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Arkansas State Head Coach Steve Roberts Talks FAU.......

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Arkansas State Head Coach Steve Roberts Talks FAU.......

Arkansas State Head Coach Steve Roberts Talks FAU…….

The Game

It will obviously be a big challenge this week heading down to Florida to play FAU, a tremendous offensive football team-one of the top teams in the country and atop the league charts offensively.


Owl's QB Jeff Van Camp

I am very impressed with the way their quarterback, Van Camp, came in and played last week against UAB. I've said several times to our team and individuals this week, if you turn on that film and you don't know that Rusty Smith is not playing-it's very, very difficult to tell. Van Camp is big, 6-5, and he's been in that system now for four years. You can certainly see why they were so excited about him throughout the last couple of years when they talked about their back-up quarterback and the promise that he has. He played an outstanding game last week-threw the football extremely well, appears to have done a lot of checks and audibles at the line of scrimmage, got them out of some plays and into some good plays.


Owl's Tight Ends

He (Van Camp) has a lot of weapons around him, especially at the tight end position. They have big tight ends that are really more wide receivers, big wide receivers, than they are tight ends. They line them up as much as wide outs as they do in the tight end positions and try to create some mismatch problems on linebackers. They have great size and great play-making ability.


Alfred Morris

Alfred Morris is having a tremendous year as their tailback. He is running the football extremely effectively and he's very, very physical. He's a guy who has moved from fullback to tailback and has really done a good job in their offense.


Owl's Defense

Defensively, sort of hit and miss with them as they've had some very good games. You look at the Middle Tennessee game in particular, where they played outstanding defensively and really kept Middle Tennessee in check. They (MTSU) had to block two punts for them to win the game 27-20, but FAU played really well defensively in that ballgame. They played well defensively against Louisiana-Lafayette down in Lafayette. Then, last week, obviously didn't play well-so they've been inconsistent. I know they're fairly inexperienced on the defensive side of the football, and sometimes with that comes some of the inconsistency they've experienced.


Preparing for Van Camp

In a lot of situations you would think so, but in this situation that's not true at all. They run the same offense and they operate it sort of like clones. As I said earlier, you really can't tell a difference in their production and what they're trying to do at the quarterback position as far as what they ask him (Van Camp) to do from a check and adjustments stand point. So we're preparing for FAU and what they do offensively because that's what they're going to do with or without Rusty Smith.


Owl's Offense

They do run some spread stuff. The thing that makes them difficult to prepare for is the different formations they use with the same personnel groups. All the opponents we face, if they want to go to four wide outs they take a tight end or fullback out of the game. You won't see that as much with FAU. If they want to go four wide outs, then they have tight ends lining up as wide outs. As I said earlier, those guys are just as much big wide receivers just as they are tight ends.

They put you in a bind, because you don't know what formation they'll break the huddle with. It could be a pro-I formation where you like to have three linebackers in the game, or it could be four or five wide where you would like to have nickel in the game. We'll do a combination of both, more based on down and distance that what personnel they have in the game.
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