The Unofficial Furman Football Page

My dad practiced Shotokan karate in Japan while he was in the service. As a kid, I loved to watch Kung Fu with my dad. Watching the game yesterday, coming off veterans day, I thought a lot about my dad.

My favorite part of the pre-game show is the coordinator interviews. Listening to Justin Roper's interview, it came to me. JR is a Master Po to Furman's quarterbacks. Roper talks a lot about trust between him and the players and patience.

As fans, we have little, if any, patience for the teams we pull for. Thankfully there are coaches out there like JR. Furman's offense went through a period of feeling clunky and taking the foot off the gas pedal. Doing enough to keep winning and showing as little as possible to the next opponent. I don't think the reality of this was to hide stuff from future opponents. It was more about easing Huff into the offense as he gets healthier.

Facing the top defenses in the SoCon, JR's Master Po coaching style performed successfully on the field.

Furman has 848 yards of offense against the SoCon's best defenses in the last two games. Tyler Huff has 728 all-purpose yards in the last two games. Wow!

I'll tell you what I saw the past few weeks.

Furman's offensive coaches out-schemed their opponents. Our game plan against Mercer looked different than the game plan against UTC. Our offense looks slightly different every week.

You can see each week the players getting more of a command of what they are being asked to do. Huff looks in complete control out there now.

Honestly, one thing I saw yesterday was the ability to throw against a defense bent on stopping the run. Over the past years, if a team could slow down our run game with enough physicality and bodies up front we would struggle to move the ball. This group, though, has shown that if you over-commit to stopping the run, we're going to throw it at you successfully.

There's also a lot of discipline from the coaching staff. We've been running plays against both Mercer and UTC that weren't on film. We didn't throw the ball deep much to start the season, and now you are seeing us more willing to air it out. These are plays that have been in the playbook, but we have kept that powder dry knowing at some point we'll play some defenses where we need a wrinkle or two.