Unbeaten Chanticleers feel they haven’t played to their potential yet

Make no mistake, it is a very good place the Coastal Carolina football team finds itself in one third of the way through the regular season.

The Chanticleers are 4-0 and have held the No. 1 ranking in the FCS Coaches poll – and No. 2 in the STATS media poll – for three weeks now.

They are right on track with their national championship hopes.

But it’s that big picture perspective, that lofty goal in the distance that serves as the standard, and with that as the gauge head coach Joe Moglia says isn’t thoroughly satisfied with what he’s seen thus far.

He delivered that message encouragingly to the players after Coastal Carolina’s 31-17 win over Bryant on Saturday night at Brooks Stadium and relayed it in his postgame media session.

“I still think we’re a team that’s got some potential, but we’re not where we need to be yet,” Moglia said. “We make too many mistakes at critical times offensively – just too many penalties that wind up hurting us. From a defensive perspective, we’re not nearly where we all would have hoped we were going to be by this time of the season.”

And the players agree, believing the best is still yet to come from this team on both sides of the ball.

Coastal Carolina’s win Saturday night was a fairly accurate reflection of its season to this point.

The offense was solid, totaling 400 yards behind a crisp performance from senior quarterback Alex Ross (19-of-24 passing for 212 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions) and another big game from junior running back De’Angelo Henderson (136 yards and two touchdowns rushing).

But it wasn’t perfect either. The coaches have been most frustrated by continued penalties on the offense and missed opportunities in the red zone, and that played out again Saturday night.

Midway through the second quarter, the Chants faced a third-and-4 from the Bryant 7, looking to punch in another touchdown when they were flagged for holding and ultimately had to settle for a 42-yard field goal from junior Ryan Granger.

Moglia made special mention of that after the game, and Ross says he agrees fully with his coach’s assessment.

“I don’t think we have [reached our potential] either. I don’t think our offense has clicked and done what it can do so far this year,” he said. “I can only speak for the offense, but we’re 4-0 and that’s a good start. So I look forward to continually improving and getting better each week. I look forward to that moment when the offense does click. ...

“We just have to execute as an offense and we can’t stub our toe and hurt ourselves.”

Really, though, the offense has been fine. The Chants rank tied for 16th in the FCS in scoring at 36 points per game and 21st in total offense at 436.8 yards per game.

And the special teams units have been outstanding in most every regard.

On defense is where the struggles have most persisted, and again, Saturday night was a fair reflection of the season to this point.

The Chants were leaky early and were outgained 256 yards to 179 in the first half, but in the end they did enough to win while shutting out Bryant after halftime, blocking a late field goal and settling down.

Coastal Carolina showed in its 41-14 week two win at South Carolina State that it has the playmakers to shut other teams down, but the Chants haven’t shown much consistency through four games. They rank a respectable 34th in scoring defense (23.3 points per game allowed), but they’re 83rd nationally in total defense while yielding an average of 435.8 yards per game.

“I truly think we’re an elite defense, we just sometimes have little mental errors that can really hurt us,” junior linebacker Alex Scearce said. “So I think holding them out, shutting [Bryant] out in the second half really made a point to our fans.”

To address the mental errors and missed assignments that have undermined the defense, the coaching staff scaled back the game plan on that side of the ball this week.

“Our focus this week on the defense was rather than have more things and have more breakdowns, we’ve got to have fewer things and get those right,” Moglia said. “We’ve got to be able to get those right.”

Moglia explained that while the Chants would usually go into a game with eight or nine defensive calls and all the variations off of those calls, they reduced that to about five calls for the game Saturday night.

“Not every one of those five calls are great calls against some of the things that they’re doing, but those calls should hold up,” he said. “There’s a tendency sometimes to say, ‘That defense is not good against that’ and then you get away from it. Bad strategy, bad philosophy, it’s not the way we need to approach it. The way we need to approach it is, ‘What was the reason we had a breakdown and if we can solve that breakdown we’re going to be OK.’ ...

“The more you add, the greater probability you’re going to have mistakes. So the objective this week was to have less stuff knowing we may not have as many perfect [matchups], but we’re going to do a better job of execution.”

The Chants have two more home games before their bye week, hosting an Alabama A&M team that ranks third to last in the FCS in total defense and a Presbyterian team they traditionally handle, and they’ll use these next few weeks to smooth out the rough edges.

But again, 4-0 is 4-0 and Coastal Carolina is voted No. 1 in the FCS Coaches poll each week for a reason.

This is a good team that simply believes it can be better.

“I’m delighted we’re No. 1 in the nation, I’m delighted we’re 4-0, but we’re not nearly where we’ve got to be,” Moglia said.

This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 7:47 PM with the headline "Unbeaten Chanticleers feel they haven’t played to their potential yet."