Russ Huesman

Russ Huesman has no plans to become one of the "idiots," he jokingly said this week when describing head coaches with defensive backgrounds, like himself, who try to get too involved in the offense.

While he oversees every aspect of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program, Huesman leaves the offensive game plans to offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield.

"I've seen defensive coaches try to be offensive coaches and they're idiots," Huesman joked during his weekly news conference Wednesday. "I'm not going to be one of those defensive coaches that thinks he's an offensive coach. There's just no way. They know way more about it than I do."

The longtime defensive coordinator, who played safety during his career at UTC, said he offers occasional suggestions but otherwise has little input on what the Mocs do offensively.

As an example, he mentioned a moment during Tuesday's practice when the offense was working on a new play.

"They ran a play and I said, 'You'll never get that guy blocked. You'll never get him blocked.' And the only reason I knew that is because I'm a defensive guy," Huesman said. "But little things like that, that's pretty fun when you're the head coach and you can kind of shout that out during the course of practice. It makes you feel like you have power, which I don't, but it makes you feel like it."

Satterfield said he appreciates the fact that Huesman "doesn't meddle" but will offer insights and pointers occasionally.

"I can't see every single position out there, and he saw an issue with the way we were blocking on a play and brought it to my attention," Satterfield said. "I love that -- love that.

"I love having somebody back there that you can trust and brings that to your attention so we can get it fixed."

Early in the season, Huesman tried to split his time during practice between watching the offense and defense. As the season progressed, including this week as UTC (5-3, 3-3) prepares for Saturday's Southern Conference game at nationally eighth-ranked Appalachian State (6-2, 5-0), he has devoted most of his time to helping on defense, primarily working with the safeties.

"I am pretty involved in the defense, but it's fun to be involved with the defense," he said. "I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't."

Huesman made it clear that even though the Mocs' defense is very similar to the one he used at Richmond, it isn't his; it belongs to defensive coordinator Adam Fuller.

"I can't take any credit for what's happening defensively," Huesman said. "We held (Western Carolina) to 217 (yards of total offense), and that's because of Adam and the defensive coaches."

The UTC offense and defense need all the pointers they can get this week because the Mountaineers have played as well as any team in the country the past four weeks. Appalachian State has won its past four games, including blowout wins over Georgia Southern and Furman, by an average of 25 points.

Beard honored

Senior defensive end Josh Beard was named the defensive player of the month for October by the Southern Conference on Thursday. Beard had seven sacks in October and leads the nation with 10 1/2.