Jake Spavital has a one-word mantra for his players this fall.
It’s nothing fancy. There’s no back story to it. There’s no deeper meaning to it. It gets straight to the point.
“'Team'” is our, is really our mantra. It's what we're going to live by, is that we have to play together as a team to win games,” Spavital said. “And so when that comes down to playing together as a team and not being yourself and doing the little things right, we're going to be competitive in every single game we do if we just be ourselves and we just play the percentage and the odds and be a smart football team. So it's all about being smart, efficient, playing together and how to finish games. That's kind of the culture that we're trying to put in place right now.”
The Bobcats reported to fall camp on Tuesday. Jake Spavital, offensive coordinator Bob Stitt and defensive coordinator Zac Spavital discussed their expectations for the program Wednesday morning inside the End Zone Complex inside Bobcat Stadium ahead of the team’s first practice that afternoon.
The discussion always came back to “team.” Working hard for the team. Wanting to succeed for the team. Doing what’s best for the team.
Jake Spavtial reiterated the intentions for fall camp that he laid out at the Sun Belt Football Media Day in New Orleans on July 22. The spring allowed the coaches to install the foundations of their schemes, but both sides of the ball kept things relatively vanilla. Now, the team will be diving into game-like scenarios rather quickly, possibly as soon as the third practice.
“I looked at the spring, just the development of where we were out there. It was a lot of feeling each other out,” Jake Spavital said. “The players were feeling us out, they're learning how to practice, learning, new schemes, and all that. So there was a lot of hesitation in spring. Now, I think they know how we practice, they know where to go, they know what to expect, we keep hammering the foundations, the pillars of our program with these guys non-stop. So you see the buy-in going.”
The first two days will be more about everyone getting their legs back underneath them — although all three coaches noted most players are in excellent shape.
Stitt noted the offense has tweaked a few things over the summer, now that they have a better idea of their personnel. He feels that the group has the speed, strength and physicality to compete with anybody in the country, but that the mental side of the game is holding them back. The unit spent the morning rehashing the studs of the scheme.
“That's what's killed us (in the spring game),” Stitt said. “It's the little thing. It's running a five step route, when it's supposed to be seven steps and just little things. You're supposed to be an outside release and you inside release, or the inside release and supposed to be an outside release. And so we go back to square one. And if we can be efficient, and we can take care of those little things and execute this offense to a tee, we've got a chance.”
Zac Spavital said the experience of the defense has helped the transition, as many players have already been taught multiple schemes by different coaches over the year. However, he’s been impressed by many of his young players coming and believes many of them could work their way into reps this fall.
“We're gonna have our first real unit meeting (Wednesday) afternoon. And I'm going to talk to them about, 'It doesn't matter what you've done in the past seasons,'” the defensive coordinator said. “They can say they were good on defense last year … but this is a new year. So the identity starts today. So that's going to be my challenge to them, is this defense is going to be different than the defense they had last year because it's different every year.”
Jake Spavital knows everyone’s giddy to get back on the field. He’s struggling to contain his own excitement. But he also knows they can’t get ahead of themselves. They have to get better, one day at a time.
Wednesday was only the first day.
“We're one of the more experienced teams in college football, but you're ranked last place (in the West Division in the Sun Belt (Coaches poll),” Spavital said. “That kind of shows what people think about us right now, is that we're an undisciplined football team. And that's something that we're changing here. That's the emphasis that we've got with our players.”
