| 3/18/2025 | Football BOCA RATON, Fla. – The Florida Atlantic football team displayed its ability to respond to both direction and change on Tuesday pleasing first-year Hagerty Family Head Football Coach Zach Kittley. The Owls saw limited scrimmage action last Saturday, made corrections by watching film, primarily on their own time, and responded to those corrections on Tuesday. Kittley also encouraged the mantra that everyone makes mistakes, it is how you adjust, correct, put it behind you and get ready for the next play. QUOTABLE Tyler Schovanec, Special Teams Coordinator On the use and devotion of full team during special teams drills “I’m very pleased with where we are at on special teams. I think we are in a great place. It is still very early. We have a lot of work to do, but the buy in has been tremendous. The thing we have going for us right now is Coach Kittley has made it a high priority that special teams is important. He has required that if you are a good player and you are a good player and you start on offense and defense, he wants you involved on special teams. That is the main thing. We have great coaches. The kids want to do it. They know that special teams is an opportunity for them to play in the NFL. A lot of stuff we do is drill based. It is the same drills and technique that they use on Sundays. They are learning all those things. That is my thing in the spring. I want them to compete, learn the drills, learn the technique and from that standpoint it has been great. The advantage that I have is that Coach has allowed me to just do special teams. I put all of my energy; I think about it all day. That is all I think about, is these guys. I work with the specialist, and we have some really good specialist. If you are going to be good on special teams, your best player on offense and defense have to play, but your specialist have got to be good and we have great specialist, a really veteran group.” Drill wise “We are working on tackling right now. Tackling is critical. The reason we do that is we are going to use offensive players on special teams. Those guys may have been two-way players in high school, maybe played defense, but a lot of these guys may have been the best offensive receiver in high school and they never had to play defense. We have to teach them how to tackle. We have to incorporate some version of tackling into our special teams. The first thing we worried about was punt. We have done punt coverage, punt protection and all different drills on punt. We are about to start to transition, punt return is coming up next practice. We are really just trying to teach the offensive guys the basic fundamentals that they need to play on special teams and our defensive guys need it for defense, but they also need to know our terminology so that we are all speaking the same language on special teams and doing them the exact same way.” Senior Long Snapper Jackson Lee On what attracted him to Florida Atlantic “The coaches. Right after I hit the portal, I could tell this was going to be a loving team, we’re going to come together and do the right things. I just wanted to be in a group with a little bit of experience as well, like Garrison (Smith) and (Logan) Lupo, we all have experience. Just being there and trying to lead the team and help the team out however I can.” On how special teams work differs at FAU “This is very new to me. I have never done a tackling drill in my life for three years and in the first day of practice, I was out there doing tackling drills. It’s awesome because it’s going to help me work with my technique, getting the returner down and helping out the team. Also the drills [Coach Schovanec] runs are very technical and you can see everyone is enjoying it and getting better.” Offensive Line Coach Stephen Hamby On getting the offensive line used to Hagerty Family Head Coach Zach Kittley’s Offense “The biggest thing is continuity. The difference is when we do go up-tempo, it’s not like we are just going tempo the entire time, but they have to react to when the tempo actually does happen, they have to fully understand that it is go now, now, now. The difference in the offenses from what they are coming from, there are a lot of similar plays, it’s just a difference from how we are going to ID it and how we are going to pick it up. That is kind of the only different transition. The way me and Coach Kittley are able to work so easily together is that we have known each other for 13 years, so there are a lot of unsaid things that he can give me one or two words on the field and I already know where he is going with it so then I can bee-line and take care of the problem and go from there. So that helps. Just being able to overlap with someone that you have known for so long, there is not a lot of explanations in meetings, he designs a play and I get to say we will block like this and we move forward. Whereas that is pretty unconventional for most people, they want to dissect every single detail and I can kind of just get past that because I can tell him where the problem is if there is a problem or that we are good to go. When it comes to these kids, I think they are starting to learn that the tempo is necessary to make sure that we are gassing the defense out. They have gotten a little glimpse of that and that is really starting to excite their brain to how the offense actually works. You are going to have 12 play drives, but if you can pop a five-play drive down to field goal position, it makes an offensive lineman pretty happy. It is a fun thing.” On building cohesion among the linemen “You have three guys that have played a lot of football: Scarlee Jean, Alex Atcavage, and Daughtry (Richardson). Totally different personalities…each of them you would never put them in the same room together. Them coming together and being able to communicate has been awesome to see. We have a baby, Braden Cunningham, who is doing really good stuff at the center position. And you have two very long tackles in (J’Kavion) Nonar and Keon Rehoe who are showing big flashes of seeing the function of how it goes…them learning, they are actually buying into what we are asking him to do. Communication is the biggest thing that we are working on right now.” Redshirt Junior OL Alex Atcavage On returning to Florida Atlantic “It was a pretty easy decision…After [Kittley] was named [head coach], we had a meeting that night, I attended the meeting, went up to him and talked to him. I had another meeting with him because he wanted to meet with each player individually and it was pretty much after that meeting that I was like ‘yeah, I have to stay…After he hired Coach Hamby, Coach Hamby immediately called me and from there it was easy to come back.” On continuity within the o-line “It was easy to give Daughtry a call to say ‘hey, let’s do this thing.’ I knew we had a young kid with Braden Cunningham that I became really close with. Just bringing all of the younger guys together, I hadn’t seen them being that close in my [previous] years of being here. They are all so close, they do everything together. I think that is going to be the one thing that brings us to the next level: everyone in the o-line room truly loves each other.” PHOTO GALLERY Gallery: (3-18-2025) Spring Practice #4 PRACTICE NOTES Senior wide receiver Jett Coolman had a great one-handed catch in the corner of the end zone in early practice work. Redshirt junior Dominique Henry had the redzone offensive catch of the day in late practice drills. NIL IN PARADISE REGISTRATION To register click HERE. COMPLETE SCHEDULE Click HERE. SEASON TICKETS To purchase season tickets, click HERE. FOLLOW THE TEAM Stay informed by reading FAUSports.com or through football’s Twitter and Instagram accounts @FAUFootball. |
