The Return of the King(s)

This past weekend was powerful for those who bleed blue. After 28 days of gruesome, money-game Power road opponents, Louisiana Tech’s football team came back home for their second game of the year in Joe Aillet Stadium. They returned to defend the home turf against the Army Black Knights who were 2-1 thus far and had similar questions regarding their team’s competitiveness in totality. The Joe had not hosted fans for so long that it felt like the resumption of a tradition long forgotten. As the Band of Pride marched down the Bulldog Village and behind them came the valiant football players, I knew that something special was in the air. After many, many years of West Point having their way with Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs triumphed in their anticipated return to Ruston.



Many Explosives

The Army-Tech game was defined by explosive, surprising, and crazy longshot plays that were allowed by both persistence and strategy. For starters, Trey Kukuk continued to fill in the role of QB for Blake Baker for the second straight game, completing 16/22 passes for 185 yards and added another 40 yards on the ground with a touchdown off a scramble. Kukuk is maintaining his impressive composure both in and out of the pocket, making extra time to throw but refusing to force the ball into unwise windows. Arguably his most impressive sequence of the game came at the end of the first half in which Kukuk led a drive down the field from his own six-yard line with three straight pass completions of 16, 19, and 27 yards respectively. While the drive did not result in any points due to a missed field goal, Kukuk displayed immense composure and maturity in the pocket while still not straying away from his athletic roots and letting his legs carry him to success.

The biggest story of this offense from Saturday though has to be Dylone Brooks. In his first start as lead back, Freshman Dylone Brooks broke free for two home-run plays that put him on the map as an elite contributor to this team. The first was a 72 yard blast through the Army front seven that saw him escape multiple tackles to find the second and third level right away for a speedy housecall TD. The next, a trick play set up by repetitive bubble screens outside that focused Army’s defensive attention to the right hashes where a lateral pass set up Marcus Calwise Jr. to toss a floating bomb across the field to a wide open Brooks for a 74-yard score. Dylone continued to take carries in this game, racking up 119 yards on seven total rushes and impressed whenever asked to move the ball forward. An impressive breakout for the young Ruston High prodigy. Sergio Snider would have a single carry for a bursting run for a 24-yard touchdown and Andrew Burnette received 10 carries for 54 yards. Their efforts and Kukuk’s totaled 244 yards rushing on the ground. 

The receivers of Louisiana Tech also played essential roles in this weekend’s successes, even if stat categories seem low at first glance. Every possession is extremely important when facing the service academies, especially if you open the game with the ball. On Tech’s opening drive, Talyn Shettron caught a desperate heave from Kukuk under pressure for 20 yards only to be followed by two catches from Jalen Mickens in which #11 fought hard to yards after contact, propelling the drive forward. Like I mentioned before, Kukuk targeted Eli Finley twice before the end of the first half before Talyn Shettron caught his second 20+ yard pass to set the dogs into field position. Jalen Mickens continued to touch the football, mainly on outside screens with outstanding tight-end blocks and athleticism that maneuvered the ball between DB’s for forward progress. Not a flashy day for the pass-catchers, but an extremely effective one.

Holding the Front Line… Enough

The common strength of the bulldogs pulled through many times in this game, even with the gimmicky trickery of Jeff Monken’s triple option posing threats until the very end. Army rarely succeeded in between the tackles which further perpetuates this strength of Tech’s that has persisted in most every game they have played so far. Early in the game, the option pitches did trip up DB’s and LB’s at times but Luke Olson did an excellent job of keying his guys into reading these attacks and the successful run-stopping on the outside came more often in the second half. Things are exceedingly impressive in this aspect when you take into account that leading tackler Alonzo Jackson Jr. was ejected in the first half of this game for a targeting call (after recording the only Tech sack to that point). Kolbe Fields and Jaden Mayfield stepped up to fill the hole left by Jackon’s ejection, each recording 13 tackles and 2 total TFL’s between the two of them.

We need to talk about Louisiana Tech’s secondary for a moment, though. Everyone knows Army as a run-first option attacking team, and while they did beat Tech on the ground a couple times in this game, Cale Hellums was forced to pass late to try and execute a fourth quarter comeback. As a result, Hellums had a season-high 24 pass attempts and 154 yards of passing. Army’s final drives included multiple fourth down conversions on long passes as the Black Knights succeeded more often than they should have against such a historically dominant DB group. This comes after giving up 21/24 passes for 253 yards from Baylor’s backup Nate Bennett and creates room for questioning the effectiveness of this group so far. Jordan McCrae does continue to shine bright through it all though with his second interception of the year and the third highest tackles of the game. I’m not giving up on Luke Olson’s pass coverage abilities, but I am saying there is some pressure to perform moving forward in the Sun Belt with noticeably more talented QB’s.

Conclusions

As many have said in evaluating the successes of the game this past weekend, Louisiana Tech’s Nathan Young did an outstanding job of setting up his game plan and executing what he had cooked up to exploit Army’s defensive weaknesses and succeed on drives. The Bulldogs totaled 504 yards of offense against an Army team that had been allowing less than that in every game succeeding their against Tech. The kicking still struggles and Sonny Cumbie has stated again that he plans on making even more changes to special teams to attempt to fix the persistent problem. I remain suspicious. Ultimately, this game was a statement about the culture of Tech’s current staff and their shift away from the previous trend of failing in big moments that required perseverance to finish out games. The Bulldogs fought till the very end with West Point and I commend their ability to pull ahead of such a historically difficult opponent to beat. Joe Aillet was genuinely electric in cheering on our team and we finally made it to Sun Belt play. This weekend is going to be legendary. GO DAWGS!