Liberty picked up a win on Tuesday night, defeating Middle Tennessee, 42-35, to move to 7-0 on the season and 5-0 in CUSA play. Following the win, head coach Jamey Chadwell met with the media. Here is everything he had to say following the game, beginning with his opening statement:

“Well, it’s never boring is it? One, I want to give credit to Middle Tennessee. They played a heck of a game. They came and took it after us. I shared they are better than their record and they showed that. It wasn’t obviously the cleanest game for us in a lot of areas. Here’s what I’m proud of though, defensively we stunk for a long time but they found a way there in the second half, especially the fourth quarter. When we needed to make plays they got turnovers, got big plays, that’s the way we should be playing defense. Proud of them.”

“I thought offensively, take the turnovers away, we had some penalties, moved up and down the field. There in the fourth quarter, we obviously had a chance to end the game, missed a couple plays where we had guys open here or there.”

“You’ve got to win challenging games and you’ve got to take everybody’s best shot. We talked all week that you can’t allow complacency to set in. We didn’t have a great week of practice and it showed up. We played like we didn’t have a great week of practice. Fortunately we were able to find a way to win and continue to move on and put ourselves one step closer to what we want to try and get accomplished for this team.”

“Always proud of the win, no matter how bad it looks, we take those ugly Ws any day over a pretty loss. Thankful that we got it done. Our student body was excellent once again there. In the Flames Quarter, we were able to take advantage of it. Got a lot of work to do to clean up, but excited about the win.”

HOW ABOUT THE 4TH QUARTER, FOR THE DEFENSE, HOLDING THEM TO 45 YARDS?

“I think we need to start in the first, so we don’t have to worry about it as much. You go back to your conditioning, you go back to your training. I told the team, you fall back on your training in times of crisis and time of preparation. We emphasized that getting here in the spring. Emphasized that the Flames Quarter is our quarter and that we have to own that quarter. One, it’s a mentality. I think, two, especially here at home, you get that ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ going, those phones going, and everybody is getting excited. It’s an intimidating thing. I think it’s a mentality that we’ve worked hard to create. Our guys have bought into that. We just got to make it all the other three quarters too.”

PENALTY ON 3RD DOWN AFTER MTSU GOT THE STOP, THEN KAIDON TAKES A SHOT AT THE END ZONE FOR THE CJ DANIELS TD PASS?

“That was obviously a big call because it was 4th and whatever. You had to make a decision, then once we got the penalty there, we hadn’t connected on some and they were begging us to throw the ball, they were begging us. We had missed some of those, whether it was a drop or just missed some. We knew we had the matchup we wanted. We thought that was the best time to let it rip. He made a nice throw. CJ made a nice route and catch. Obviously that gave us the lead and we were able to hold on.”

TURNOVERS PLAYED A BIG FACTOR, YOU END UP WITH ONE MORE THAN THEY DO?

“Yeah, that’s the name of the game. Get stops, get people off the field, and the turnovers. We obviously created some there, had the interception and the fumble, but ours were right out of the gate. I’ll tell you all that story one day. Right out of the gate and then obviously the fumble there when we were out of halftime, we get a great stop, we’ve got a first down and big plays there. The disappointment we turn it over and we left 14 points off of turnovers. You turnover you hope you hold them to field goals. We need to stop turning it over, but if our defense continues to take the ball away, it gives us a chance to win. We have to play better if we’re going to win any games again.”

RUSHED FOR OVER 400 YARDS, THAT HAS BECOME A REOCCURRING THEME FOR THE TEAM THIS SEASON?

“Our whole game plan was you want to be as balanced as possible, you want to hit your shots, you want to do all those things. The way they were playing us, especially early, they were keeping everybody deep and saying we’re not going to give up any deep shots. That was their plan from the first half on. We just decided, alright, we’re going to run it and do some things. Take your chances and we were able to do that. When you don’t have your best in the other areas, if you can run like that, it gives you a chance. That allowed us to stay in the game because it kept them off the field when we weren’t playing good defense and we were able to control the ball, control the clock, until we could make it more of a game that we want to try and play.”

IS THE INTENTION TO HAVE THAT MUCH OF A RUN VS PASS RATIO TONIGHT OR DID THE GAME DICTATE THAT?

“You want to take what they give you. We’ve had some games where we have thrown it more but the last couple weeks the way people have played us because we’ve hit so many big shots, our receivers, some of them are averaging over 20 yards a catch, they don’t want to give up those. If you are going to play soft then we are going to try our best to try and run it down your throat and see if we can do that. If that’s what a team wants to do to us, we’re going to try to do that.”

“Also, you are playing a team like them that was explosive, you saw that. They had a lot of receivers we had trouble tackling. You want to try to keep them off the field and limit the opportunities they have. It’s a part of trying to win. We want to try and be as balanced as possible. If you go back, we dropped a touchdown pass. We had another one there at the end that barely overthrew Sibley. You hit on a few of those and we had whatever, we are probably 240 throwing. Then everybody is high fiving me, coach that’s awesome! Now, everybody is saying coach why are you running the ball so much? We want to win.”

WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT YOUR PROGRAM, DIDN’T PLAY YOUR BEST GAME BUT STILL GOT THE W?

“Well, I think our team is resilient. I think they are buying into what we believe in, what we preach. We almost learned a valuable lesson. We got really close to touching that fire and it about cost us. I’m glad we’re learning in a win, but we have to learn how to practice and not take things for granted. I told our team last night in the meeting there, I love 80s music, one of the songs is don’t know what you got, ’til it’s gone. I referenced losing an opponent that we were better than because we thought we were better, we didn’t prepare. That’s where all our championships came from. We are on such a special thing going, don’t take it for granted. I give credit to them. It’s them. They showed resiliency and they believe in each other. We never think we are out of the game which is good. Hopefully we continue to do that.”

SEEMS LIKE BRYLAN GREEN KEEPS MAKING HUGE PLAYS, HOW HUGE HAS HIS PLAY BEEN?

“He’s been great. He wasn’t with us in the spring, obviously he plays baseball. Then, he was hurt, he hurt his back, so he practiced with us a little bit. He never really scrimmaged. He did a lot of individual. We had obviously heard about him and watched video from last year. For us, it was all going to be brand new. This fall camp, he had a great fall camp. Your punt returner is who you trust the most on your team. He is our punt returner. We trust him to make great decisions. Obviously he is back there in center field which is natural for him because of being a baseball player. He’s always got a knack for the ball. He finds it. He’s an all-conference player, no doubt.”

RICK WEAVER ON THE OFFENSIVE LINE BLOCKING ON THE GOAL LINE PLAY, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PRACTICING THAT?

“The dream Weaver, that’s what we call him, the dream Weaver. When did we start practicing for them? We got back from Jacksonville State…whatever time we started practicing, day one, whenever that was, we do short yardage, goal line. The way they were lining up, it gave us an idea to run an iso play. Rick is a fire hydrant. Y’all should make him the player of the game. Walk in here, he’s a national champion wrestler, strong as an ox, appreciates everything. He’s on our show team and is so hard to block, we thought he could iso somebody. If y’all see that play, he knocked that guy. That guy gave everything he had and Rick didn’t move. I’m excited for him. Think about this, for him, walked on the football team in the spring in a tryout. Made the team. He probably made the team because I didn’t know any better. I was trying to hold onto everybody at that time, everybody was trying to leave. Just did exactly what you’re supposed to do, worked hard, didn’t say much, very soft spoken, you can barely hear him. He became such a great teammate. Our O-Line hates him because he goes so hard all the time, but they were the first ones celebrating for him. That’s what makes football so special, getting opportunities. That young man, no matter what he does the rest of his time, he will remember that for the rest of his life. Man, how special is that for him and his family? It’s awesome, going to make me emotional.”

YOU GOING TO HAND IT TO HIM NEXT TIME MAYBE?

“Not yet. One at a time.”

VERY EFFICIENT IN THE RED ZONE, HOW GOOD WAS YOUR TEAM THERE TONIGHT?

“That was actually one of our whole keys to the game. We’ve not been great down there as far as getting touchdowns. I don’t know what our percentages are. That was a huge emphasis. They are a good team. Look who they’ve played, their schedule, they’ve scored points. I tell our guys all the time, that target, the more you win that target gets bigger and bigger and bigger. People can make their season by knocking the Flames off. We needed to score. We needed every one of them. That was huge for us. One thing that we really did emphasize this week of scoring in the red zone. You do it every week, but guys we can not settle for field goals, we cannot do it. It was great to see something you really emphasize, come to fruition.”

ARE THE PENALTIES A CONCERN?

“Its a major concern. We had a block in the back, we had a hold. The hold was foolish, block in the back we will see what happened there. I need to watch that one. Some guy hit somebody late, we get in his face, we get a penalty there. They had an offsetting penalty which I didn’t agree with, but I don’t agree with any of their calls. It is because what it does is it stops momentum and it’s undisciplined. One thing we pride ourselves on, core value #2 is being disciplined. When you don’t do that, it hurts your team and it shows up. We had a pass interference penalty, ok they called it, then we want to talk to their sideline. That’s foolish. It’s foolish. We’ve got to get that stopped. I have to because I’m responsible for that. We will get that stopped starting Thursday.”

GREEN AND SINGLETON WITH BIG PERFORMANCES, HOW MUCH RESOLVE DO YOU THINK THEY HAVE DOWN THE STRETCH TO GET THE JOB DONE?

“I think the confidence is high. When you go do something and you’ve done it consistently, you believe you are going to do it every time. It’s like when I went and tried to date my wife. I asked her and she gave me the go ahead, the next time I’m asking again because I’m confident. Same thing. They made it and now they believe it every time. They want the ball, let it come to me. I think that shows you confidence and they don’t get down on themselves if someone makes a play. It was huge, the resolve they have. You have to. We put a lot of stress on that defensive backfield, we are having a lot of man to man coverage and they get tested all the time. I want to shout out Preston Hodge. We are down two corners that have played a lot of football. We were getting toasted, to be honest with you. Preston Hodge who plays nickel for us, we moved him to corner. He did a fantastic job. I wanted to give him a shout out.”

COOLEY WITH 24 CARRIES, IS THAT THE STRATEGY GOING FORWARD?

“Right now we are banged up a little bit there, obviously. If you watched Billy (Lucas), he is still limping around a little bit, not completely healthy. We are trying to get him a little bit, James Jointer came in and got some carries. He got 7. Cooley is the one that needs to be our workhorse, especially the way people are playing us. If that’s what we got to do then that’s what we’ve got to do. I’d love for him to not have as many. If Billy can get back healthy then we can start splitting those a little bit, but James coming in and getting big carries for us was big. Proud of him. We are going to have to figure it out the way we are with injuries. That’s life right now.”