Looking back at last night's season opener, and a thank you to the fans

By Paul Haynes
Head Coach

After last night's win, I didn't immediately come back and start watching film because I had a house full of people who were in town for the game.

But I was still racing through my mind with things that we have to do to get better, analyzing everything. That's what we all do as coaches. It's always thinking about how can we get better.

I was back in the office at about 7:30 a.m. today and started watching the tape.

The crazy thing is that games are never as bad as you think or as good as you think when you sit down and watch the film. The biggest thing for me about last night was the 12 penalties. You can't have that. You are not going to win too many games with 12 penalties. Those are the things we have to eliminate.

The penalties come down to a fundamental and a technique here and there. They come down to discipline. We have to become a more disciplined football team.

It's not about effort. It's not a lack of effort. It's a lack of doing right. We have to right.

There were also a lot of things I liked. Up front on defense, I thought we played well. I expected that from those guys, and they met those expectations.

You look at the first drive of the game. With a lot of new guys out there for the first time, we put together a pretty good scoring drive. That was a positive. 

There is some stuff that we can build on, but there is more stuff that we have to improve. That's not necessarily bad. Sometimes it isn't a good thing when you come out of a game feeling too good about yourself.

I'm not too worried, except for the penalties. Those are the things you can't have.

What we need to continue to have is the support from the fans like we had last night. That crowd was awesome, and the students in particular were loud and into the game. 

I sent out a tweet today thanking the students for their support. To have a record student crowd of 7,000 last night was very exciting. And we need them to keep coming back. 

We need them more than ever next week when we play Bowling Green because we are going to be gone for three straight weeks after that.