Northeastern football coach Brendan Brown (above) wasn't exactly thrilled with his team when we spoke on the phone Saturday afternoon. He mentioned mental mistakes on the field, a lack of leadership and struggles tackling among other things.
Brown said there is still work to be done this week, but remains supremely confident in his squad's ability to earn the victory in its historic first varsity football game in history at home on Friday night against East Juniata.
"They're expecting to come in and beat us, there's no doubt about it," Brown said. "They have a tailback that can scoot and they like to throw the ball to the tight end. That being said, the fact that East Juniata isn't down here for me to give them bulletin board material, I do expect to win that football game. I absolutely expect to go out and win that football game."
More from the interview, condensed for clarity and space, after the jump.
Q: What have been some of the highlights from training camp after two weeks?
A: We're heading into the first week of the season as healthy as we've been in a month, so that's a good thing. To be honest with you, right now at this second, we have a lot of things to work on. Last week we were ecstatic at how we competed with Red Land and Moon. We went toe-to-toe with those guys and we opened some eyes. This week, we went up against two teams that have completely contrasting styles (Millersburg and Susquenita)... and we struggled today when i thought we would be more enthusiastic.
As a coaching staff, we're frustrated. We thought we would go into today shot out of a cannon after how good we played last week and it didn't really happen. But you don't scout your scrimmage opponent and you don't have a chance to go over defending the no-huddle and some of the other things. So, you know, we're a little disappointed with some of the individual efforts out there today, but at the same time I'm happy that these guys got it handed to them today. If they're having this kind of success, they're going to walk around beating their chests thinking they're untouchable and that couldn't be further from the truth...
This team is still searching for an identity. We don't have any guys that are just leaders, that are getting the rest of the team pumped up. And that's the one thing I'm not used to. I'm kind of having to go on the internet, read books, make phone calls, find out how to bring that out of people, because I'm not used to having to bring that out of somebody. Usually it just happens. Leadership usually emerges, especially going into your first year of the varsity football program, you expect guys to be excited and be ready to run through a wall and kill somebody. For some reason, these guys have a very mellow demeanor. I don't understand it. It could just be the climate of the school. It could be because we're a volleyball/baseball/soccer school and the mentality isn't: "I'm going to talk up and punch you in the mouth," which is what you want it to be if you're a playoff football team.
Q: So have you still not decided on captains for the team?
A: You know what? I thought I had four of them last night. But right now, we have none. Right now we don't have any captains. Hopefully those will emerge this week in practice.
Q: Do you expect to name some before the start of the season?
A: Yes, and I know who I want them to be, but I'm not going to do it unless they show me they deserve it. Right now I'm in a position where I'm not afraid to go out there without any captains Friday night. I'll go out for the coin toss and that's it. I don't know if they'll let me do that, but I'm going to send messages one way or another that the leadership has to come from them. It can't all come from us.
Q: You mentioned that part of the issues have been lack of intensity and leadership, but are there any particular areas on the field where you feel these guys need to improve, especially before the season opener?
A: We're very very very concerned defensively. We're not tackling well and we're not lining up right. We even gave written tests in the classroom the other day and the kids did not perform well on that. That was an indicator that we have reason to be concerned right now. We spend a lot of time in the classroom and they are not taking it as seriously right now as playoff football teams need to take it.
Offensively, I don't want to say we're very pleased, because today we had the ball inside the five once and didn't score when last week when we got it inside the 10, our kids smelled blood and put it in. But this week, we still moved the ball. We got stopped in the red zone once and turned the ball over once, but we are moving the football offensively and we're happy about that. We think we'll be able to move the football against almost any team on our schedule this year. But defensively, there's a lot of question marks that we don't have much time to get answers to.
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