East Carolina head football coach Scottie Montgomery said Monday at his weekly news conference that November football is different.
At 2-6 on the season, Pirate fans hope it’s a complete 180-degree turnaround.
Montgomery explained it this way.
“We are getting ready for November football and there is a different element of November that is different than September and October,” he said. “November football you have got to stop the run, you’ve got to be able to run the football, and then the play action pass you’ve got to go out and hit it.”
Basically, the coach is right, especially in the sense that November football tends to be more meaningful even if the various aspects of the game are not particularly different.
Sure, ECU is still technically bowl eligible, but it will take a four-game winning streak that few see coming for the Pirates to advance to the postseason.
Coach Mo was fired up at Monday’s weekly news conference as his Pirates get set for the final third of their season.
“I am excited to get started back,” said Montgomery. “We had a great practice last night with the team – a lot of people, a lot of energy. We are happy because our injury report doesn’t look like it did a couple of weeks ago.”
The Pirates are expected to have several players back and several others feeling better. That latter list included quarterback Thomas Sirk. Sirk left the Brigham Young game with an injury, but will return for Houston.
Gardner Minshew rallied the Pirates against BYU and perhaps moved up a notch or two on the confidence latter for the coach.
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Montgomery was asked about a possible quarterback controversy.
“Controversy? No,” said Montgomery. “Does it cross my mind to give him a chance in a spot to play the game? Of course it does. Whenever you see a guy go out and play as well as he does there’s room for guys like that to play, there is no question. Like I have said from the beginning, I’ve got a lot of faith in Gardner, but besides that, I’m not going to say much more about it.”
It’s interesting that Montgomery ended that comment on his quarterbacks by stating that he wasn’t going to say much more about it. Perhaps that statement says volumes about how long of leash Sirk will have this weekend in Houston.
As for this week’s opponent, Houston saved its season with the big upset win at South Florida last Saturday. Montgomery and the Pirates don’t expect a lot of changes from the Cougars after their upset win.
“Changing for us is probably no different than them,” Montgomery explained. “We know that they are going to grow their offense a little bit over the week now that they have him in for a whole week. We are not going to change too much of what we do, it’s based around personnel not versus them winning the last game.”
ECU heads to Houston as a 24-point underdog.
Here’s hoping Coach Mo is right and that November football is different.
BB
The season is in the crapper and nothing can change that. I don’t understand why Montgomery is playing a quarterback who will not be back next year. Carolina has a worse record, but they are playing freshmen and sophomores. Next year they are going be a very experienced and young football team. Don’t understand the logic.
It looks like we are finding some of our better players now and they happen to be underclassmen. I look forward to seeing what Reid Herring can do.