Neal Brown Press Conference - Akron Game - Troy University Athletics

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Good afternoon, thank y'all for being here.

Before we start, from our football staff and our athletics department, I just want to send our thoughts and prayers to Ben Abercrombie. He is a Harvard player, former Hoover Buc, that had a serious neck injury over the weekend against Rhode Island.

We're 1-0 in the Sun Belt. That was our goal all week. I thought we had a good week of preparation last week. Our guys prepared with purpose and understood the task at hand. We went on a tough road trip. It's really difficult to get from Troy, Alabama, to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I don't think the average fan understands what goes into making that type of trip. We've made two cross-country trips in two weeks; all the way to Boise, Idaho, and then to New Mexico. I'm really proud of our guys for handling that trip and coming out with the win.

New Mexico State is a much-improved team. A lot of credit goes to coach [Doug] Martin and his staff. I thought it was an extremely physical game and it was competitive all the way to the end.

On the NMSU game…
On special teams, the negatives were that we missed an extra point and a field goal. That can't happen. It caused us to go for some fourth downs later in the second quarter that we probably would've kicked under normal conditions. We also have to do a better job blocking in the return game. We have a really good returner in Marcus Jones in the punt return and kickoff return games. We just need to do a better job blocking for him.

Positives came on the coverage units, which were real question marks coming out of that Boise game. For the second game in a row, we did a nice job, and they had Larry Rose back returning punts, so it was a great challenge for us. Bratcher [Underwood] did a great job on kickoffs, and [Tyler] Sumpter continues to punt well. He's been consistent through our three games with the help of the snappers Cameron Kaye and Preston Langham, who are both doing a great job snapping for us.

New Mexico State is one of the top, if not the top, offenses in our league. We held them under their season average in points and yards. Negatively, we had zero takeaways. That's something that we pride ourselves on and we probably work on more than your average college football team. That's the second week in a row. They were 4-of-8 on third downs of 7+ yards. We have to do a better job of getting off the field. And we didn't do a good job at all of generating pressure. Some of that has to do with our coverage – we were in coverage a lot more than usual. But we had zero sacks in the game. I think we had seven opportunities where we could get the quarterback down and we didn't get him down at all.

The positives were that we stopped the run and took them out of the run game. I think they only had 17 rushing attempts for right at three yards per carry. We limited their big plays and kept them in front of us. Really the only huge pass play they had was on a tipped ball that [Andre] Flakes had a chance to intercept. It's the best we've covered in three years as far as the quality of the passing team.

Offensively, the negatives are obvious. I think we had nine offensive penalties, which is absolutely ridiculous. We were 1-of-3 on fourth down, which is not where we need to be. Probably the most frustrating thing offensively is when we went into the half 13-3 and we haven't punted the whole half. We didn't punt until the third quarter and only had 13 points at the half. We had opportunities in that second quarter to make it a 20-3 or 27-3 ball game going into halftime. I was disappointed we didn't take advantage of our opportunities there and really shot ourselves in the foot with penalties.

Positives were that we had zero turnovers. We were really efficient on third downs. We started both halves fast, scoring touchdowns on both the opening drives of each half. The biggest positive thing was finishing that game. We ran six-plus minutes off the clock to take a knee to win that game.

On returning home…
This week, our team is really excited about not getting on a plane. We're excited about staying home and getting back in front of our home crowd. We're expecting another huge crowd here. We've got really two groups of people that we're celebrating this week.

First, it's going to be our Military Appreciation Game. It's a game that our fans and our players look forward to. We've got a lot of guys who have family members that serve in the military. We're excited about hosting our service people.

The other thing is the College Football Playoff initiative is the Extra Yard for Teachers. We did this last year, and I come from a family of educators, so this is something that is really close to my heart. We're going to do some promotions and recognitions in-game to honor the service that our teachers do.

On Akron…
Akron is a quality football team. They've played a really difficult schedule after playing Penn State, a top 5 team, and then last week played a much-improved Iowa State team. They really played them close, but turned the ball over in the second half and let the game get away from them.

Terry Bowden has done a great job there. I think he's one of the winningest coaches Akron has ever had. I'm sure it'll be a special game for him. They held the Bowden Family Camp here for several years and a lot of his family can get back here, too. They have a lot of players from the Southeast that I'm sure are looking forward to coming back and playing down here.

Offensively, they're really balanced. They have a quarterback named [Thomas] Woodson who is really accurate. They've been throwing the ball a good bit this year. Their running back, [Warren] Ball, is an Ohio State transfer. He's very similar to Jordan [Chunn]; he's a big, physical kid that runs downhill.

Defensively, they do a nice job. They attack you and hit you from a number of angles. Their corner, [Kyron] Brown, is probably the best cover guy that we've played all season. Linebacker Ulysses Gilbert is really active and up front [Jamal] Davis does a really nice job of using his hands and plays good pad level.

On Deondre Douglas' third down catch…
We have high expectations for Deondre. He's a guy that has the ability to play on Sundays. I didn't think he played particularly well weeks one or two. We coached him a little harder this week and he responded. We gave some opportunities early in the game, which proved fruitful as we went on.

That was a huge third down reception on that last drive. That kept our drive alive. It was a great throw by Brandon [Silvers] and Deondre went up between two defenders and brought it down with his foot inbounds. He needs to be a go-to guy for us, without question. I hope he gains confidence out of that game to build on.

On Silvers' performance…
That's what we expect from him. He had a couple of nice runs, as well. I don't know if we'll see a 30-yard run every game. I thought he made good decisions pre-snap. I thought he managed the game well. I think the week one Brandon Silvers that you saw at Boise, isn't who he is. I think he put a lot of pressure on himself for whatever reason and didn't perform very well. I think he's gone back to the drawing board and has been more fundamentally sound. As long as he continues to do that, I think he'll continue to play at a high level.

Troy University Athletics

Neal Brown Press Conference - Akron Game

Players Mentioned

Deondre Douglas

Marcus Jones

Cameron Kaye

Preston Langham

Brandon Silvers

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