Theo Agnew believes Georgia State is close, very close, to picking up its first win this season.
If that happens, and the Panthers (0-7, 0-2 Sun Belt) will try again at Louisiana-Monroe (3-4, 1-1) on Saturday, it may be because the defense cleaned up the little mistakes that have mushroomed into big plays the past few games.
Little mistakes — particularly following through on assignments in plays — have prevented the Panthers from winning the past two games and are part of the reason the team is 0-7 instead of possibly 4-3. In those four winnable games, the Panthers have been outscored 51-24 in the final quarter.
“It’s something that is within our grasp, opposed to last year when things were out of reach,” Agnew said. “We have come such a long way, and now it’s right on the tips of our fingers.”
If those fingertips were longer the Panthers might have overcome their sporadic lack of discipline and make tackles that would have turned last week’s game against Texas State from a 24-17 loss into a victory.
Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said four of Troy’s long runs, including a 35-yard run in the fourth quarter that set up the winning touchdown, should have been stopped for short gains.
Miles said Minter knew what Texas State was going to call and therefore called the perfect run blitz. But a player on defense didn’t follow his assignment, which created a hole and sprang the big run. Minter said five such mistakes led to 167 of Texas State’s 296 rushing yards.
So while the stats don’t look good, the fact the mistakes are fixable — and Miles said they are being fixed daily in practice — is a good sign and one of the reasons why the players are still confident.
“You’re giving yourself a chance,” Miles said. “… You can play a great game and get beat in the end. That’s just the way it goes. But our kids, they’re competing so hard, and they’re playing at a higher level that they’re giving themselves a chance. Yeah, that’s a great thing. It shows the progress.”
It’s a progress that has been building since the loss to Chattanooga in the second game. The Panthers were outplayed, outmuscled … out-everythinged in that 42-14 humbling defeat.
Perhaps, after playing well against Samford in the opener, Georgia State’s players thought they would roll over the Mocs. Instead, they were steamrolled.
Aside from the losses to BCS teams Alabama and West Virginia, the Chattanooga game was the only one in which the Panthers didn’t have a chance to at least tie in the fourth quarter. It reminded many of the efforts of last season’s team, which won one game and had an average margin of defeat of more than 20 points.
But Agnew said the Chattanooga game is when the team came together in its belief of Miles and his teachings that everything from the food they eat to the way they practice counts toward earning wins.
“We realized that he was being true to us individually and as a team, and once you begin to realize that you realize it’s for our better development,” he said.
Now, they just need to clean up those mistakes, which may become more difficult if quarterback Kolton Browning returns to the Warhawks’ offense. Browning, the conference’s preseason player of the year, was cleared to play by a team doctor this week. He had missed the previous four weeks after suffering a torn quadriceps muscle against Tulane.
“We do believe we are going to win games,” linebacker Robert Ferguson said. “It’s just about us executing through all four quarters.”
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