UT Martin will look for offense vs. Govs

By RANDY CAVIN
Press Sports
UT Martin put up a good defensive effort against Southeastern Louisiana last Thursday night, but Skyhawks’ head coach Jason Simpson was not pleased with the offensive effort.
At Monday’s press conference, he said there is a lot of work that needs to be done with the offense before conference play begins Saturday at Austin Peay.
UTM is 2-1 after beating Southeastern Louisiana 23-6 and Simpson is happy to get the win. But he wants his offense to put up more points.
The Skyhawk dominated the time of possession against the Lions by a 37:23 to 22:37 margin, but Simpson is not overly concerned about beating opponents on the clock. He just wants his team to score quickly and in bunches.
“Anytime you can control the ball that long is great,” Simpson said. “I could live with scoring 40 points in 28 minutes. I don’t think the game plan was to keep the ball away from them, but we need to start scoring more points.”
In the first two games of the season, the Skyhawks used more of a balanced offensive attack. In the game against the Lions, the offense leaned heavily on the running game with 58 plays on the ground for 168 yards.
With the way the offense is now, opponents will not know what the Skyhawks will do. Simpson could have a balanced attack like in the first two games, a run-heavy scheme or unleash quarterback Derek Carr and his talented corps of receivers. Simpson thinks that gives his team a big advantage because it makes it harder for opposing teams to develop a game plan to stop them.
“Offense goes one or two ways — you either dominate the line of scrimmage with your tight end or your fullback and you get nine people in the box and throw over the top of people to make plays,” Simpson said. “Or you throw first, get those six-man boxes and you rip off your big runs from there. We are kind of in between right now. The bright side of that is that when you play us, you do not which direction we are going.”
Simpson wants his team to be able to run the ball when the opposing team knows he is going to run and throw it whenever he wants to.
It is the defense that has been a pleasant surprise for the Skyhawks this season. Not known for being a defensive team over the last few seasons, this Skyhawk unit has already forced six turnovers and kept the Lions from scoring until there were only 36 seconds remaining in the game.
Simpson wants the defense to turn some turnovers into points.
“I am ready for the defense to score,” Simpson said. “They are getting some turnovers. It is time to scoop and score. It is time for interceptions to get run back for touchdowns. So that is the next step.”
The defense may get its chance against Austin Peay on Saturday. The Governors have been intercepted five times in the first three games and have fumbled the ball four times, but only lost one.
Simpson is not taking AP lightly, even though the Govs are 0-3 for the season and 0-1 in the conference.
Published in The WCP 9.20.12

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