Florida A&M (0-1) looks to rebound this week against Fort Valley State (0-1) in their home opener for the annual Jake Gaither Classic.
The Rattlers look to get things back together after suffering a 0-62 loss to UCF in their first game. With this being the 12th meeting between the two teams, with the last meeting coming last year, FAMU won convincingly 41-7.
Head Coach Willie Simmons explained why they will not plan to add in any game plans from last year for this game. “I think every situation is different. Every year is different.” “The teams are different and there are guys who weren’t on their team last year there are guys on our team that weren’t on the team last year.”
One thing that will help the FAMU rattlers is coming off a bye week one, in which Coach Simmons wanted to place an emphasis on fundamentals. “We felt it was necessary to get to our base fundamentals”.
Against a high powered offense like UCF, it was impossible for the team to try to keep up with the Knights. So against the Wildcats, Coach Simmons explained how the bye week helped them get to the philosophy of being an uptempo team.
“After that game was over it gave us a week ,which why the bye week so critical. It also gave us a week to kind of get into our philosophy of being an uptempo team”.
With Fort Valley State coming off of a 17-38 loss to Miles College, it is imperative that both teams know what’s at stake. “It’ll be a game of who executes the best and handles the adversity that comes their way.” Coach Simmons said.
Fort Valley State plays a quarter defense along with only playing cover and a cover 6 defense.
With a defense that is set up to stop the pass the team has a simple game plan to be able to open up the passing game. “Got to be able to run the ball so the passing game can open up”. said redshirt junior, Chad Hunter. Hunter also added what the team needs to do in order to secure a win.
“Do the little things right once while we get all the little things… then it’ll turn into a big thing and you’ll get the dub. That’s how you win.”
The game will take place on Saturday 6 p.m. at Bragg Memorial Stadium (Tallahassee, FL).