Coach Jones Continues To Prepare For FIU Despite Birthday
Monday was head coach Joey Jones’ 50th birthday, but instead of a big birthday blow-out his mind was elsewhere. With Florida International due to visit Mobile on Saturday, he was busy studying film, overseeing practice and helping plan for the game.
But it wasn’t completely forgotten as reminders were there throughout the day. During practice, at the weekly press conference and even at the 1st & 10 club.
“We just had an hour and 10 minute practice (Monday afternoon), reviewing the special teams and installing the special teams gameplan for this week,” Jones said. “Then we had about a 40-minute segment with the offense and defense, what we wanted to install. It was really a light practice, more of a mental practice today.”
Special teams play was not at it’s normal level against ULM as Coach Jones also pointed out. “That shows you you’ve got to bring you’re a game every week,” Jones said. “I don’t know that we were satisfied with where we were, we just had a bad game on special teams. It shows you, I think that was a major factor in that game with field position and the blocked punt, they really whipped us on kickoff team and they stopped us deep in our territory except for once.”
“That makes a big difference on defense when they are starting their drives on the 30 or 35 as opposed to the 18 or 20.”
Senior linebacker Jake Johnson leads the Sun Belt Conference in tackles per game with 9.6. He has 77 total tackles in the teams eight games including 40 solo tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, three quarterback hurries, one sack and a fumble recovery.
Enrique Williams is close behind Johnson in third place with an average of 9.4 per game. He has 75 total tackles in eight games with 31 solo, 5 tackles for loss and a fumble recovery.
The Jags and FIU kickoff at 2:30pm at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. FIU is set to leave the conference after this season to join Conference-USA along with North Texas.