Liberty became bowl eligible with a win over Middle Tennessee, 37-17, on Saturday afternoon. The Flames improve to 6-2 on the season and 4-2 in conference play. Following the game, head coach Jamey Chadwell met with the media. Here is the full transcript and video from his press conference (transcript to follow):
“It’s good to win again. The locker room when you when you lose, it’s not a fun locker room. It was good to come back in that locker room and have a victory. Very pleased with our effort in all three phases. I thought we played clean, as far as from a penalty standpoint, although we had some turnovers early, but we didn’t let it affect us. I was pleased that we played together for four quarters. Also a check point to get bowl eligible, but it’s hard to win. You don’t want to be the team or the coach that breaks the six year streak, so that was good to get that and what I’m encouraged by is we played really well. We can do things better, and I’m hoping this team stays hungry.”
Season high rushing the ball, what did you see from a ground game?
“Yeah, we needed to get back to our identity. We lost that a little bit, and I thought it was good to go to it. The way they were playing is they were not going to give up any big plays. They wanted to see, hey, will you be patient enough? Our guys did a great job. Then when we did throw, we were able to hit some quick outs, get some balls across the middle, make some explosive plays there. It was one of those things we wanted to come in and control the line of scrimmage. We put a lot of emphasis on that. We can really challenge our offensive line and really everybody, Hey, this is what we’re going to do. We anticipated they were going to play that way. I really liked how our guys executed.”
How disruptive was your defense today?
“I was really pleased with how they played. I thought they played hard. We didn’t beat ourselves with some stupid things. We made them earn everything. A couple huge stops, that one right out of half time, when they get down there, and we stop them a half a yard. That’s a huge because we’re up, what is it? 27-7. They score there, 27-14 and they’re in the game. That was a big deal. We were able to drive and score some points. I thought they played really well. And I know defensively, they feel like there’s some things they left out there too. You want to come out with a victory and be able to be excited about it, but also know there’s room to improve.”
Coming off the two losses, how excited are you with how the team responded?
“We’ve got a lot of pride. We expect to win every game and when we didn’t, there’s a lot of frustration. But you know, you got to get a group of guys to continue to stay the course, continue to be persistent, and continue even when it’s been challenging to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought our guys, over the last couple weeks, they’ve responded in a good way. Even when we didn’t get the the win like we wanted last week versus Jacksonville State, they kept plugging, they kept getting better. I thought our leadership was better. They said, Alright, hey, let’s not worry about any of these other things, let’s learn how to prepare and do the right way. So I am pleased with that and and it showed up. It was good to show up today. We needed it. I think we all needed it, and it was good. So now I can probably stop yelling for a little bit.”
How pleased are you with Juju Gray’s performance?
“Yeah. I mean, he’s explosive, right? He’s been hurt all year, and we’re still working through some things, right? He looked up and dropped a pass and ended up being behind the line of scrimmage, it’s a fumble. Still working on some things because all the time he missed. But you can see when the ball is in his hands, he’s got some explosiveness to him. He obviously had a huge game today, and we need to be able to use him, because he does give us a different dimension than we’ve had. A guy that in the run game can really take it. Very pleased with how he did that. He’s got to continue to improve, continue to practice well, and continue to just not try to do things without the ball. He sees the ball coming, he’s already made his decision. He’s already made his decision what he’s gonna do. Just gotta get the ball first and then think about it.”
How do you feel about Kaidon’s performance today?
“I thought he did well. The one pass that he fumbled. Just a terrible decision. He owned it, which is good to see. Hey, I screwed that up as my fault. He stayed locked in. I thought he did a really nice job of commanding our offense. He knew they were playing us a certain way. I thought he did a good job of distributing to who we needed him to distribute and managing the clock and the things that we needed to do. So it’s good to see. I think there’s been some growth from him last couple weeks, which has been really good. If he can continue to do that and we can continue to be better around him and be more consistent, then we got a chance to be better offensively and hopefully continue to win defensively.”
Ethan Crisp gave you a spark on defense, how much did his energy help the defense?
“It’s huge. He’s obviously from this area, Mount Juliet, got to come back home. I’m sure there’s a lot of a lot of friends here and family. There’s a lot of Tennessee guys on the roster. Obviously, I’m from this state, so we wanted to play well from our home state. He played extremely hard. Made a lot of tackles, seemed like he made a lot of tackles for loss, I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but there was great energy. And every time that we needed somebody to make a play or something, we got them in a bad situation, and it seemed like it was him a bunch. I mean, to be able to pick that ball up and, you know, run it there and do a great job. And he actually had good ball security, which we were pumped about. I was excited there, and so really pleased with how he played. And I thought, in general, I thought our defense played with just a lot of energy. We were down a coach today, Aaron Fierbaugh, his wife’s pregnant. If he’s watching, I know the baby has not come yet, hopefully everything’s good. Hopefully this didn’t pop it out yet, too nervous. We tried to make it an easy game for you, but they responded in a good way.”
