With key skills players back, Conway looks to get back to winning ways

Chuck Jordan’s mental state hasn’t changed.

Even though Conway hasn’t won like it did in its historic run in the early to mid 2000s, and even though the coach has given up his athletics director role at the school, he’s still all-in when it comes to football.

“My thought process has always been, ‘we’re going to win every single game,’ ” Jordan said. “If I’m playing Michael Jordan in basketball, I expect to whip his butt.”

Chuck Jordan goes on to say what the reality would be if he played professional basketball’s best player ever, but that doesn’t stop him from believing he should win.

Thankful for the Tigers, the competition level on the football field is nowhere near as fierce. Climbing out of their unusual spot at the bottom of Region VI-AAAA, though, may have seemed like it at times over the course of the past year.

Conway is coming off its second consecutive 2-9 season, something that had never happened throughout Jordan’s first 31 years at the school. In fact, the current three-year stretch of losing seasons is also the first time it’s happened since 1977-1979, prior to his arrival.

But to say only the head coach is feeling the crunch of getting things moving in the right direction wouldn’t be accurate. It’s falling on the players, too.

“I definitely feel some pressure,” second-year starting quarterback Peyton Derrick said. “As a city, Conway for the past four-five years has been on the downward. I feel like it’s the changing of the tide. We have a year that we can prove to people that we can really turn this around.”

Jordan pointed out last week that losing so many players from back-to-back 2-9 teams may not be a bad thing. Neither, however, is bringing back some of the players he’ll have in uniform.

Derrick threw for 1,981 yards, second in the area, and 13 touchdowns. South Carolina commitment Bryan Edwards snagged another 688 yards and six touchdowns worth of receptions. And tailback Jah’Maine Martin (1,132 yards, 11 touchdowns) gave the Tigers a rushing boost they hadn’t had in more than five years.

Those three will be asked to make up for an offensive line starting three sophomores and a junior.

“We recognize that we’re very young on the offensive line,” Jordan said. “We like these kids and they’re going to be good. But they’re young. One of the things we’re going to have to do is use our skill people to take some pressure off the offensive line.”

Said Derrick: “It reassures us that we have all the talent skill-wise. We can still put points on the board with a young offensive line. It’s a boost.”

Of the Tigers’ three returning starters on defense, one will be Austin Manchester, a linebacker who tallied 61 tackles as a junior.

Although most of the other faces – on both sides of the ball – are going to be new, Jordan intends to rely upon the same methods that had his team consistently winning in its glory days.

“We’re not changing a whole lot up. We’re Conway,” he said. “We’ve been doing things a certain way a long, long time. … As far as any wholesale change, that’s not going to happen.”

This story was originally published August 15, 2015 at 9:19 PM with the headline "With key skills players back, Conway looks to get back to winning ways."