Dear Citadel Football Association:
First and foremost, I would like to express our heartfelt sympathy for those that were affected by Hurricane Helene this past week. Once again, I would like to congratulate our young men and women who received their rings this weekend and thank you to all those who supported us for the entire game.
Our players fought hard this weekend, but the missed assignments were too much to overcome. Offensively, we had 30 missed assignments against ETSU, and you cannot expect to win after having that many missed assignments. That amount of MA’s will keep you in the game, but it will not be enough to beat the more talented teams on our schedule. ETSU has a very talented football team, and they deserve to be ranked going into this week. Our big point of emphasis going forward will be to finish drives. It is not enough to finish drives with field goals, we need to get the ball in the box and finish drives with an extra point. One way of doing that is to finish our explosive plays. We have had 27 explosive plays so far this season, and only 3 of them have ended with touchdowns. We are emphasizing the football intelligence aspect of the game in this phase of the season so that our players can understand and react to things faster, enabling them to play faster and finish plays. We are also recruiting players with greater speed than we have in the past, which will help us tremendously in the future by having the foot speed to finish those explosive plays.
Last weekend saw Dustin Fletcher get some action early in the game. We will continue to have Dustin play meaningful snaps and drives in games going forward because we are developing a program, not just a season. It is important to us as a staff and to Dustin’s development that he get live and meaningful reps in games. We have already begun to see the fruits of developing a program and not just a season. So far this year we have 11 sacks, 5 forced fumbles, 30 tackles for loss, and 12 takeaways compared to 5 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, 14 tackles for loss, and 6 takeaways this time last year, which is a testament to the job that our coaches have done and the work that the players have put in.
Looking ahead to Furman, they are a very good team with a potent offense led by two young quarterbacks. In their FCS competitions, they have put up 336 yards, 410 yards, and 348 yards of offense. They have a very talented receiver, Josh Harris, out of Newnan, GA who is ranked 12th in Furman history in receptions. They also have a very talented defense led by linebacker Evan Dimaggio. This being rivalry weekend, our team is ready to go to play the Paladins, and we are looking forward to your support this weekend.
Go Dogs!
Sincerely,
Maurice T. Drayton