Neal Brown Press Conference - Appalachian State Game

Troy Football Press Conference – Neal Brown Appalachian State Week

Opening statement…
Thanks for being here. I appreciate you all coming out on a pretty nasty day here in Troy, Alabama. Good team win, we needed it. I'm proud of our guys. We overcame some adversity. We didn't get in to El Paso until right around midnight on Friday night. They handled that well. We had to adjust our whole Friday schedule. That shows maturity. It's hard to win games. You need to enjoy it when you do win them, we certainly are. We have been close in a couple of conference games and didn't get it done. So to get off to the type of start we had on Saturday night was definitely a positive and something we look forward to doing.

Before I get into each side of the ball, I have a couple of award winners, which we will do when we win games. Our scout team players of the week last week: on offensive, running back Keith Johnson, who is sitting out this year. Defensively is Uvakeious McGhee, from Montgomery. He has does a tremendous job for us on our scout team. He has a lot of upside. He is a guy that is going to step in and fill a major void for us next year. So I'm excited about him. On special teams it was Nick Manuel. Our Corey McCullers Spirit Award, which goes to the guy that brings the most energy on our sidelines and embodies everything we want in a Trojan, goes to Josh Burnham. He's a guy that plays some on special teams. He is really a team leader, a guy that does a lot of things for us behind the scenes.

Defensively, I though we did a nice job in the red zone, this is really the second week in a row, and on third down. Coach (Vic) Koenning has done a nice job. We have one of the top third down defenses in the country, and right at the top of our league. We didn't play the run as well as we would have liked, or as well as we will need to. We haven't played as well on defense in the last two games, as we had earlier. Some of that is because we have gotten banged up a little bit. The good thing is, I think this is a testament as to how far we've come – we haven't played as well, but we gave up seven points this week and only gave up 16 the week before. I think a lot of that shows how much improvement we've made. The defensive player of the week was Rashad Dillard. He scored his first touchdown ever – like peewee, high school, ever. That's what he told me after the game. He did a good job holding his gap in the run game. He got a couple pressures on the quarterback and had a huge fumble recovery for a touchdown in the second half.

Offensively, by far the best game we've played this year. Hopefully those performances become the norm. They have been around here before and other offenses that we have had at different places. We averaged over seven yards per play and scored 45 points in the first half. I thought we lost our concentration. I was disappointed in how we played in the second half. We did sub quite a bit and pulled back the reigns a little. But early in that third quarter we should have moved the ball. We had too many drops. Like I said, I would like us to still come out and play as hard and as efficient as we did in the first half.

We needed that. I think the big telling point was that we had zero turnovers offensively in the first half. For us to win in our league, that is what it's going to take. We can't turn the ball over and we have to do the little things right. It was good. Our offensive player of the week was Brandon Silvers. It was good to get him back. We are a different team offensively when he plays – it had been since the second series of the Mississippi State game since he played. He did a nice job. He came out and threw with confidence and got the ball out of his hand quick. He was decisive. So, that was probably the best thing I saw out of him. He was 23-of-37 for 288 yards and threw for five touchdowns. I thought he did a nice job.

On special teams, the huge fumble recovery on the first punt we had – I thought that was the biggest play of the game. It set up our first touchdown. Ryan Kay and Jed Solomon were both very solid. Jed has been really solid all year. You take that miss, I know that got pointed out, but he has been solid throughout the year – several kickoffs out of the end zone, made a career-long field goal. We need to get better. Our punt coverage is not where it needs to be. I was disappointed in how our long snapper on the punt team played – he did not do what he needed to do. We also got another big punt return, positively. We got another big return from Teddy Ruben. Our punt return unit is one of the higher ranked units in the country, and he's done a really good job returning punts. Our special teams player of the week was Ryan Kay. He did a good job fielding bad snaps. He had six punts with a 47-yard average, and two inside the 20.

A good team win – I'm proud of our guys.

Moving on, we have the best team in our league at Boone. They play really well at home. It's a tough trip. We are going to head up on Thursday night and go part of the way. They are one of the hottest teams in the country. I think they are 12-1 over their last 13 games. They came into Troy an underdog last year, sitting at 1-5 and the rest is history. I really, really have a lot of respect for (Appalachian State head coach) Scott Satterfield. He has done a great job. He's in his third year. That's something I've noticed – (Paul) Petrino is in his third year, and they're playing a lot better in Idaho; Scott in his third year at App State has done a tremendous job, really recruited well. I think they did a great job with the transition from FCS to Division I. I like watching his guys play. I probably wish weren't playing them this week, but I like watching them play.

On offensive they are really efficient and on defense they have a lot of guys that get to the football. When you start talking about them it starts at the quarterback, Taylor Lamb. He is a coach's son, with two years starting. He makes a lot of good decisions, and doesn't turn the ball over much. He is a threat to run. Their running back, (Marcus) Cox, is going to break all the records there. He's a guy that doesn't wow you, but he doesn't have a lot of negative runs, like the guy at New Mexico State (Larry Rose III). He always falls forward. Their offensive line is solid, probably the best in our conference. They are balanced. They lead the Sun Belt in just about every offensive category. They create a lot of alignment and matchup issues based on what they do.

Defensively, their coordinator is Nate Woody, has been doing this a long time. He did it for a long time at Wofford. When he was there, he had one of the top defenses in I-AA, or FCS, however you want to put it. They are the top-ranked unit in our conference, seventh nationally, in total defense. They are number one in the red zone. Adam (Prendergast) can probably tell you, they have only given up four red zone touchdowns, which is unbelievable to me. They play a three-down system. Everything is based on creating negative plays. We have too many negative plays, and that's what they're looking to do.

They are solid in all of their special teams phases. Their punter (Bentlee) Critcher and their field goal kicker is (Zach) Matics – they do a good job.

So, we have our hands full. Obviously we are going over there with a little more confidence.

On ball security against Appalachian State…
We preach ball security every week regardless of who we are playing. We devote a whole period and sometimes it doesn't show, but we always do some type of competition period at the start of practice and we go right into a turnover circuit on defense where we are working on getting ball out and intercepting the ball and offensively working on ball security and doing a circuit. We work it every week regardless of who we are playing. They're doing a good job. I think when you get a lot of people to the ball, and they're fast, look at who forces your turnovers; people that can run because they get a lot of hats to the ball. So, they're fast on defense and we've got to be conscience of that.

On the offensive explosion…
I knew we were going to play better. A lot of the reason we played better last week, and I sat in here Monday and talked about how we can't become outcome oriented, we've got to become a process oriented football team, each individual football player, and I thought they did a good job going from station to station. Like today, we're going to have team meeting, special teams meeting, position meeting, practice. Keeping our focus through those things, like today my message to the team is going to be 'hey, we play at 2:35 in Boone, North Carolina on Saturday. That is so far away; let's not even think about it. All I need to think about is making corrections from this New Mexico State game, let's move on in station to station,' which sounds redundant and doesn't have a whole lot of jazz to it, but that's how we've got to focus with so many new guys playing.

It's a challenge week in and week out. I'm proud that we're getting better, but this is going to be our toughest matchup in conference for sure. I knew we were going to play better, Brandon practiced all week and we play at a little higher level when he plays. We caught the ball better; we knew we were going to focus on throwing the football more this week, so I felt like we had an identity and starting to figure out who we are. Did I see us scoring 45 points in the first half? No. Did I think we we're going to play at a much higher level than we have played? Yes.

On the offensive line...
We're a work in progress there and we played six guys and it hadn't worked out. We're not happy with how we've played, so we tried two new guys. Jay Dye played his first meaningful minutes and started at center. He's a walk-on that's done a really good job for us. Xavier Fields played his first meaningful action of football here at Troy and did a pretty good job and we rotated eight rather than six. What we're going to do is, based on how practice goes this week, we'll determine who starts. We're playing against a different front, they'll play a head up nose who is about 320 pounds. It's a different set of issues, but we're going to reward whoever practices the best and whoever has the best production early in the game will have the majority of the snaps.

How much confidence does this provide heading into Boone…
Just playing well gives you some confidence. Going on the road, I wasn't surprised that we played well on the road. If you look at it, even the games we've lost, we've played pretty decent on the road. The league didn't do us any scheduling favors. We go from the furthest west to the furthest east and there's really no easy way to get to Boone. I think they handled the trip down here pretty well last year, so I don't think it will be that big of an issue.

On Brandon Burks performance…
He's had a good season so far. If we blocked things a little cleaner, I think we'd be talking about him being one of the top running backs in the league and the most productive. The things I was most pleased with him is, and this is what our focus was all week, is not having those negative runs. We've had some minus five, minus six runs; he didn't have any of those. The long run he had was special, it really was, it was one of the longest runs in school history and it was special. We got jammed up in the middle and he broke a couple tackles, we did a great job blocking at receivers, which I think is a sign that we're hungry. If your wideouts are really blocking well, which ours did in the game on Saturday. But he's played at a high level. He and Teddy Ruben by far are our most consistent guys offensively.

Is this game a turning point for the program…
I hope so. That's something I talked to our team about. Whether we're at the same point. That happened the mid-way point of year two for them. I don't know if we're ready yet, I hope we are, but that's something that's to be determined. But that's definitely something I pointed out to the team. You look at it, they (App State) were 1-5 and lost by several touchdowns a couple times and they made the long trip here and won going away and didn't turn around the rest of the season. That's something we're looking to duplicate, whether we can I don't know. I think App is a really good football team and we're going to have to play at a higher level than we have at any point this year.

Troy University Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Brandon Burks

Josh Burnham

Rashad Dillard

Jay Dye

Xavier Fields

Keith Johnson

Ryan Kay

Nick Manuel

Corey McCullers

Uvakeious McGhee

Teddy Ruben

Brandon Silvers

Jed Solomon

Neal Brown Press Conference - Appalachian State Game

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