University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Charles Huff Weekly Press Conference – Oct. 28, 2025
10/28/2025 3:14:00 PM | Football
HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Southern Miss head football coach Charles Huff met with members of the media on Tuesday, Oct. 28, during the Golden Eagles' bye week. Huff discussed the team's recent win over ULM and the remainder of the season for the bowl eligible Golden Eagles.
Southern Miss' 49-21 homecoming win over ULM gave the Golden Eagles their sixth win of the season, guaranteeing the program a bowl game for the first time since 2022.
Here is what Huff said to the media:
Opening Statement…
"Obviously, a really good performance by our guys Saturday. Really good job of competing in the elements. Really good job of showing the right mental disposition to go out and play really well together. A lot of things that we did well, a lot of areas still to improve. Really good opportunity for us, with the bye week coming up, to get a head start on Arkansas State, who is a really good team, and for us to be able to get some of the fundamental things that showed up in the last game cleaned up as we move forward. So, excited to be bowl eligible, that's the floor in our program now we continue to build towards ultimately, why we all play the game is to be the best in our conference, in our league, take advantage of opportunities to improve, and give these guys an opportunity to go out and create a lot of value for themselves."
Q: You mentioned the areas to improve, so far during the win streak, where do you feel like the team can improve?
"Yeah, I think fundamentally, you know, tackling is one that's the more consistent we can be. We've gotten better, but there are still some areas where we can get better and eliminate the rallying to the ball tackle and the first guy there, get him on the ground. I think there's some things we can do defensively, to continue to play the ball in the air and a deep part of the field with poise and confidence, continuing to rotate guys in to games so that the depth doesn't become an issue offensively, our run game is getting better, but I think the more we can continue to improve, that as you go down the stretch, running the ball consistently is going to have to happen in order for you to continue to have success. I thought our wide receivers did a much better job of blocking on the perimeter with something we've really been harping on. We got to continue to do that. And sometimes when we say improve on things, it's thinking maybe things we did well that we need to continue to put time and effort into. So we continue to do them well. Again, I thought, as always, I thought we did a really good job of taking the ball away on defense, taking care of the ball on offense, so we got to continue to do the things that are giving us a chance to win, and sometimes that's putting more time and effort into them in practice. Sometimes that's getting other guys some of the same drills or fundamental reps that they may not get by position or spot on the depth chart as the season goes."
Q: Can you speak a little about how your slots are starting to open up your passing game?
"Yeah, I think it all works together. We always talk about cohesion, but the running game is starting to become alive. And when the running game becomes alive, you start to activate the safeties and the nickels in the run fits, or at least the run awareness, once you start activating the middle of the defense coverage into the run fit, now your slots are going to have a lot more opportunities for one on ones, or a lot more opportunities to play fast. I think they go together. The run game is having more success or more consistency, I'd say, now the safeties are in a little bit of a bond. Do I get down in the run fit? Or do I cover this guy? Especially the guys to the field with the nickel being involved in the run fit, not being able to get hands on the slot, him getting a free run at the safety. His safety kind of having two roles play past the run. Okay, now I'm in conflict, because Braylon does a good job with the RPOs, and we do a good job with tempo, which is creating some down the field explosive plays that we got to continue."
Q: When you're rolling like this during on a win streak, I was curious to know, with a bye week coming now and guys are resting, would you rather just play it through or?
"They make the schedule long before it got here to us, there's always a plan in the way we work things. When we get the schedule at the beginning of the year, we kind of map out things we want to accomplish at certain points. This is a phase where we want to start adding more to our offensive and defensive schemes based on what our players can do. So every three weeks, in between the Thursday night game, we were able to add some things offensively to kind of complement what we were doing. We mapped it out again. This is an area we want to be able to add some things. And when I say add things, we're not talking you know, all of a sudden we come out triple option, but building off of what we've been able to do, creating more conflict for the other team defensively, adjusting some of the coverages in the fronts that we're playing, how we're playing certain coverages and fronts as the season goes on. You use these bye weeks to kind of do a couple different things. As far as adjusting scheme, revamping scheme, we'll go back and look at some of the things we're running. If they're not efficient, we got to take them out. You know, some things we thought were going to be good. Maybe this player is there or not. They're playing a certain way. Maybe we're not getting the same type of reaction from the other side of the ball. So for us to take out what's not working good and then build on what we've done well is always kind of a road mark when we get these bye weeks, of what we want to be able to do."
Q: Can you speak to you guys' halftime adjustments, just elevating you guys in the second half? I feel like every single second half you've just played better than the first half.
"Yeah, we've kind of come up with a plan that you know, how we want to address its changes each week, how we want to address the second half, what we anticipate their answers being. What we anticipate their adjustments being, it's not a sign. It's not a, it's not perfect. You know, hey, they're going to do A because they were doing B. But just giving our players the opportunity to say, hey, here's the next step we got to be ready for, and then also doing a good job of, you know, the iPads have really changed the game a little bit. A lot of the adjustments that are made are already made before we get inside. Because every series, you can come off and kind of go look through it a lot of times, what we do at halftime is just kind of put all of those series together for the guys. Okay, hey, here's all of the runs they've had in the first half. Here are all the passes they've had, and here's how we're going to adjust. So I credit the coaches. You know, I always challenge them to make sure our second half adjustments make sense. Make sure our second half adjustments are player driven, not necessarily scheme driven. What can our players do? And they've done a really good job of we got to keep doing that as the season goes on, you got to play 60 minutes. You know, if you look at our kind of season so far, the first half is always a little bit I don't know. I mean, maybe this could go either other way. And I think again, our process, our fourth quarter training, allows us to come out in the second half and really make an impact on the game, which I think is crucial if you're going to be able to sustain success."
Q: You've got one of the better if not best corner duos in the conference. Can you speak to those two guys' Moten come in known but Richard's come on in his own?
"Again, it's when you play opposite a really good player, you force teams to throw at the other guy, which forces the other guy to get opportunities. I think Richard has done a really good job of taking advantage of the opportunities. He's really coachable. He does exactly what you tell him to do. He doesn't try and get some technique he got off of YouTube and try it. He doesn't try to get outside of his skill set, he does a really good job in his preparation. He's long, he's physical, so he can challenge some of these guys. He knows his deficiencies in certain areas and routes. He's becoming better with his ball skills. He's been able to get his hands on multiple balls. He's turned them over now with a more consistent rate, and I think that's just a byproduct of playing across on the other side of the field from a really good corner, you got to kind of pick your poison. Then I think again, it's the cohesion in the back end. Part of playing corner is trusting that the safety is going to do his job when he needs to. Part of playing corner is understanding how the back end works together. When do I have help? When do I not have help? Situational Awareness regards one of the smarter guys on the team, as far as understanding, you know, hey, here's the situation. Here are their tendencies. It's 3rd and 5. Here are their tendencies. 1st and 10. Here are their tendencies. And again, I think Coach Calhoun has done a great job of teaching him the game at his skill set. A lot of times, coaches teach the game of, hey, this is how you supposed to do it from a perfect level. Well, every player is different. You got to coach and teach different players in different ways. So credit to him. Credit to Moten for being consistent enough to force them to kind of have to make some decisions. Credit to Coach Calhoun for continuing to be innovative with how he's teaching each guy separately, and then credit to Richard for being coachable and leaning on Moten for, some peer situational coaching. Hey, what do you see here? Well, how do you play this? I think he's done a really good job. Got to continue that in order for us to have success, us to have success, especially with the teams coming up that we're going to play are going to be a little bit more, I won't say pass happy, but a pass threat than some of the ones we've played in the last couple of weeks for different reasons. You know, one, two weeks ago, the quarterback changes how you throw the ball. This weekend, you got two quarterbacks out so changes how they throw the ball. So as we continue to move forward, we're going to come up with more teams that have some pass consistency that we're going to have to defend a little bit better.
Q: You guys got your takeaways like you've done almost every week, but you didn't have as many negatives as you have in weeks past. Could you, what they did, I know they rolled the quarterback out a lot and got the ball out of his hand, could you speak on the design of that and how it played out?
"I thought they did a really good job of hanging onto the ball. We got a couple punches at it that it wiggled, but it didn't come out. I thought they did a really good job of limiting how many times they had to throw it. Meaning, you know, it was like, you say, the rollouts. It was a quick game. Passes. They were safe throws. I thought they did a really good job of that. I also thought they did a good job of trying to keep the ball out of the middle of the field. It's really, it's a lot of hands in there. When you start throwing the ball over the middle, there's a lot of hands, and there are a lot of eyes. If you can keep the ball outside the numbers when you're throwing it, obviously, typically, there's one guy there. I think the one turnover, the two turnovers, interceptions we got, it was over the middle. So I thought they did a really good job of that, of keeping the ball on or outside the numbers in the pass game, which minimizes the amount of hands that you can get in there. So I thought they did a good job. I thought our guys did a good job of making the plays when they got an opportunity. It's really hard for a defensive player to catch a ball that's not they don't like train to do that. They train to tackle guys. It's really hard for an offensive player. That's why you don't see many of them on special teams, because it's really hard for an offensive player to run down, stack, lean, get back in phase and shimmy close and make a tackle in the open field. They don't train that. So when you're able to do it at a high level, it really goes a long way. You know, we no one would be upset if every one of the intercept me, I would excuse me if every one of the interceptions we've had were actually like past breakups, because you don't expect those guys to be great with hands, so we train that a lot. You know, past breakups don't do anything for us. We need it turned over, and now we're starting to really focus on offense. We need points off those turnovers, because now that's when you really start to flip momentum. You really start to put the other team in a bind. When they're turning the ball over and you're getting points earlier in the season, a couple of times, they would turn it over and we would, you know, move the ball down the field, but may not get points. So now we're focusing more on, okay, how can we generate points off these turnovers.
Q: Braylon being named Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week, four touchdowns last week, just what has he meant to the run you guys have been on so far?
"Yeah, I mean, obviously, I see him every day. This is no disrespect to any other quarterback in the league. I know the guy's the best quarterback in the league. I mean, he's and that's not just because of his on the field stats, the guy's a leader. The guy's track record, I mean, he's won, I don't know if he's lost a conference game in almost a year, and that's no knock to any other quarterback. There are some good ones. You're going to play one two Saturdays from now, a really good one. But the consistency of his performance, the consistency in his execution, the way he carries himself, his leadership, his confidence, not comparing him. But the last quarterback that had this kind of impact on this conference is probably Grayson McCall, as far as week after week, year after year, the production, and I'm not comparing the two, so don't clip my interview and then post it and say I compared those two. It's not what I'm doing. What I'm saying is every once in a while, there's a generational talent that comes along in a conference that drastically affects the conference at all levels. At our level, again, Grayson was probably the last one that truly impacted this conference. For multiple years, there's always been a guy that's come in and played well, but the consistency and performance, the way they've carried themselves, the impact they've only had, not only had on their team, their community, this brand, this conference. The guy's playing phenomenal. Now, if he doesn't play well next Saturday or two Saturdays from now, nobody's going to care. But again, the consistency in his preparation, the consistency in his performance, I'm honored to be here to watch it every day. I'm honored to be a part of it, and his humbleness, the way he carries itself, you wouldn't know that he got player of the player of the week, or the conference, or whatever it may be. He hasn't changed. He is still the same person- big smile, wants to win. If we told him, if he's only going to throw it five times, he would throw it five times and hand it off 35 times, and those kids don't come along a lot, and you don't get the whole package. You might get talent, but maybe they don't have preparation skills. You might get talent, but you don't have consistency. Maybe you get the talent, but their personality is more reserved, and they're not as outgoing or affecting the team. But we've been blessed. We've been blessed to have him. I really hope, is Pavia going to win this waiver or whatever, because if he wins, I'm going for something for Braylon. So just keep him here, keep him around us. I love the guy. I love the guy, not only because of what he does on the field, but because of who he is every day. And that's really hard for 18-to-22-year-olds to be it's really hard for them to be the same person every day, right? As you become an adult, you get in a routine, and your leader or your manager, and you know, you got to, you know, present the same way. But every day, I don't know if I've ever seen him have a bad day, he'll probably come in the day frowning, but I can't say enough about not only what he does for this program off the field. Obviously, everyone sees what he does on the field, but his off-the-field effect is the same, if not greater.
Q: Talk about Brodarius Lewis and that defensive line, how has he grown up from the guy that we would've seen a couple of years ago?
"It was interesting, because we almost let Brodarius leave. Brodarius got hurt when we first got here, right out of the gate, so we didn't get to see him go through fourth quarter. We didn't get to see him go through any of the install walkthroughs. We didn't get to see him go through spring ball and about the last two practices of spring, he got healthy enough to do some indi and do some one-on-ones, not full practice, but indi and one on ones. He took one-on-one reps, and I said, he's good. Just get him healthy, we'll keep him. But you don't know, because, again, I didn't go back and look at film. I wanted everybody to have their own, you know, litmus test, or track record, whatever you want to call it. He got hurt so early, out of his control, nothing he did. He did everything he needed to do to rehab. He got hurt so early we weren't able to see the explosion, the twitch, the quickness that we see. He did come back, obviously did a phenomenal job this fall, this summer in camp. The one thing that really impresses me about Brodarius is when we started getting our leadership council together, you know, basically the captain. We don't have captains, but each position has a guy that represents them, and they're the influence group, right? They kind of decide on a uniform. They decide if we're, you know, going to wear shells or, you know, spiders, when we win those type of things, and everybody on the team, everybody offense, defense, from the guys that were here and the new guys that got to spend time with him this summer, Brodarius for the D-line, Brodarius for the D-line, Brodarius for the D-line. He's just got a personality that gravitates to everybody, very similar to Braylon in different lanes, but very similar. What he's been able to do this year has been great man. He's got an unbelievable twitch. He's got unbelievable quickness. He's a lot more powerful than you may think. Obviously, his stature is lower, so he's got really good leverage. We're able to do things with him in the game from a D-line technique, a fundamental perspective that you can't do with everybody. He has become a student of the game, not saying he wasn't, but he's starting to break down formation tendencies. Thinking, okay, this formation they got to be going this way. The guards got to try and block me this way. I think Coach Mathies and him have really got a good relationship as far as giving him some freedom on some things that he can do, you know, there's one thing to say, hey, everybody's got to use this technique. But when you get a veteran player, you can give them some tools; you can give them some freedom. So, he's done a really good job, I couldn't be prouder to have him. He's another guy coming in the locker room after that last win. There's nobody in that locker room that was on the team last year that's ever been to a bowl game. So that experience alone, I told them, we got a bye week, and we took four minutes in the team meeting and just reflected on where we've come from, not just from one year, last year to this year, but we went all the way back five years old. Some of you guys, this is over in five weeks, and you've been playing this game since you were five. The majority of your life, you've been connected to the game of football, and then possibly in five or six weeks, this thing's over. Hopefully you all get to go play in the NFL, and hopefully you all get an opportunity, but we don't know, so let's maximize this for the next five or six weeks. Let's make sure that we don't just get so excited about making a bowl game that we don't maximize the next four or five or five or six weeks, whatever's left. Because for some of you, we have all our seniors sitting in the front row, this is it. You've been playing since you were five, and it was, oh, well, next year. Well, I'll go. To high school, or I go to varsity, or I'm going to go to college, this is it, and he was one of the guys that really embraced that. Let's do everything we can this week, even though it's a bye week, to make sure we fully maximize these next six or whatever. I mean, we have almost two months and it's over. Actually, it'll be a month. Once you get to this weekend, it's over like, this family is done. Regardless of what happens, win every game, get crowned kings of the world, it's done. This family and that team room will never be back together again. Yeah, the Southern Miss team will be back. Some guys will be back, but this family is done. So we talked about it: let's maximize this opportunity. Let's not sit here and say, well, we've made a bowl game. We're good, or we're, you know, in a good spot. Let's enjoy it. That's not the way it works, and Brodarius was one of the guys who I really thought about. Brodarius, Joseph Harper, Chris Jones, Brendan Toles you know so many guys, Avery Sledge, David Griffin, I mean, there's so many guys that are that were on this team that have never experienced this. So, for us to be able to continue to create these memories and opportunities for those guys is truly special."
Southern Miss' 49-21 homecoming win over ULM gave the Golden Eagles their sixth win of the season, guaranteeing the program a bowl game for the first time since 2022.
Here is what Huff said to the media:
Opening Statement…
"Obviously, a really good performance by our guys Saturday. Really good job of competing in the elements. Really good job of showing the right mental disposition to go out and play really well together. A lot of things that we did well, a lot of areas still to improve. Really good opportunity for us, with the bye week coming up, to get a head start on Arkansas State, who is a really good team, and for us to be able to get some of the fundamental things that showed up in the last game cleaned up as we move forward. So, excited to be bowl eligible, that's the floor in our program now we continue to build towards ultimately, why we all play the game is to be the best in our conference, in our league, take advantage of opportunities to improve, and give these guys an opportunity to go out and create a lot of value for themselves."
Q: You mentioned the areas to improve, so far during the win streak, where do you feel like the team can improve?
"Yeah, I think fundamentally, you know, tackling is one that's the more consistent we can be. We've gotten better, but there are still some areas where we can get better and eliminate the rallying to the ball tackle and the first guy there, get him on the ground. I think there's some things we can do defensively, to continue to play the ball in the air and a deep part of the field with poise and confidence, continuing to rotate guys in to games so that the depth doesn't become an issue offensively, our run game is getting better, but I think the more we can continue to improve, that as you go down the stretch, running the ball consistently is going to have to happen in order for you to continue to have success. I thought our wide receivers did a much better job of blocking on the perimeter with something we've really been harping on. We got to continue to do that. And sometimes when we say improve on things, it's thinking maybe things we did well that we need to continue to put time and effort into. So we continue to do them well. Again, I thought, as always, I thought we did a really good job of taking the ball away on defense, taking care of the ball on offense, so we got to continue to do the things that are giving us a chance to win, and sometimes that's putting more time and effort into them in practice. Sometimes that's getting other guys some of the same drills or fundamental reps that they may not get by position or spot on the depth chart as the season goes."
Q: Can you speak a little about how your slots are starting to open up your passing game?
"Yeah, I think it all works together. We always talk about cohesion, but the running game is starting to become alive. And when the running game becomes alive, you start to activate the safeties and the nickels in the run fits, or at least the run awareness, once you start activating the middle of the defense coverage into the run fit, now your slots are going to have a lot more opportunities for one on ones, or a lot more opportunities to play fast. I think they go together. The run game is having more success or more consistency, I'd say, now the safeties are in a little bit of a bond. Do I get down in the run fit? Or do I cover this guy? Especially the guys to the field with the nickel being involved in the run fit, not being able to get hands on the slot, him getting a free run at the safety. His safety kind of having two roles play past the run. Okay, now I'm in conflict, because Braylon does a good job with the RPOs, and we do a good job with tempo, which is creating some down the field explosive plays that we got to continue."
Q: When you're rolling like this during on a win streak, I was curious to know, with a bye week coming now and guys are resting, would you rather just play it through or?
"They make the schedule long before it got here to us, there's always a plan in the way we work things. When we get the schedule at the beginning of the year, we kind of map out things we want to accomplish at certain points. This is a phase where we want to start adding more to our offensive and defensive schemes based on what our players can do. So every three weeks, in between the Thursday night game, we were able to add some things offensively to kind of complement what we were doing. We mapped it out again. This is an area we want to be able to add some things. And when I say add things, we're not talking you know, all of a sudden we come out triple option, but building off of what we've been able to do, creating more conflict for the other team defensively, adjusting some of the coverages in the fronts that we're playing, how we're playing certain coverages and fronts as the season goes on. You use these bye weeks to kind of do a couple different things. As far as adjusting scheme, revamping scheme, we'll go back and look at some of the things we're running. If they're not efficient, we got to take them out. You know, some things we thought were going to be good. Maybe this player is there or not. They're playing a certain way. Maybe we're not getting the same type of reaction from the other side of the ball. So for us to take out what's not working good and then build on what we've done well is always kind of a road mark when we get these bye weeks, of what we want to be able to do."
Q: Can you speak to you guys' halftime adjustments, just elevating you guys in the second half? I feel like every single second half you've just played better than the first half.
"Yeah, we've kind of come up with a plan that you know, how we want to address its changes each week, how we want to address the second half, what we anticipate their answers being. What we anticipate their adjustments being, it's not a sign. It's not a, it's not perfect. You know, hey, they're going to do A because they were doing B. But just giving our players the opportunity to say, hey, here's the next step we got to be ready for, and then also doing a good job of, you know, the iPads have really changed the game a little bit. A lot of the adjustments that are made are already made before we get inside. Because every series, you can come off and kind of go look through it a lot of times, what we do at halftime is just kind of put all of those series together for the guys. Okay, hey, here's all of the runs they've had in the first half. Here are all the passes they've had, and here's how we're going to adjust. So I credit the coaches. You know, I always challenge them to make sure our second half adjustments make sense. Make sure our second half adjustments are player driven, not necessarily scheme driven. What can our players do? And they've done a really good job of we got to keep doing that as the season goes on, you got to play 60 minutes. You know, if you look at our kind of season so far, the first half is always a little bit I don't know. I mean, maybe this could go either other way. And I think again, our process, our fourth quarter training, allows us to come out in the second half and really make an impact on the game, which I think is crucial if you're going to be able to sustain success."
Q: You've got one of the better if not best corner duos in the conference. Can you speak to those two guys' Moten come in known but Richard's come on in his own?
"Again, it's when you play opposite a really good player, you force teams to throw at the other guy, which forces the other guy to get opportunities. I think Richard has done a really good job of taking advantage of the opportunities. He's really coachable. He does exactly what you tell him to do. He doesn't try and get some technique he got off of YouTube and try it. He doesn't try to get outside of his skill set, he does a really good job in his preparation. He's long, he's physical, so he can challenge some of these guys. He knows his deficiencies in certain areas and routes. He's becoming better with his ball skills. He's been able to get his hands on multiple balls. He's turned them over now with a more consistent rate, and I think that's just a byproduct of playing across on the other side of the field from a really good corner, you got to kind of pick your poison. Then I think again, it's the cohesion in the back end. Part of playing corner is trusting that the safety is going to do his job when he needs to. Part of playing corner is understanding how the back end works together. When do I have help? When do I not have help? Situational Awareness regards one of the smarter guys on the team, as far as understanding, you know, hey, here's the situation. Here are their tendencies. It's 3rd and 5. Here are their tendencies. 1st and 10. Here are their tendencies. And again, I think Coach Calhoun has done a great job of teaching him the game at his skill set. A lot of times, coaches teach the game of, hey, this is how you supposed to do it from a perfect level. Well, every player is different. You got to coach and teach different players in different ways. So credit to him. Credit to Moten for being consistent enough to force them to kind of have to make some decisions. Credit to Coach Calhoun for continuing to be innovative with how he's teaching each guy separately, and then credit to Richard for being coachable and leaning on Moten for, some peer situational coaching. Hey, what do you see here? Well, how do you play this? I think he's done a really good job. Got to continue that in order for us to have success, us to have success, especially with the teams coming up that we're going to play are going to be a little bit more, I won't say pass happy, but a pass threat than some of the ones we've played in the last couple of weeks for different reasons. You know, one, two weeks ago, the quarterback changes how you throw the ball. This weekend, you got two quarterbacks out so changes how they throw the ball. So as we continue to move forward, we're going to come up with more teams that have some pass consistency that we're going to have to defend a little bit better.
Q: You guys got your takeaways like you've done almost every week, but you didn't have as many negatives as you have in weeks past. Could you, what they did, I know they rolled the quarterback out a lot and got the ball out of his hand, could you speak on the design of that and how it played out?
"I thought they did a really good job of hanging onto the ball. We got a couple punches at it that it wiggled, but it didn't come out. I thought they did a really good job of limiting how many times they had to throw it. Meaning, you know, it was like, you say, the rollouts. It was a quick game. Passes. They were safe throws. I thought they did a really good job of that. I also thought they did a good job of trying to keep the ball out of the middle of the field. It's really, it's a lot of hands in there. When you start throwing the ball over the middle, there's a lot of hands, and there are a lot of eyes. If you can keep the ball outside the numbers when you're throwing it, obviously, typically, there's one guy there. I think the one turnover, the two turnovers, interceptions we got, it was over the middle. So I thought they did a really good job of that, of keeping the ball on or outside the numbers in the pass game, which minimizes the amount of hands that you can get in there. So I thought they did a good job. I thought our guys did a good job of making the plays when they got an opportunity. It's really hard for a defensive player to catch a ball that's not they don't like train to do that. They train to tackle guys. It's really hard for an offensive player. That's why you don't see many of them on special teams, because it's really hard for an offensive player to run down, stack, lean, get back in phase and shimmy close and make a tackle in the open field. They don't train that. So when you're able to do it at a high level, it really goes a long way. You know, we no one would be upset if every one of the intercept me, I would excuse me if every one of the interceptions we've had were actually like past breakups, because you don't expect those guys to be great with hands, so we train that a lot. You know, past breakups don't do anything for us. We need it turned over, and now we're starting to really focus on offense. We need points off those turnovers, because now that's when you really start to flip momentum. You really start to put the other team in a bind. When they're turning the ball over and you're getting points earlier in the season, a couple of times, they would turn it over and we would, you know, move the ball down the field, but may not get points. So now we're focusing more on, okay, how can we generate points off these turnovers.
Q: Braylon being named Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week, four touchdowns last week, just what has he meant to the run you guys have been on so far?
"Yeah, I mean, obviously, I see him every day. This is no disrespect to any other quarterback in the league. I know the guy's the best quarterback in the league. I mean, he's and that's not just because of his on the field stats, the guy's a leader. The guy's track record, I mean, he's won, I don't know if he's lost a conference game in almost a year, and that's no knock to any other quarterback. There are some good ones. You're going to play one two Saturdays from now, a really good one. But the consistency of his performance, the consistency in his execution, the way he carries himself, his leadership, his confidence, not comparing him. But the last quarterback that had this kind of impact on this conference is probably Grayson McCall, as far as week after week, year after year, the production, and I'm not comparing the two, so don't clip my interview and then post it and say I compared those two. It's not what I'm doing. What I'm saying is every once in a while, there's a generational talent that comes along in a conference that drastically affects the conference at all levels. At our level, again, Grayson was probably the last one that truly impacted this conference. For multiple years, there's always been a guy that's come in and played well, but the consistency and performance, the way they've carried themselves, the impact they've only had, not only had on their team, their community, this brand, this conference. The guy's playing phenomenal. Now, if he doesn't play well next Saturday or two Saturdays from now, nobody's going to care. But again, the consistency in his preparation, the consistency in his performance, I'm honored to be here to watch it every day. I'm honored to be a part of it, and his humbleness, the way he carries itself, you wouldn't know that he got player of the player of the week, or the conference, or whatever it may be. He hasn't changed. He is still the same person- big smile, wants to win. If we told him, if he's only going to throw it five times, he would throw it five times and hand it off 35 times, and those kids don't come along a lot, and you don't get the whole package. You might get talent, but maybe they don't have preparation skills. You might get talent, but you don't have consistency. Maybe you get the talent, but their personality is more reserved, and they're not as outgoing or affecting the team. But we've been blessed. We've been blessed to have him. I really hope, is Pavia going to win this waiver or whatever, because if he wins, I'm going for something for Braylon. So just keep him here, keep him around us. I love the guy. I love the guy, not only because of what he does on the field, but because of who he is every day. And that's really hard for 18-to-22-year-olds to be it's really hard for them to be the same person every day, right? As you become an adult, you get in a routine, and your leader or your manager, and you know, you got to, you know, present the same way. But every day, I don't know if I've ever seen him have a bad day, he'll probably come in the day frowning, but I can't say enough about not only what he does for this program off the field. Obviously, everyone sees what he does on the field, but his off-the-field effect is the same, if not greater.
Q: Talk about Brodarius Lewis and that defensive line, how has he grown up from the guy that we would've seen a couple of years ago?
"It was interesting, because we almost let Brodarius leave. Brodarius got hurt when we first got here, right out of the gate, so we didn't get to see him go through fourth quarter. We didn't get to see him go through any of the install walkthroughs. We didn't get to see him go through spring ball and about the last two practices of spring, he got healthy enough to do some indi and do some one-on-ones, not full practice, but indi and one on ones. He took one-on-one reps, and I said, he's good. Just get him healthy, we'll keep him. But you don't know, because, again, I didn't go back and look at film. I wanted everybody to have their own, you know, litmus test, or track record, whatever you want to call it. He got hurt so early, out of his control, nothing he did. He did everything he needed to do to rehab. He got hurt so early we weren't able to see the explosion, the twitch, the quickness that we see. He did come back, obviously did a phenomenal job this fall, this summer in camp. The one thing that really impresses me about Brodarius is when we started getting our leadership council together, you know, basically the captain. We don't have captains, but each position has a guy that represents them, and they're the influence group, right? They kind of decide on a uniform. They decide if we're, you know, going to wear shells or, you know, spiders, when we win those type of things, and everybody on the team, everybody offense, defense, from the guys that were here and the new guys that got to spend time with him this summer, Brodarius for the D-line, Brodarius for the D-line, Brodarius for the D-line. He's just got a personality that gravitates to everybody, very similar to Braylon in different lanes, but very similar. What he's been able to do this year has been great man. He's got an unbelievable twitch. He's got unbelievable quickness. He's a lot more powerful than you may think. Obviously, his stature is lower, so he's got really good leverage. We're able to do things with him in the game from a D-line technique, a fundamental perspective that you can't do with everybody. He has become a student of the game, not saying he wasn't, but he's starting to break down formation tendencies. Thinking, okay, this formation they got to be going this way. The guards got to try and block me this way. I think Coach Mathies and him have really got a good relationship as far as giving him some freedom on some things that he can do, you know, there's one thing to say, hey, everybody's got to use this technique. But when you get a veteran player, you can give them some tools; you can give them some freedom. So, he's done a really good job, I couldn't be prouder to have him. He's another guy coming in the locker room after that last win. There's nobody in that locker room that was on the team last year that's ever been to a bowl game. So that experience alone, I told them, we got a bye week, and we took four minutes in the team meeting and just reflected on where we've come from, not just from one year, last year to this year, but we went all the way back five years old. Some of you guys, this is over in five weeks, and you've been playing this game since you were five. The majority of your life, you've been connected to the game of football, and then possibly in five or six weeks, this thing's over. Hopefully you all get to go play in the NFL, and hopefully you all get an opportunity, but we don't know, so let's maximize this for the next five or six weeks. Let's make sure that we don't just get so excited about making a bowl game that we don't maximize the next four or five or five or six weeks, whatever's left. Because for some of you, we have all our seniors sitting in the front row, this is it. You've been playing since you were five, and it was, oh, well, next year. Well, I'll go. To high school, or I go to varsity, or I'm going to go to college, this is it, and he was one of the guys that really embraced that. Let's do everything we can this week, even though it's a bye week, to make sure we fully maximize these next six or whatever. I mean, we have almost two months and it's over. Actually, it'll be a month. Once you get to this weekend, it's over like, this family is done. Regardless of what happens, win every game, get crowned kings of the world, it's done. This family and that team room will never be back together again. Yeah, the Southern Miss team will be back. Some guys will be back, but this family is done. So we talked about it: let's maximize this opportunity. Let's not sit here and say, well, we've made a bowl game. We're good, or we're, you know, in a good spot. Let's enjoy it. That's not the way it works, and Brodarius was one of the guys who I really thought about. Brodarius, Joseph Harper, Chris Jones, Brendan Toles you know so many guys, Avery Sledge, David Griffin, I mean, there's so many guys that are that were on this team that have never experienced this. So, for us to be able to continue to create these memories and opportunities for those guys is truly special."
– #FlipTheScript | #SMTTT –
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