Neal Brown Press Conference - Texas State Pregame

Neal Brown Monday Press Conference

Opening Statement…
Thank y'all for being here today. Before we start football talk, I want to wish our women's basketball team good luck as it plays in its home opener today and to our men up in Pittsburgh. Also, I want to recognize Veterans' Day. Thank you to all those who have served and those who are currently serving in our Armed Forces. We appreciate those people to allow us to do what we do. Whether it's you all in the media or us coaching football or are student-athletes being allowed to go to school. We are very appreciative of that and it's something we'll definitely discuss with our players later today.

Last Saturday was a good win for us; on the road versus a really good Georgia Southern football team. I'm proud of our players, proud of our staff for probably the best overall game we've played all year. Just a quick recap to talk about every aspect of the game.

Special teams leads us off, the negatives were that we missed two field goals. We had a penalty on a punt return that probably set us back on a drive. Then we've got to get better on kickoff return; we're just not good enough in that area right now. It's unfortunate because we've got some pretty good returners. We haven't blocked as well as we need to, and we need to fix that.

We averaged 57 yards per punt and that's special by Tyler Sumpter, who the Sun Belt recognized for the second consecutive week as the Special Teams Player of the Week. On kickoff, Bratcher (Underwood) kicked several touchbacks or fair catches plus our coverage was better. I thought our punt block team tipping a punt and effecting others was definitely a positive.

Defensively, two weeks in a row we've played at a high level. We gave up a couple of explosive plays on wheel routes. We didn't create any takeaways and those are the only negatives. We limited a triple option team to 101 yards rushing, 3.0 yards per carry. We got off the field on third downs. Our defensive line really controlled the game, the best we've played up front in a game all year.

Negatives on offense start with the fumble that led to their second touchdown. We had too many negative-yardage plays in our run game which will come back to haunt us if we don't get those fixed. Positives were that we had only one penalty, our tempo was the best it's been all year, we controlled the clock and had a number of explosive plays. I thought it was one of our better offensive games this year.

Wrapping up, that win gets us to 8-2 and more importantly 6-0 in the league. It makes each game after that even bigger.

On Texas State…
We're back home to play a much-improved Texas State team. It's the last home that's on our schedule; hopefully, if we can finish this, we'll have another one here. But, we're going to honor a group of 14 seniors that not only had a tremendous impact on our football program, but on this university as well.

I think the strength of their team is special teams. They're top 20 in blocked punts, 33^rdin punt returns, 39^thin kickoff returns and 15^thin kickoff; so I think one of the more complete special teams units that we'll play all year. They're much improved on defense from a year ago. They play really, really hard. I think they've done a good job against some of the best offenses in our league. On offense, they're multiple; they give a lot of different looks which will be a challenge for us defensively.

We're in "survive and advance" mode. We've got to win this one to set up the final one; it's critical. We have to continue to play at a high level, our margin for error is not real big. We have to continue to prepare and play. And again, I've said this for two weeks in a row, we've got to prove whether we're a pretender or a contender. We're in the third round of this heavyweight fight we've been in here in the month of November.

I hope our community, our fans and our students show up and support this football team. You know we're in an era here where we're getting really close to having the most wins over a three-year period in school history. I think we've won over 80 percent of our games in the last three years and this is a team that's played hard and overcome a lot of injuries. I hope our fans show up to support our guys, especially those 14 seniors in their last scheduled home game of the year.

On responding to trailing 14-3 early at Georgia Southern…
We're not a very old football team, but we have a lot of experience. We have a lot of guys that have played in big football games. Those guys didn't blink. We went down 14-3 and had the biggest drive we've had this season, it took forever. We had 14 plays and multiple third down or fourth down conversions, so they made us work for it. I thought that drive kind of ignited both sides and we got a three-and-out the very next series. We came down and scored the very next series. It speaks to the resilience, the belief, the confidence our guys have regardless of any time of the game. That belief is not only in themselves but in the systems we have in place.

On preparing for Texas State…
I just think we have to be mature about it. Honestly, we're not at a point where we can take anybody for granted. We lost to a Liberty team that we probably shouldn't have; they just beat us. We have pretty recent history of when we don't play or prepare well then it shows. I think our margin for error is really small. Another thing that's real critical for us, through the month of November and December we continue to get better. We played our best game in New Orleans against North Texas last year. We played our best game this year in week 10 against Georgia Southern. I still think there's room for improvement, so we're going to continue to practice at a high level. College football is totally different than basketball or baseball; you play one game a week. We've got 12 a year, that's what they put on the schedule. You have to be able to get up for every game. Our job is to make sure that we're doing that. I think it helps that it's Senior Day. Everybody that Texas State has played, they've played them well. The game against Appalachian State got away from them a little bit, but other than that they've been competitive in every game. They are more than capable of coming in here and knocking us off. We have a lot of respect for them, so our guys better get ready.

Troy University Athletics

Neal Brown Press Conference - Texas State Pregame

Players Mentioned

Tyler Sumpter

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