Just throwing this out there. Maybe, the staff is getting the most out of Joey and bringing him along. He was only a part-time starter in JuCo last year (not sure if it was due to an injury, coaches decision, etc). He’s stepped into FCS football and only had the off-season to build a relationship with his teammates.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s showed tremendous poise and has made some big plays this season in tough environments (and often while having the pressure of playing from behind).
Each week he’s getting better and the playbook is getting opened up a little more (when we tried the backward passes or gadget plays earlier, the play call was there, but the execution wasn’t). We even snapped the ball and hit a man in motion at a critical point in a game.
We saw a jet sweep this week, the razzle dazzle TD and we saw his best running game in tune with his highest passing output. And as long as we could block their edge rushers, we saw a lot of good things that happened on offense.
Perhaps we are going in the same direction on defense. While we gave up a ton, you did see Parker deeper in the secondary making plays (called back INT, pass breakup in the end zone) and there was a play where our edge rusher recognized the back slipping out of the backfield, reversed direction and forced an incompletion. (Against Coastal, we let the back slip out uncovered).
Again, we gave up a ton, but you can see some small improvements/coaching taking hold.
