MOCS GLANCE• UTC (0-2) at Austin Peay (0-1)• Saturday, 5 p.m.• Governors Stadium in Clarksville• 96.1 FM
UTC offensive lineman Corey Levin walks to the sidelines during a Mocs' football practice at Scrappy Moore Field in this 2014 file photo.It all starts up front.
The success or struggles of a football offense begin with how well the line plays, and after last Saturday's feeble offensive showing, much of the emphasis for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga team this week has been to improve that area.
"It's on our shoulders," said right tackle Hunter Townson. "We've not played good at all. We should play better than that. We have to work harder on the smaller things, come in every day and focus. We have to take more pride in our work, fight for our spot."
Townson is one of two redshirt freshmen, along with center Jacob Revis, making up one of the most inexperienced units on the team. They are joined by senior right guard Chris Mayes, who had played on the defensive line his whole career before switching during spring practice, left guard Brandon Morgan and sophomore left tackle Corey Levin, who was an FCS Freshman All-American last year.
The Mocs line took a huge hit just before the season began when junior Synjen Herren was lost for the season to injury. That cost the team an All-Southern Conference player and forced the staff to move others around. A young line with little experience overall had only one player who had ever started a game at his current position.
"When you're young you may not realize all you have to do is your job, and you get in there and you try to do more than your job and the next thing you know it blows up in your face," said UTC offensive line coach Chris Malone. "I firmly believe that in the process of trying to be physical they forgot what they were supposed to do.
"I don't get a pass because they're young. You see Jacob Revis and Hunter Townson screwing up early and then figuring it out later because they played and learned. I'm trying to tell people it's going to slow down, just not as quickly as we want.
"I know everybody in Chattanooga hates me right now, but give me eight or nine weeks and see where we are. If we can keep this bunch healthy, that's how you build confidence through repetition. Judge us by the end work we produce."
UTC averaged just 1.9 yards per play, totaling 111 yards, in last week's loss to Jacksonville State. Over the last six quarters the Mocs have produced only 120 total yards.
Head coach Russ Huesman said there would be open competition beginning this week for starting positions and playing time along the offensive front. He added that the blame didn't fall just on the offensive players, but on the coaches as well.
"We missed quite a few assignments. When you're doing that, in my opinion, it has a lot to do with coaching," Huesman said. "You're not doing what you should to prepare them during the week. So we've got to do a better job.
"We had three or four times where we hand the ball off to Keon [Williams] and the linebacker hits him in the hole and that guy should've been blocked. We had somebody assigned to him in the hole and we didn't block him. Just bypassed him. And that's coaching to me. You ain't getting it done correctly and you ain't blocking the right guy, then something was wrong during the week of practice. We weren't blocking it correctly. We weren't real smart. We weren't executing like we were supposed to.
"It's going to be a dogfight this week to see who those five are. But you have to remember we've got two redshirt freshmen there that probably they're both going to be excellent football players. We hit a home run with both of them. Are they physically ready? Probably not enough. Are they mentally ready? Probably not enough. They'll get better as the year goes on."
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293.