By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – As Tennessee Tech continued its spring football work on Saturday at Tucker Stadium, class was in session as the Golden Eagles went through situational football with officials overseeing the action.
"It was really important for us to get the officials here and put the uniforms on so it felt more like game situations," head coach Bobby Wilder said. "I'm really pleased with their effort and attitude today. We did not have a good practice on Thursday and it was really good to see them bounce back and perform at a much higher level."
The situations started with the offense deep in its own territory – which led to a safety early on – but the offense did move the ball well, even as the defense was able to come up with big plays to stop scoring drives.
"They did and that's why I really like to do situational football," Wilder said. "The defense got two interception returns for touchdowns in the last drive of the scenarios. The quarterbacks were forced in those scenarios to make some difficult decisions. The ball can be put into danger at times. I really like what the defense did in those scenarios because we returned two for touchdowns.
"We also had some excellent plays by the offense where not only did they score, but they got the two-point conversions to force overtime. It was some excellent learning scenarios for the guys today."
As the session ended Saturday, the referees were the instructors as they went over what the calls, their repercussions and how to avoid those infractions.
"That's something I've always liked to do," Wilder said. "There's new rules that have been implemented this year. It's really important for the players to hear it, but I also asked the officials before the scrimmage to take some notes and talk to them about it after. It's good for them to learn from it.
"We had a scenario where there was an altercation after the offense scored to tie it and send it to overtime – it was an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that was added to the start of overtime. You want those things to happen now so the players learn from it so they don't happen in a game scenario."
With the team's annual spring game coming up in a week, there's still work to do as the Golden Eagles expand their repertoire.
"It's continuing to install our packages in all three phases," Wilder said. "We just installed red zone offense and red zone defense. Today was really our first day practicing those scenarios, so we'll keep doing that. We'll keep installing the fundamentals of late-half, late-game scenarios. People refer to them as the two-minute drill.
"Today was the first time we did that and those are critical when you're trying to score or stop somebody at the half, score or prevent a score to win a game. We'll keep installing those through all 15 of the practices."
In those red zone efforts, Dylan Laible got a quick strike score to receiver D.J. Linkins, then Jordyn Potts got scoring passes to Luke Shields and Isaac Knowles.
Tech got its next touchdown score two drives later as Laible linked up with Linkins again for a 27-yard completion. The Golden Eagles got the two-point play as Quavel Thornton worked his way to the right and in.
Back on the red zone lessons, Potts completed three straight scoring passes to Ashton Maples, Reece Perkins and Hunter Barnhart.
As the Golden Eagles went back to their next drive, Potts found Linkins under coverage for a three-yard touchdown, then completed the two-point pass to J.D. Dixon.
As the Tech team started working on the late-game drills, Kanstin Brooks and Tim Coutras stalled the offense, returning interceptions for long touchdown scores – Brooks' for approximately 65 yards, Coutras for almost 55.
Tech's final score of the day came as Laible completed a 22-yard touchdown pass to Maples.
The Golden Eagles return to practice this week with afternoon sessions on Tuesday and Thursday with the spring game on Saturday. The sessions are open to the public.
Photo | Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
