BOCA RATON, Fla. – As Florida Atlantic University’s football team (5-2, 4-1 Conference USA) continues prep work for this Thursday’s contest at Southern Miss, the Owls received the notification on Tuesday that senior defensive lineman Ryan Veingrad is one of 67 players nominated for the 2020 Burlsworth Trophy.
Veingrad has played in every 2020 contest and has started the last six, of the team’s seven, games. He has tallied 10 tackles, including three solo, with 2.5 being for a loss of nine yards was a sack. The senior has one sack and one quarterback hurry on the year.
Veingrad will lead the Owls this Thursday in the team’s final regular season contest at Southern Miss, which is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Eastern, will air on CBS Sports Network and also will be carried on the radio by Fox Sports South Florida 640 AM. This will be the second time FAU has made the trip to Hattiesburg to play the Eagles (2-7, 1-4 C-USA). FAU holds a 2-0 all-time mark versus USM..
The Thursday contest is not the first time FAU has played on a Thursday night. The last time was versus North Texas on Oct. 15, 2018. This Thursday, the Owls will rely upon a stingy defense that is allowing 12.4 points per game and ranked No. 2 nationally. Offensively, FAU will be led by graduate student TJ Chase, who has a team-leading 328 receiving yards, and senior captain James Charles, who has been the Owls’ starting back, with 268 yards on 60 carries.
Coordinator’s CornerCo-Offensive Coordinator Drew Mehringer
On how much the USM game means with more at stake:
“Hopefully, all the games that we play mean a lot to the coaches and players. There are not very many of these opportunities and in a year like the one that we are having right now, you are certainly not promised anything. We were on the bus getting ready to play a game a couple weeks ago that got canceled. I have heard teams, like Buffalo was two and a half hours on their way to a game … they had to turn around. You just aren’t promised a whole lot of opportunities. There is a Greek philosopher Epictetus that talked about the shortness of life and I hope we all appreciate the opportunities. It does, obviously with conference championship implications, those things do matter, we want to play for championships around here, but every single game should matter, whether playing for a championship or not. But I think with the added incentive it does heighten everyone’s awareness.”
Other than protecting the ball, what will be the emphasis this week heading into USM?
“Four turnovers is hard to move past. You are not going to win very many games, you can ask Marshall, speaking of the Rice Owls, how it was going with five. [It is] very hard to win when you have that many turnovers. You just cannot give that many possessions away, regardless of where you are at on the field. When you make it a short field for the offense, if you look at the battle of field position. When you cross the 50, offenses statistically … obviously a high percentage of points. You get to be a lot more aggressive. You get into four down territory rather than punting territory. Then you are right there on the edge of field goal range.
“When we turnover the ball in those scenarios in bad positions, that is not good obviously for the team. I think that too, what the turnovers did, was they were drive killers. We looked at the fumble that we had when the ball was moving. We were down in there. There was a little bit of rhythm going and then bam. It is deflating at times when those things happen. It is your job as coaches to get those guys up, like ‘hey we are doing really good things, but we have got to take care of the football.’ The other drive killer that you get is pre-snap penalties, whether it is a false start or whether it is a lack of communication, whatever it is, I read a stat a year and a half or two years ago that drives with a negative play in it have something less than a 20 percent chance of scoring.
“So the emphasis will be to stay ahead of the chains in one capacity or another, whether it is disciplined football pre-snap or communication post-snap. Those things are critically important to staying on the field and giving yourself and your team the best chance of scoring points. The point that you were making is that yeah, those things are a little bit obvious, I think that they are important but one of the things too is that we have to strain and finish blocks. When we do that and when we play with high levels of effort and great technique good things happen with our running backs. We have seen it happen before and that has been a emphasis for us this week – where our pad level is. Our feet moving on contact and driving and moving defenders. Straining to finish blocks and execution from that standpoint, effort, is a huge point of emphasis so that we can create more of those holes, we can get our backs into the secondary, whoever is running the ball when we get into the play action and stuff like that off of it.”
About The Burlsworth Trophy
The Burlsworth Trophy is named in honor of Brandon Burlsworth, former University of Arkansas walk-on and All-American offensive lineman. Burlsworth’s life is also the subject of a major motion picture, “GREATER,” which was released in 2016. The Burlsworth Trophy is given to the most outstanding football player in American who began his career as a walk-on and has shown outstanding performance on the field. Each nominee must have begun his first season of participation with FBS (D1) football program without financial aid of any kind from his university’s athletic department.
The 2019 winner was defensive end Kenny Willekes from Michigan State University. After receiving no Division I scholarship offers, Willekes walked-on at Michigan State, where he became All-American, the Big 10 Defensive Lineman of the Year, and Michigan State’s all-time leader in tackles for loss (51). The 2018 winner was Clemson’s Hunter Renfrow, who had 186 receptions for 2133 yards and 15 touchdowns, four of which were in national championship games.
Inside the Owls’ Burrow On this week’s Owls’ Burrow, host and producer Frank Forte will talk with head coach Willie Taggart about the final regular-season game at Southern Miss. Also featured are outside linebacker coach and recruiting coordinator Raymond Woodie, plus a “Pads Off” segment featuring linebacker Caliph Brice. This week’s 20th season moment looks back at 2004 and the Owls’ season opener at Hawaii. With FAU scheduled to play on Thursday night, this week’s show will air on Fox Sports South Florida at 6 p.m. on both Wednesday, Dec. 9th and Dec. 10th.
