A-State Enjoying the Bye Week

[Seminole Indian]

After a disastrous 0-4 start, A-State benefited greatly from the extra practice time before and after the GaSo game.

From all reports they took the extra time to simplify things on both sides of the ball and conduct very physical practices,  with "good on good", something they had not done in the fall camp or since the season started.

Their HC also issued a "you are all in or you are out" challenge ultimatum to their players, and a couple of players went the "out" route.

What resulted was a more physical run oriented offense, much better defense across the board, fewer miscues, and of course two wins over decent opponents.

From the little that has been put out about this bye week( and to be honest there has not been a lot of interest even after winning the last two games), it appear's they are focusing on using the extra time this time to get healthy.

Another thing that happened this week was Anderson placed more of the blame on himself for the 0-4 start, something their fan base felt strongly was missing in his previous explanations of what had gone wrong in the first four games.

He said in  the Wednesday edition of the Jonesboro Sun newspaper when discussing the subpar performance of the defense in the 1st four games that  "perhaps the coaching staff and team put some unintended pressure on the defense to carry the first two weeks of the season".

Went on to say "I kept feeling our guys (on defense) were playing not to make a mistake .", and added "They put so much pressure on themselves and I think, to some degree I put a lot of pressure on them going in with all the new pieces (offensively) both staff and player-wise, I feel like guys were playing afraid to make a mistake."

No doubt the team is better than they were the first four games , but they are still no where near the team Anderson told everyone he felt had going into the season. Will be interesting to see if they have made progress toward becoming that team after the bye week.