The Harrell Huddle: Army Week

ECU Head Coach Blake Harrell met with the media on Monday to recap BYU and look ahead to Army. Check out his full quotes below or watch the press conference at the bottom of this article.

OPENING STATEMENT

"Obviously a tough night for us on Saturday. We made some mistakes against a really good football team, and it cost us. But just want to say this, the atmosphere that Greenville, our fan base, Pirate Nation, created in Dowdy-Ficklen on Saturday night was awesome. To be on national TV, the national stage, and what they created, and, the administration, with the fireworks and all those things put together, that's big time college football. And we had over 300 recruits here that witnessed that and were a part of that, and were fired up. Our players felt it. Just wish we could have got the job done there for them and for everyone involved there. There were some bright spots in the game for us, some things we did really good. There's some things you always, in a win, you kind of go back and pick out the things you didn't do well. And sometimes in losses, those things get overshadowed. I think you got to go back and and look at some things you did well certainly. Offensive I think that's only second time BYU has given up 400 yards in the last two years. I think that's the best our offensive line has probably played as a group. We're able to run a football against a good defense out there, and not late in the game, early in the game, when it mattered. London, those guys got going. Marlon, Parker - all three got going back there. So thought that was a bright spot. I think defensively, we went 11 straight quarters without allowing a defensive touchdown. I think that's a new American Conference record, if I heard that correct. But, you know, there's only one stat that matters, and that's getting back in the W column. We obviously got some things we got to clean up, and I'm 100 percent confident in the young men in our locker room and our staff that they'll do exactly that. They're competitors. They go at it. They're proud to be a Pirate. They take a lot of pride in that, and they're looking forward to getting back in the W column this week. And I told him this a few minutes ago, and said, Life is full of adversity, like adversity you're going to face all throughout your life, and probably you face it at some point in your life, and you knew how to overcome adversity, or you wouldn't be here. One game, one loss is not going to define us, but how we respond to that does. 

ON ARMY

"And so we got back to work yesterday, and obviously we've got to flip the page pretty quick, because it's a short week and in three nights, we got a Army team coming into town, who was the 2024 American Conference champs. Coach Monken has done a heck of a job up there. Known him for a long time, and whether he was at Georgia Southern, he'd been Naval Academy, at Georgia Tech - he's done a really good job. That offensive line won the Joe Moore award last year, which is the top O line in the nation. Got a couple returners on that O line. They're an option-based offense. They get under center, run the option. They'll get in the gun, run the option. Two-quarterback system right now, Coach Cody Worley is the OC I was with him at Kennesaw State, and he's playing two quarterbacks  - DeWayne Coleman, who kind of started beginning the year, number 10, and then number three, Cale Hellums comes in as well. So both of them played in the last game. Not exactly sure which one we'll see yet, but we'll be prepared for both. They're averaging about 280 on the ground, over 400 yards of offense. The B back is, I think, the leading rusher, one of them number eight, Hayden Reed, and then their speed guy is, number 15, same guy's last year, Noah Short. He'll catch the toss out on the edge, run the wheel routes, get out the backfield and catch the ball. He's got some true speed back there.

"Defensively, their defensive coordinator Nate Woody, when I was in SoCon, we coached against him and some of his style defense. He's a 3-4 base defense. Field boundary reduction. Play some quarters, play some cover three, and cover two back there, doing a really good job, as always. I think they're averaging about giving only up about 190 in the air and 150 on the ground. So, tough defense as always. Linebackers, kind of the guys that stand out to me, for those guys, Kalib Fortner and the Thomas kid - 51 and 53 - both solid in there. I think both are preseason all-conference. Seven, the corner is Jaydan Mayes, really good, solid corner back there. The safeties fly around. Danny Verpaele, who I was with at Kennesaw State as well, the safeties coach, and doing a really good job back there. So you know again, thank you for the fan base, the Pirate Nation, and thank you to the students who continue to ride with us and making Dowdy a special place. We're ready to get it back out there. I believe in this group, and thank you for the fan base for doing the same. And this time, we'll open it up for questions."

ON GETTING READY FOR THE OPTION ON SHORT REST

"Yeah, I mean, you're getting ready for an Army team. Somebody says, 'Hey, you got a short week preparing for Army.' I say Army's got a short week to prepare for us. And that's kind of the mindset I want within our program, within our players and within our football team. And it's obviously an option. I was around the option offense from 2008 to about 2019, till I came here. I guess we were in some some short of the option when it was Lenoir-Rhyne, The Citadel, or Kennesaw State, and you attack it differently in different places. And I think you attack it differently here as well. And the main thing is, you know, keep it simple for your players, so you can go play fast, and clean, and that's any (short) week. Doesn't matter if it's Army or whoever it may be. I think that's the key to it on both sides of football, is let allow your guys to go play, keep them fresh. You got a quick turnaround yesterday. We usually have Sundays off. It was a quick turnaround. We went back out and practiced a little bit, a little light practice last night, trying to get some soreness out of us, get the game plan installed. Usually, Mondays are a film review and a light practice. Well, Monday this week was a pretty heavy practice in pads, moving around pretty good. Had the game plan installed on both sides. But you try to just keep it simple, so you can go play fast on both sides of ball and play with the culture you expect. So I think at the end of the day, that's what's going to win you the football game, that's playing with great effort and great intensity and being physical."

ON THE FALSE STARTS

"I thought there's a couple things. I just talked to our team, but little things, you know, how you do anything is how you do everything. And little things matter. Little things make the big things, and we gotta do a better job attacking those. Some of it is, just like a little bit of anxiety, or receivers trying to get out a little earlier, you know, beat a corner getting to a route, those type of things. Up front, I think a little bit of the pre-snap movement maybe got to us. So all those things are unacceptable. All of them got to be cleaned up and got to be fixed, and we got to get to that and be more detailed about those things. So because those little things are things that aren't clean, they aren't\ disciplined, so to speak, and they will get you beat. And they certainly did Saturday night, and we just talked to our football team about that as well, how we gotta focus in, lock in on those things. Two days before the game, I would call it a Thursday practice, it'll be a Tuesday practice this week, we got t-shirts that say, "Locked in," and that's really what we gotta do, a better job of locking in, making sure we know our job and do our job to the best of our ability at all times."

ON WHAT HE SAW FROM ARMY IN THE COMEBACK WIN OVER NORTH TEXAS

"A couple things. And to that point, the other night, we're down two scores to BYU, there in the fourth quarter, I think about five minutes to go. And you know, defensively, they're about five yards away from being in field goal range. And you take a chance there to try to keep them out of field goal range, and you zero out, and you get out of a gap, and they pop one on you. Because, you know, if they get up three scores, it's unreachable with that amount of time. So you're trying to just hit them for a loss, get the ball back, get a score and maybe have a chance for onside kick. So, similar situation with Army. The biggest thing I saw when you get ahead of Army, they're not built to come back or vice versa. I think in the Kansas State game, they ate the ball 26 minutes out of 30 minutes in the second half against Kansas State, which really led to the victory there. But I think it was more about North Texas in the second half, got beat on a deep sprint out on a fourth down. I think fourth and 10, fourth, and 13 or so, the safety kind of mistimed, didn't play really well, and gets behind him for a big play. And then, you know, Army scores, I think it's 35-38 and Army tries the onside kick. Obviously, North Texas recovers. I think 2:50 on the clock. Army has no timeouts. Basically, I think if they just knee it out, they probably give them the ball back at the 10. They punt it with probably about 30 seconds, 20 seconds to go in the game, which is basically a victory. And the first snap, North Texas fumbles, you know? So I think it's more about what North Texas did. Now, Army obviously capitalizes on it. And you know, that's what well-coached teams do. Army is a well-coached team, goes down there and kicks the field goal. And then overtime, obviously North Texas took the ball, scored first, and then Army got the ball, couldn't get in the end zone, threw a few passes there. You know, Coleman gets banged up in overtime. Hellums come in, and just couldn't get in the end zone there. But you know, to come back like that shows the resiliency of that football team and what Coach Monken has built. That's always the toughness that they have."

ON HOW THE TEAM HAS RESPONDED AFTER THE LOSS

"I thought we fought all the way to the end of that game. I mean, Katin will be the first to stand up here and tell you that he didn't play to his expectations. And you know, I'll tell you as a team, we didn't play to our standard. And it's like I told him in my office yesterday, you cannot let those things weigh you down. You got to keep on going, attacking it. Yeah, we're going to go take it on. We're going to own it. It is what it is, and we're going to fight back. And if we'll do that, not only on the football field, but in life, we'll be successful, and that's what we talked about. And I think, you know, you can use lessons like this with your young men in your locker room to teach life lessons. You know, sometimes those things hit a little harder than you know, not going to class and making it on time. It seems like things on the football field kind of stick with them a little bit more. But the way we'll bounce back, and the way our kids will go to work with it, we'll get there, and we all gotta do it. Can't just be, hey, half of them, or 75 percent of them, they all got to be in, on board on that and I told them, like, Hey, you either are on board or you're not. There ain't no in between. Ain't no gray area. You either you touch the line or you don't, you make the third down, or you don't, you make it to class on time or you don't. So those are things we're continuing to kind of make sure we instill within our program, within our culture and within our football team, to make sure we get back to where we need to get get to."

ON WHAT HE SAW FROM THE IMPROVED RUNNING GAME

"I think the offensive line the week before, I thought we missed some some gaps in there, some creases in there. I thought the running backs did a better job winding back, you know, bending back off of the hip and staying tight. You know, for the most part, I thought the O line did a better job staying on guys and just, all in all, and that's a good defense. Now, that's a, like I said, that's a defense, that's only allowed 400 yards twice in the last two years so, and they're a Big 12 opponent, but, we got to do what we do. So I thought we did a better job there with the backs and the whole line for sure."

ON IF IT’S GOOD THE TEAM HAS TO MOVE ON QUICKLY WITH THE SHORT TURNAROUND

"Yeah, that's there's no question. I said this the other night. In basketball, you turn around a couple of nights after you play and you get that bad taste out of your mouth. And in baseball, you do the same, you know, you lose on Friday night. You got a game Saturday or game Sunday, or even if you have a bad one on Sunday, you turn around on Tuesday. In football, usually you gotta wait seven days. Or, you know, in our case of last time we had a loss, we had to wait nine days. Or whatever it may be. This week it is five days. And it was late Saturday night, so you wake up Sunday morning, it's time to get focused on the next opponent, flip the page and go back to it. So I think for some of us, like getting out there, getting to practice, getting back on the field, it's kind of hey, we got to reset. We got to refocus. And it's got to be 1-0 this week. And so flip the page to it is a conference game. It's a new part of our season. The non-conference is done with, those four games. We're going into the back two-thirds of our schedule with our conference, and it's conference play the next eight games. And you start out really with Army and not looking ahead, but Tulane, who also played in the conference championship last year. So you got a tough road ahead. But, really, the focus has got to be on us and how we go our approach like it is every week. But it does help to get that bad taste out your mouth immediately."

ON WHAT HE’S LEARNED FROM GOING THROUGH NON-CONFERENCE FOR THE FIRST TIME AS HEAD COACH

"Man, what an awesome fan base we have, and that's that's real, like, Raleigh, they packed it out. Down in Conway, they packed it out. Campbell game, FCS game here, they packed it out, and then the other night, that's amazing. That's as good as I've ever seen and this is big time college football. And that's why you do what you do. And I think our schedule, you had two P4 opponents. You had to go to a regional game down the road, and you had to have a FCS game here. And those challenges were awesome for our program. I think we grow more from that than if we would have played, you know, three group of five opponents and an FCS opponent. I think we're going to grow more from playing an ACC team and a Big 12 team down the road. So I told the guys the other night, I said I believe things happen in life for a reason. You know, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and the bad events in our life, we gotta learn from them, grow from and move on, and that way, it helps us down the road. And I think this is one of those events. So, you know, I thought it's been a really good schedule for so far, just of non-conference that will help prepare us for the conference."

ON IF THEY HAVE WORKED ON THE OPTION BEFORE THIS WEEK

"More as a staff than as a defense. That was kind of our focus points, just kind of our first few opponents, and certainly in the conference, because we knew this was going to be a short week and we got to have a game plan ready to go. You know, preseason camp, we usually take some time to work on the option and plan it up like that. We didn't take as much time this year, just because I thought we were behind defensively. I wanted to make sure we were ready for our non-conference schedule. I thought, going into that, if we were ready for that, that would help us build confidence down the road. And I certainly think it has. I think defensively, you know, take that touchdown, that last touchdown away the other night that we zeroed out on, and try to try to hit a TFL in there, I think we played pretty good football overall. Now obviously I'm probably the biggest critique of defensive football of anybody, but if you take the big picture of those four games, with where I thought we were in August, I think we came a long way, and we're getting where we need to be going into conference play, and that's probably the best confidence we can have, and the best defensive builder we can have going into conference play."

ON XAVIER MCIVER’S RECOVERY

"Yeah, you know, we've been missing Zay for a couple weeks now, and we'll be excited to get him back, not only his presence on the field, but his leadership on the field. He's a senior who's played a lot of football, and he's missing it right now. So it's hurting and bothering him a little bit right now too. So it'll be good for him to get back out there with everybody and us as well. So he's getting closer and closer. Not sure we'll get to see him this week, but I think hopefully after the bye week, we'll be able to have him out there between the lines and going at it. So he's coming along nicely, and his recovery is doing well."

ON HOW KAMAURRI MCKINLEY PLAYED AFTER THE TEAGAN WILK EJECTION

"I said this the other night, and Teagan's got to do a better job hitting the strike zone with some of those things. I just, it's football. Let's play football. But Kamaurri, he played 40-something snaps the other night, and for the most part, did a really good job. There's a few things in there he's got to clean up and do better. But I didn't think like when you stuck him out there, he was a, 'Hey, we're going to go attack this guy.' He held his own, did some good things, you know, had a few hits. Got to do a little better job wrapping up. But he's coming along. He's kind of always had athleticism, and now he's starting to have the discipline to kind of go along with that, and I think he's going to get there and be a guy that we can depend on down the road."

ON HIS THOUGHTS ON GOING TO ONE TRANSFER PORTAL WINDOW

"Thank God, that's my thoughts now. As a coach, and when I was at the AFCA last January, or whether that was with the American head coaches, like the two windows have been miserable for head coaches because you can lose part of your team at two different points in the year. And the first transfer portal, they haven't set it in stone yet exactly when it's going to be, but was in the playing season that was miserable. So instead of focusing on the last game, which is your bowl game, you're worried about your roster and how that's going, and then again, end of the semester in the spring. If we can get that thing to one, and if we can find the best time for it, which honestly, like, to me, it's February out of the playing season, getting back to putting a student first in the student athlete, all those things that would be awesome. I'm not sure it's going to go that way, but I think we're going in the right direction.

"And at some point, you know, we got to make sure these young men graduate. We're talking about, you know, rev. share, transfer portal, all these other things, which I think is great for college athletics and great for our sport and but at some point we got to get the student part back into it. Where a young man doesn't transfer every semester, and you look up, he's out of eligibility but has no degree. Like, well, how do we help him be successful in life? How do we help him grow as a man? How do we help him go get a job or whatever it may be? Every coach on our staff wouldn't be here if they didn't have a college degree. So we got to make sure we're helping our young men be successful and graduate from college so they can have more choices in life."

ON THE STUDENTS NEEDING TO SHOW OUT ON A THURSDAY NIGHT

"I thought the other night it was awesome just to have our students and families in there, it was family weekend. And you know, I saw what that meant to all of Greenville, not just the hotels, but the restaurants. And I saw the some pictures of downtown being packed out and all those things. This Thursday, like you said, it may be a little tougher for some fans to get here because of the travel, whatever it may be, but our students, they know they're going to pack out the Boneyard, and they're gonna bring the energy, and we feed off that thing. And I appreciate them, and I enjoy going around campus and just seeing that. They put a smile on my face when I ride around campus. And I couldn't tell you how many times, like different folks, we stopped on campus last week and asked, 'You coming to the game?' They said, 'Oh yeah, I already got my tickets.' You want me to show you?' Nah you don't gotta show me. I believe you. But I really appreciate them, and I think that's what makes this place special again, and so just thank you to the students."