After going through a figurative “Murderers’ Row” of the Southern Conference, the Elon University football team gets a Saturday to rest its tired legs, make some key personnel decisions and get ready for a crucial second half of the season.
The Phoenix went 0-3 to start the Southern Conference, dropping games to No. 7 Georgia Southern University, No. 5 Wofford College and No. 13 Appalachian State University in consecutive weeks. Along the way, bodies were worn down and injured and psyches shaken. What his team has been through led head coach Jason Swepson to proclaim after the loss, “Thank God we’re not playing this week.”
But he’s still confident.
“I’ll still say, even though we’re 0-3 in conference, 2-4 (overall), we’re still a good football team,” he said. “I think they’re giving a great effort.”
But Swepson also intimates that there are some who are not giving all they’ve got.
“We’ve just got to find out who’s with us, who didn’t quit,” he said. “I know a lot of heads are down right now. We’re going to see who’s going to try to take a week off and we’re going to see who’s going to try to work harder and get better. So that’s going to be our goal as coaches.”
The bye week comes a lot earlier than last year’s week off, which was with two weeks left in the season. And arguably at the right time. The Phoenix is dealing with a number of injuries and missing some key players, including junior offensive lineman Gavin Billings and several defensive players.
Swepson said the “most important thing” over the bye week was “getting this team healthy.” Along with that, the Phoenix is looking to develop some depth, something that has been lacking in most positions.
“I don’t know if all three coordinators are ready to put some young guys in critical situations,” Swepson said. “We’ve got some young guys that had an opportunity (against Appalachian State) and didn’t come through for us. It is what it is. We’re still young, we’ve still got a chance to coach them up this week and I think they’ll get better.”
Most notably, the depth is apparent on the defensive side of the ball. Swepson said that, in the second half of the Phoenix’s 35-23 loss to the Mountaineers Oct. 6, Elon made “maybe two or three” substitutions in the second half.
“To play this kind of team and that kind of speed, you’ve got to have some kind of depth, and right now, we don’t have that kind of depth,” he said.
The Elon defense looked tired in the second half against Appalachian State, which led to big offensive plays for the Mountaineers.
“We’re a little lacking in depth right now,” said Elon sophomore linebacker Jonathan Spain in post-game. “Our legs might get a little heavy in the fourth quarter as it is, especially with this team. It felt like they had a lot more depth, especially at the speed positions. They’re a fast team, they’re a good team, we just made too many mistakes.”
And it is those mistakes that cost the Phoenix the game.
Swepson spoke specifically to potentially taking redshirts off players who were slated to receive them because of injuries. He said the bye week would be used to see who had the right mindset.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “When you deal with young kids, their mind is going to wander and hopefully it wanders in the right direction and they make good decisions this weekend and next weekend, and then when we get ready for game day, we’ll know who our team is.”
One position that has benefitted from the depth it has is the wide receiver slot. The 1,046 receiving yards by seniors Aaron Mellette and Jeremy Peterson and junior Rasaun Rorie, the starters at wideout, accounts for 46.9 percent of the Elon offense. The 443 yards from the rest of the wide receivers (sophomores Kierre Brown and Danny Sellers, redshirt freshmen Ricky Brown and Andre Davis and Blake Rice) account for 19.9 percent of the Phoenix’s offensive production.
Mellette, who leads the team with 670 receiving yards and ten touchdowns, draws a lot of double-coverage and special attention for defenses. So seeing those numbers, he said, makes it easier for him.
“I love it when they (produce),” he said. “Every time they get a catch, the pressure just drops for me. It gets me hype. Just between the receivers, we’ve got a little competition going in anyway, trying to figure out at the end of the day who’s going to have the most catches, the most touchdowns, stuff like that.”
Regardless of the success in that area, Elon lands at the halfway point with a 2-4 record, winless in the conference and in a bind. In all likelihood, the Phoenix needs to run the table to have any shot of making the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
“We’ll take it one at a time, but if we can somehow run the table, send these seniors out on a great note, a lot of good things will happen to us,” Swepson said. “Even if we get four out of the five, still something to be proud of. Our goal is to have a winning season and there’s still an outside shot of us getting to the playoffs if we run the table.”