Chants offensive line paving way for team’s success

Coastal Carolina’s offensive line has been a steady force and a big key to the team’s success over the past few seasons.

Just ask Chanticleers head coach Joe Moglia about his men in the trenches.

“You cannot have a good offense without a good offensive line,” Moglia said. “Period. End of story. … This season, we have five seniors that know what their job is and they go out and perform. They know what is asked of them, and I and everyone else has full confidence in them.”

Senior Chase Tidwell noted that the expectations were high entering this season, and believes that offensive line hasn’t disappointed.

“This year coming in we definitely wanted to be the leaders of the offense – establish dominance up front in the games. That’s always a goal for us,” Tidwell said. “I think we’ve made a lot of progress from the first game of the year until now, which is always good. We still have things we need to work on every day in practice but I feel as a whole we’ve done a really good as an offensive line.”

Chants offensive line coach Patrick Covington builds his players up from the time they get to him until the time they leave. Four of the team’s five seniors on the offensive line are starters Sam Ekwonike, Voghens Larrieux, Tidwell and Dom DiGalbo. Covington has seen the progress they have made.

And it has shown in the stat book as well as the Chants offense is averaging 38.8 points per game with 232 average rushing yards and 162.5 passing yards per game with the help of a strong line.

But Covington doesn’t like to take all the credit.

“It’s definitely been a group effort. All those guys have played a lot of football now, and even the younger guys are getting to play a little more. They’re a tough group, they play hard and they do what they’re supposed to do,” Covington said. “The awesome thing is, we always have really good running backs, we always have really good quarterbacks and pretty much every position has stepped up. So it’s been a group effort, and that’s been the coolest thing.”

Tidwell, the team’s starting left tackle, has a unique story. He spent two years at Charleston Southern but didn’t play the sport, before walking on to the Coastal Carolina campus with no experience ever playing organized football. The Goose Creek Native redshirted his first season with the Chants in 2014, his junior year, and the opening game of the 2015 season was the first ever football game he ever played in.

Tidwell ended up earning All-Big South Second Team honors last year and has come a long way, giving the credit to his “brothers” beside him.

“It starts off with everyone playing together. We’re one unit out there,” he said. “In practice, games, in meetings we’re all together and I feel us five seniors really gel well together, we’re all older and more experienced. We feed off each other and we know each other like the back of our hands, any play we call out there we have confidence in it and just run it.”

Tidwell also said the linemen are pretty tightknit and usually hang out together off the field, helping fuel their passion on the field as well.

“We’re all brothers. You can find us taking naps in the locker room or playing a game together ... We do a lot together. We’re a laid back, fun group.”

Larrieux can attest to that, adding that the group plays around quite a bit.

“Off the field, we are all jokesters,” he said, “Fat man jokes – that happens a lot. You know, we go to restaurants and go out for wings all the time. We just try to do funny things in our group such as sending each other funny fat man pictures and just playing with each other. We’re kind of an interesting group.”

Meanwhile, Larrieux gives Covington the most credit for helping the line establish a name for itself

“It starts with our coach. Covington works us; he develops us. From our freshman year until the time you leave and now I’m a fifth-year senior,” Larrieux said. “We take it one step at a time and we work on the little things sometimes like our hands. Every day, we don’t change what we do. Consistency every day, doing drills, doing everything perfectly so we can apply it every Saturday.”

Offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude said he has quickly noticed how much of an effect the offensive line has on the offense as a whole this season.

“When you have a veteran group that has played together for so long, they tend to find success,” Patenaude said. “They know how to work together, There’s not a whole lot they haven’t seen at this point, they can make adjustments on their own during the course of a game. They’re really well-coached, Covington does a great job with them.

“And I’ve always said that the key to any good football team is their offense and defensive lines. Those guys have to be the strong, toughest and most physical guys on your football team. They have to set the tempo for your team as a whole. Luckily that’s the case with us.”

With only four games left, all of which are at home for the Chants, the offensive line plans to keep up the pace and finish out the year, and for many – their careers, on a positive note.

“I was just talking to [Ekwonike] going down the stairs and was like, ‘Man, only four more weeks.’ It’s real important,” Larrieux said. “I think about the time I first stepped on the campus and it doesn’t feel like it was too long ago. To only have four more weeks left is bittersweet. It’s kind of like, ‘Wow.’ These games are very important but it feels like that door is shutting more and more.”

That only gives them more of a reason to step up.

“These last few games mean the world to us,” Tidwell said. “We come out here and give it 110 percent and want to win this thing out and go out on a strong note.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Chants offensive line paving way for team’s success."