but the Skyhawks shut that down quickly with a three-safety look that confused the Mocs all game long.

Tiano was sacked five times, lost a fumble and threw a late interception.

"We call the best plays that we can for us," UTC coach Tom Arth said. "We'll go back and look at it and see if there were some opportunities we missed, but against three safeties I'm not sure where that's going to come from.

"We've got to run the ball. We've got to be able to run the ball and got to be able to get them out of there, make them get more people around the line of scrimmage. We didn't do a good enough job of doing that."

All three of the Mocs' touchdowns in 2017 have come in the second half of games, with Bingo Morton's 59-yard catch-and-run in Saturday's third quarter the first UTC touchdown outside of a fourth quarter this season. The Mocs moved downfield on their next possession but stalled in the red zone, and a miscommunication between Tiano and running back Alex Trotter coming out of the backfield led to an incomplete pass and a turnover on downs.

The successful drive is an example of what UTC needs to produce more consistently, starting with this Saturday's Southern Conference opener at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va.

"After we scored, the feeling was that we can do this, we can go put points on the board," Tiano said. "We started moving the ball up and down the field, but we have to do that from the start, and whether we go three-and-out or score on the first play, we've got to always have that confidence that we're going to do it.

"Our defense is playing their tails off, and that's motivation for us. My biggest message is for us to keep fighting, keep working, keep getting better. We've got to find a way to get downfield, find a way to get first downs to win games but (also) to give our defense a break, because we're making it tougher on them."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.

Upcoming Events