Everything Akron head coach Joe Moorhead said previewing matchup with South Carolina
Akron head coach Joe Moorhead met with the media on Monday to preview the Zips’ upcoming trip to Columbia to face South Carolina this weekend. Here’s everything he had to say.
On quarterback Ben Finley’s breakout performance against Colgate
“Excited to see Ben build off of his performances against Ohio State and Rutgers. Made a bunch of good decisions, threw the ball with accuracy — short and medium — and certainly pushing the ball down the field. Gotta continue to work on quieting his feet down in the pocket and improving his accuracy a little bit. But all in all, a good performance.”
On what he learned about his team on Saturday after falling behind 17-0 in the first quarter
“Yeah, we talk to this team all the time that if we want to be different then we’ve got to be different. To fall down 17-0 where just about everything that could go wrong in the course of a football game did in a stretch of 10 minutes and not finger point, not hang our heads, battle back through a somewhat adverse situation and run off a 31-3 stretch there, it was a good sign for us that we’re maturing as a team.”
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On what the focus in practice will be this week before heading down to South Carolina
“I don’t know. It’s kind of the same thing. You’re going on the road to play another top 25 caliber team that is incredibly talented and well-coached, almost knocked off LSU. We’re going to control what we can control, which is how well we prepare our level of effort and execution. The department gets to pay some bills, the equestrian team gets some new saddles, and everybody wins. So we’re going to be fired up to go down there in certainly a very challenging environment.”
On Akron’s defensive performance in the second half against Colgate
“Yeah, we continue to see the defense make positive strides season to season and game to game. And certainly after those first couple drives there, we gave up some points. They really buckled down, contained the quarterback run, were able to get a pass rush, provide some good tight coverage and keep them to three (points) in the second half.”
On the job Avery Book has done as the Zips’ punter this year
“We’d like to see him punt less. He’s averaging just about five punts a game here, I think just about 46 yards per kick. (He’s) getting great protection, getting good snaps from the (long snapper). And really, the mix of the traditional punt and the rugby. So, great evaluation by Coach Matt Vico acquiring him in the portal and winning the battle in fall camp and doing a nice job with his opportunity.”
On the message to the defense after falling behind 17-0
“I think the big thing was that we just needed to kind of collect ourselves on the sideline. The coaches did a nice job of kind of keeping them composed. There weren’t really a ton of schematic adjustments. We wanted to play a lot of two-high coverage and keep edges on the defense because there’s so much quarterback run. And I think we ended up doing a better job with our gap fits, a better job turning some of the pullers in, putting the ball on our correct pad, and the unblocked guy making the play. So it wasn’t necessarily more, it wasn’t necessarily a wholesale change in terms of different calls that we were making. But making sure that we aligned properly, that we were had our eyes on on our keys, and that that we were doing a good job tackling that quarterback, who’s a really good football player.”
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On the message to the offensive line in that game with Finley becoming more comfortable in the pocket
“Yeah, that’s been an area that we’ve been working to improve for the past few years. I thought, as we mentioned with Joe on the show earlier, that our pass protection was improved. We still need to firm up the width and the depth of the pocket a little bit, and the running backs play a part in that, as well, along with the quarterback, who’s got to kind of step up and find the dead area instead of always working to escape outside. So, thought the pass protection got better. They really started heating us up in the second half with pressures, which makes it more difficult. We still need to see more productivity and explosiveness out of the run game. But a lot of that was kind of taken away with what they were doing from a blitz standpoint. But from going against Ohio State and probably two first round picks in JT (Tuimoloau) and (Jack Sawyer) and certainly a very tough Rutgers team, we need to keep making progress throughout the year to run the ball, because we got two talented running backs that have been playing. And then certainly we’ve seen that we could push the ball down the field with our quarterback and wideouts.”
