How dedication, poise and discipline have played a huge role in CCU’s historic season
When you look at the keys to Coastal Carolina’s remarkable success this season, the obvious game-changing examples are the tremendous play of quarterback Grayson McCall, who is completing 69.3 percent of his passes and has thrown for 23 touchdowns and just two interceptions, or CCU’s ferocious pass rush.
The Chants have 33 sacks, 71 tackles for loss and 48 quarterback hurries, which are 82 more than their opponents in the three categories combined.
But a deeper look at the statistics and factors that reflect dedication, poise, discipline, focus and efficiency reveals the underlying reasons for CCU’s unprecedented season. The Chants are perhaps the No. 1 team in the nation in terms of those tangibles and intangibles.
Avoiding injuries, COVID-19 cases and penalties, while playing efficiently in terms of turnovers, third- and fourth-down conversions, red zone conversions and time of possession have all greatly factored into CCU’s historic 11-0 season, national rankings, Sun Belt Conference co-championship and invitation to face Liberty in Saturday’s FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl.
“That’s something not a lot of people talk about, but that’s one of the main reasons we’re undefeated right now is we are playing smart football,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said. “One of our big deals during this offseason, we talked about penalties, we talked about discipline and doing those little things. That’s lining up right, that’s not being offsides, that’s not false-starting. Our guys have done a really good job of those things. We’ve not had foolish penalties that have extended drives, we’ve not had foolish penalties that have set us back to where we had a good play and had to take it back. That’s how you win.”
The Chants have remained astonishingly healthy.
Coastal has kept it best players on the field for the great majority of the season, and in a young FBS Group of Five program that would seemingly have a drop-off from starters to backups because of limited depth, that has allowed the Chants to get peak performances at each position.
On defense, CCU has had the same starting lineup for all but two games: the opener against Kansas when Kendricks Gladney Jr. started at outside linebacker rather than Enock Makonzo, though both played significant minutes, and the final game against Troy when E.J. Porter started at linebacker in place of Silas Kelly, who also played late in the game.
On offense, quarterback Grayson McCall has missed one game, left tackle Antwine Loper has missed one game, and tight end Isaiah Likely has missed one game, and every other major contributor has played every game.
“We’re just trying to take care of our bodies so we can keep everybody,” senior defensive lineman C.J. Brewer said. “Last year that was a lot of our problems, there were a lot of injuries that were hurting us and were causing us to lose games. But we feel we’ve come together as a team and are just trusting the process.”
Chad Scott, the director of football speed, strength and conditioning, was hired at CCU in February 2019 after six years at Charleston Southern.
“Our strength coach, now he’s into truly his second year,” Chadwell said. “He’s had an opportunity to really train some guys and they understand how its going. I think that’s part of it because all your strength training is to try to reduce injuries, and our players to their credit are understanding what it takes to try to stay healthy too, what you have to eat and what you have to do to try to play a long season.”
This year, health has also meant avoiding coronavirus cases within the program, which the Chants were able to do for more than three months before it was forced to cancel the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game last week.
Chadwell said three cases within the program and the required quarantining of several players through contact tracing protocols left the Chants without players at a specific position group. CCU hopes to regain the services of those players on Wednesday if further testing has returned negative.
“We’ve been great all year long with that,” Chadwell said. “We got hammered early on with covid in late July and early September where we missed a lot of players from various position groups, but ever since late September we’ve been really good. We’re in a hotspot here and I think it finally caught up to us a little bit and it was unfortunate that it happened at this timeframe, but I actually feel fortunate we made it that far considering the hotspot our area has been. So I give credit to our players for trying to do the right thing all year long, and I think they did that.”
Coastal is among the least penalized teams in the country. The Chants’ 3.36 penalties per game are the fewest in the nation, and 33.45 penalty yards per game are third, and those averages increased after CCU committed six penalties for 60 yards in its regular-season finale at Troy.
Discipline was a focus this offseason within the team mantra of the number 24. The Chants went 5-7 last year and lost five of those games by a combined 24 points.
“That’s part of our whole deal with 24, how were we going to overcome 24 points, and discipline was one of those main things, being disciplined in those key situations,” Chadwell said. “When you’re doing that and you play clean games like that it gives you opportunities to have success. And that’s hard to buy into. But the more the players have seen that they understand how much it benefits them and it gives us opportunities to accomplish some great things.”
CCU has protected the ball well and taken the ball away from its opponents for a 22-11 advantage in turnovers. The Chants have recovered eight of the 21 fumbles they have forced and have intercepted 11 passes while losing seven fumbles and throwing just four interceptions – two by McCall and two by backup QB Fred Payton in his one start.
The 22 forced turnovers are second nationally and plus-11 turnover margin is third.
Coastal is also among the nation’s most successful teams on third down, fourth down and in the red zone.
Coastal is converting third downs at 54.3 percent, which is fourth in the nation, and has converted 12 of 15 fourth downs for an 80-percent clip that is sixth. In 55 trips inside the opponents’ 20-yard line, CCU has scored 42 touchdowns for a 76.4 TD conversion percentage. Only Alabama with 46 and BYU with 45 have more red zone TDs than CCU.
Conversely, opponents are converting 37.4 percent of third downs, 40 percent of fourth downs and 59.3 percent TDs in the red zone.
Coastal is fifth in time of possession in the country with an 8:30 advantage over its opponents per game with an average of 34:15 per contest.
“That’s what our offense wants to do. We want to control the football, give our defense plenty of rest,” senior offensive lineman Trey Carter said. “When we control the clock and control the ball we win football games for sure.”
Saturday’s Game
Who: AP No. 9 Coastal Carolina (11-0) vs. No. 23 Liberty (9-1)
What: Sixth annual FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl
Where: Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida
When: 7:30 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: ESPN Radio and WRNN FM 99.5
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 3:39 PM.
