Saturday, October 7
Annapolis, Md.
2:30 PM CT
University of North Texas
at
Navy
Photo by: Zach Del Bello / [CO]
Mean Green Hit Road for AAC Opener at Navy
10/3/2023 12:40:00 PM | Football
DENTON – The UNT football team will look to build off its positive momentum coming off a road win and a bye week when it travels to Navy on Saturday for a 2:30 p.m., kickoff. The game can be seen on CBS Sports Network with the radio broadcast set for 97.1 The Freak/The Varsity Network.
Morris and selected players spoke to the media on Tuesday and discussed, among other things, starting a new era with the first AAC game, the different looks Navy presents on both sides of the ball and the way the offense has come on in recent weeks.
Underway in The American
The Mean Green (2-2) will play their first conference game as a member of The American on Saturday when they travel to Annapolis, Maryland, to take on Navy.
UNT is entering the game on a two-game win streak after dropping its first two games of the year and beginning Saturday, the games have some extra meaning.
"With where we're at as a team and program and us building this foundation for the future, there's still a lot of youth in different spots on this team," head coach Eric Morris said. "These games now mean something toward our goal of being a conference champion."
Morris said he hasn't had a chance yet to get a good gauge of where teams in the league stand entering conference play but said he'll soon start to get a better feel of how the conference stacks up this year once he starts seeing crossover film of conference games.
"I don't have a huge sample size yet," Morris said. "We've been in the moment of watching film of who we're playing that week so I haven't spent a ton of time on The American yet. Now is where you'll start to see crossover film and can judge your own conference. On paper, yeah, Memphis has pulled out gritty wins and Tulsa had a great win the other night. Tulane is Tulane and at the top right now. They're the ones everyone's chasing. Everyone is familiar with UTSA and what they've done in recent years, and Rice has been surprising and have come out with a nice win over Houston."
Linebacker Kevin Wood said the team is riding positive momentum heading into conference play after consecutive wins over LA Tech and ACU and said he's ready to get started in this new era for Mean Green football.
"It's a great opportunity for us and this university to show what we're doing in Denton, Texas, and hopefully we can go out there and come home with a win," Wood said.
Navy presents unique looks on offense, defense
When UNT takes the field on Saturday, it'll be against an opponent that likes to do things differently than many teams in the country.
In a day of high-flying passing offenses, Navy is fifth in the country with 227.5 yards per game, but it's how they do it that makes them so unique - with the antiquated, hard-to-prepare-for triple-option attack only run by a handful of schools in FBS.
"This offense makes you have to cover the whole, entire field and it makes you cover every person on the field including the quarterback," Morris said. "It's so much more different than what we face. We spent some time in the offseason studying what they do and the parts of the field they want to attack."
Wood said the key when playing a team like Navy is discipline and not falling for what Morris called Navy's "eye candy," with different shifts and formations to try to throw off defenders from sticking to their assignments.
"Mainly, just have to be disciplined in your assignment, and you have to tackle," Wood said. "You can't get eyes in the wrong place with this team. They're really good at what they do and we have to be disciplined in what we do."
Defensively, Navy is maybe the most aggressive team UNT will face this year and will consistently bring the house in blitzes, creating situations where they have more people rushing the quarterback than the offense has people to block.
"They want to pressure you," Morris said. "They've been able to get after some quarterbacks and get some shots on some quarterbacks. That's their brand and their style. They're gonna bring more than what we can account for in protection."
Junior quarterback Chandler Rogers said it's also important for UNT's offense to stay disciplined and play clean football because Navy's offense isn't the only unit on the team that doesn't make many mistakes.
"They're very, very aggressive," Rogers said. "They're not scared to send the house in cover-zero. The Academy schools are very disciplined, so we have to limit mistakes because those schools - they really harp on discipline and they don't make mistakes."
Offense has been hot, but has room to improve
In the last two games, which have both been UNT wins, the Mean Green have put up 85 points and eclipsed the 500-yard mark in total offense in each game.
That has coincided with the first two UNT starts for Rogers, who is nearing two dozen career starts but is in his first year at North Texas.
Rogers has completed almost 62% of his pass attempts for 845 yards and seven touchdowns with just one interception, which came in the season-opening loss to Cal when he entered the game in the second half. He's now gone 94 consecutive pass attempts without an interception and is also one of four players on the roster with more than 100 rushing yards with a pair of rushing touchdowns. Former quarterback Austin Aune had a similar streak hit 105 pass attempts from 2020-2021, and Mason Fine had a 300-pass attempt streak in 2018.
For the first time in program history, UNT has had a 100-yard rusher and a 100-yard receiver in consecutive games, yet Morris said as productive as the offense has been in recent weeks, he knows it can be better.
"It should've been more," Morris said. "There are still a lot of squandered opportunities. When we're good, we're good. I thought we squandered some stuff last week. We talked about mental toughness and being able to finish. We're not turning the ball over. There's a bunch of positives. We're pushing the ball down the field. Ayo's (Adeyi) been great. Oscar's (Adaway) been great. There's pieces to work with. We have to continue to build, but we're not quite there yet."
Rogers said the main focus this week is to finish off drives with touchdowns, not field goals.
"We have to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot and operate at a high level; we have to score TDs and not field goals," he said. "If we get a field goal, they could go down and get six and take 10 minutes off the clock doing it, so it's very important for us to get touchdowns."
Morris and selected players spoke to the media on Tuesday and discussed, among other things, starting a new era with the first AAC game, the different looks Navy presents on both sides of the ball and the way the offense has come on in recent weeks.
Underway in The American
The Mean Green (2-2) will play their first conference game as a member of The American on Saturday when they travel to Annapolis, Maryland, to take on Navy.
UNT is entering the game on a two-game win streak after dropping its first two games of the year and beginning Saturday, the games have some extra meaning.
"With where we're at as a team and program and us building this foundation for the future, there's still a lot of youth in different spots on this team," head coach Eric Morris said. "These games now mean something toward our goal of being a conference champion."
Morris said he hasn't had a chance yet to get a good gauge of where teams in the league stand entering conference play but said he'll soon start to get a better feel of how the conference stacks up this year once he starts seeing crossover film of conference games.
"I don't have a huge sample size yet," Morris said. "We've been in the moment of watching film of who we're playing that week so I haven't spent a ton of time on The American yet. Now is where you'll start to see crossover film and can judge your own conference. On paper, yeah, Memphis has pulled out gritty wins and Tulsa had a great win the other night. Tulane is Tulane and at the top right now. They're the ones everyone's chasing. Everyone is familiar with UTSA and what they've done in recent years, and Rice has been surprising and have come out with a nice win over Houston."
Linebacker Kevin Wood said the team is riding positive momentum heading into conference play after consecutive wins over LA Tech and ACU and said he's ready to get started in this new era for Mean Green football.
"It's a great opportunity for us and this university to show what we're doing in Denton, Texas, and hopefully we can go out there and come home with a win," Wood said.
Navy presents unique looks on offense, defense
When UNT takes the field on Saturday, it'll be against an opponent that likes to do things differently than many teams in the country.
In a day of high-flying passing offenses, Navy is fifth in the country with 227.5 yards per game, but it's how they do it that makes them so unique - with the antiquated, hard-to-prepare-for triple-option attack only run by a handful of schools in FBS.
"This offense makes you have to cover the whole, entire field and it makes you cover every person on the field including the quarterback," Morris said. "It's so much more different than what we face. We spent some time in the offseason studying what they do and the parts of the field they want to attack."
Wood said the key when playing a team like Navy is discipline and not falling for what Morris called Navy's "eye candy," with different shifts and formations to try to throw off defenders from sticking to their assignments.
"Mainly, just have to be disciplined in your assignment, and you have to tackle," Wood said. "You can't get eyes in the wrong place with this team. They're really good at what they do and we have to be disciplined in what we do."
Defensively, Navy is maybe the most aggressive team UNT will face this year and will consistently bring the house in blitzes, creating situations where they have more people rushing the quarterback than the offense has people to block.
"They want to pressure you," Morris said. "They've been able to get after some quarterbacks and get some shots on some quarterbacks. That's their brand and their style. They're gonna bring more than what we can account for in protection."
Junior quarterback Chandler Rogers said it's also important for UNT's offense to stay disciplined and play clean football because Navy's offense isn't the only unit on the team that doesn't make many mistakes.
"They're very, very aggressive," Rogers said. "They're not scared to send the house in cover-zero. The Academy schools are very disciplined, so we have to limit mistakes because those schools - they really harp on discipline and they don't make mistakes."
Offense has been hot, but has room to improve
In the last two games, which have both been UNT wins, the Mean Green have put up 85 points and eclipsed the 500-yard mark in total offense in each game.
That has coincided with the first two UNT starts for Rogers, who is nearing two dozen career starts but is in his first year at North Texas.
Rogers has completed almost 62% of his pass attempts for 845 yards and seven touchdowns with just one interception, which came in the season-opening loss to Cal when he entered the game in the second half. He's now gone 94 consecutive pass attempts without an interception and is also one of four players on the roster with more than 100 rushing yards with a pair of rushing touchdowns. Former quarterback Austin Aune had a similar streak hit 105 pass attempts from 2020-2021, and Mason Fine had a 300-pass attempt streak in 2018.
For the first time in program history, UNT has had a 100-yard rusher and a 100-yard receiver in consecutive games, yet Morris said as productive as the offense has been in recent weeks, he knows it can be better.
"It should've been more," Morris said. "There are still a lot of squandered opportunities. When we're good, we're good. I thought we squandered some stuff last week. We talked about mental toughness and being able to finish. We're not turning the ball over. There's a bunch of positives. We're pushing the ball down the field. Ayo's (Adeyi) been great. Oscar's (Adaway) been great. There's pieces to work with. We have to continue to build, but we're not quite there yet."
Rogers said the main focus this week is to finish off drives with touchdowns, not field goals.
"We have to make sure we don't shoot ourselves in the foot and operate at a high level; we have to score TDs and not field goals," he said. "If we get a field goal, they could go down and get six and take 10 minutes off the clock doing it, so it's very important for us to get touchdowns."
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