Dear Citadel Football Association Members:
I would first like to thank you, the CFA, as well as all of our fans for all the support during our first home game of the 2024 season. Our atmosphere can be described as nothing short of electric and that is thanks to your continued support.
After a fantastic victory at Charleston Southern, we fell short this week against South Carolina State. Our players played hard and improved from week 1 to week 2, but playing hard is not the goal. It is about winning and losing, and our goal is and will forever be to win. When you lose the first down battle, it is hard to win the football game and that showed up with South Carolina State’s 26 first downs to our 10. The completion numbers came out to 19/26 for South Carolina State and 13/22 for us. SCSU also had 421 yards vs our 275 yards of offense. Despite being led in all these categories, when it came down to it we still had a chance to win the game. Our freshman kick returner Braylon Knauth continues to impress with his speed and did a great job returning kicks on Saturday. Sophomore cornerback Bradlee Jones became the first Citadel football player to block back-to-back kicks in the same game. Our defensive front has come along well from last year where we only had 7 sacks all season to where we are now with 5 sacks in the first two games.
With that being said, we have a very important game coming up this week against North Greenville. Each game we play is the most important game for the sole reason of it being the next game. North Greenville has a talented team led by 12th year head coach Jeff Farrington, Citadel class of ’82. They have 17 transfers, coming from Chattanooga, Georgia Southern, Samford, Jacksonville State, and Gardner Webb among others. NGU also has multiple homegrown talents from the low country, young men from Summerville High School, Ashley Ridge High School, and Oceanside High School just to name a few. This game will be no different from any other game for us, they are a good team and we need to be prepared for them.
Sincerely,
Maurice T. Drayton
Head Coach