Colonels dealing with early open date after 0-2 start

Not too many teams face an open week after only playing two games but that’s the situation Nicholls finds itself in after getting off to an 0-2 start on the season following losses to Sacramento State and Texas Christian University.

“This year, it’s early. You would like it to be about four or five weeks in so your guys might be able to recover a little bit. If you have bumps and bruises, it gives you a little bit of rest, but we have to deal with it where it comes,” Nicholls coach Tim Rebowe said.

The Colonels began to deal with it on the trip home from Forth Worth, Texas, following last Saturday’s 41-6 loss to TCU.

“We had a long bus ride coming back from Sunday, so we gave them Sunday off while we watched the film and graded it and lifted weights on Monday,” explained Rebowe. “I gave them Tuesday off just to recover and let the coaches start game planning for Tulane.

“We did that Monday and Tuesday, and we will bring them back this week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We will give the players off on Saturday and then get back to work on Sunday.”

The open week does come early. It also comes during a stretch against tough opponents to begin the season. Sacramento State is ranked among Football Championship Subdivision teams while TCU is ranked among Football Bowl Subdivision teams after playing the national championship game a year ago.

Up next for the Colonels is a trip to Tulane against a Green Wave team that beat USC in the Cotton Bowl a year ago.

“You have to find the positive,” Rebowe said of the timing of the open date. “You have got to make it advantageous to you. We are going to do that. We find some things that we need to fix. Obviously, these first two games, we have some players we need to fix. We’ve got some players who may be showing us they are not ready. We might have to get some other guys ready to go.

“There are a lot of factors that are involved. We’ll get to work on some fundamentals that we need to do – some tackling, some special teams stuff that we have to do – we will get a lot of good work and it gives us a little (extra time to prepare). We have two games right now on Tulane. We will have a little bit of a jump start on the Green Wave and put these two games into the system and break them down into some normal situations, third-down stuff, things they are doing in the red zone back and forth on both sides of the ball.”

Open dates, particularly those that come in the middle of the season lend themselves to teams using the time off to self-scout, looking for tendencies that opponents may have detected.

That had been standard operating procedure for many teams over the years, but times are different, according to Rebowe.

“I think it’s kind of changed where you are self-scouting year-round, all through the season. We do that. We take a look at ourselves, see the things that we like. Try to see what the other teams see in us and try to make sure we are not too predictable in certain things. We do that on a week-to-week basis.

“I think we are finding out some things. Obviously, we showed some improvement from Week 1 to Week 2. You would like to get into a little bit of a rhythm in the schedule and play this week but it’s not.”

As can happen in games where a bigger school is a huge favorite, it seems to score in bunches against a fatiguing smaller team late to make the outcome look rather misleading. Such was the case in the Colonels’ game against the Horned Frogs.

“One of the most disappointing things we have to look at is that fourth quarter,” Rebowe said of the TCU game. “At least we have to try and get on the board. We have to try and keep them off the board. It won’t be 17 (points in the fourth quarter) if we can move the ball and sustain some drives.  You get worn down a little bit at the end. Our guys were still fighting and still playing.”

“Under a minute to go, they are still throwing,” the Nicholls coach continued. “He (TCU coach Sonny Dykes) is looking to get his guys some work. You can’t blame him for that. We have got to try to stop them, but it did make it look a little bit worse than what it was.”

The Colonels did some things to stay in the game in the underdog role like coming up with a turnover and driving for a field goal late in the first half to turn what could have been a 28-0 score to 21-3. Nicholls held onto the ball in the third quarter and outscored TCU 3-0 in the period.

“I thought we played well coming out at halftime,” Rebowe said. “In that third quarter we did some things, but we’ve still got to put some points on the board.

“We have got to be able to sustain some drives. Against good football teams, you can’t shoot yourself in the foot. We talk about all the time of doing the little, simple things and executing some of the simple things. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”

Yet, the Colonels were their own worst enemy on numerous occasions in the game.

themselves with pre-snap penalties and dropped passes that could have extended drives.

“I think we dropped some balls that we call ‘pitch-and-catch.’ You have to make those plays, it doesn’t matter who you play,” Rebowe said. “You can’t have the pre-snap penalties and the false starts. We took some situations that were advantageous to us, second-and-5 like those situations, and we jump offsides. It becomes second-and-10. We had third-and-1and jump offside from the wide out. We can’t have it. The punt team, we have a gunner on the outside who jumps offsides.

“It’s just some discipline things that we have to be able to clean up. I think the guys lose a little bit of focus when they do that, and we talk big about that. Those are things that we still can get corrected this week with the open date and weeks to come.”

The Colonels gave TCU its first points on a blocked punt returned for a touchdown on Nicholls’ opening possession of the game to quickly fall behind. It was the second week in a row that a special teams blunder cost the Colonels a touchdown.

“We talked about before the game that we were going to have to sustain a couple of shots. You just don’t like to see it come that way on special teams where it was a low snap,” said Rebowe. “We missed a protection in the blocking scheme. We still should have got the ball off. It was seven points, but we did talk about that was not going to determine the outcome of the game.

“We talked about before how those first couple of minutes of the game are not going to determine the game. It’s what you do the rest of the way. I felt we withstood that. We came back from that.”

Despite the 0-2 start, Rebowe remains positive about his team as it prepares for Tulane and sets the stage for the Southland Conference schedule.

“I kind of like the way it is shaping up,” the Nicholls coach said. “We know we’ve got another tough game coming up and then you better be ready because conference is right around the corner. I think the conference race is going to be wide open.

“I think after our preseason three games, you throw out the schedules for everybody and start stacking up and see where you stand.”