Bye time to kill those penalties
When UCF linebacker Eric Mitchell stopped Tulsa running back T.K. Wilkerson behind the line of scrimmage on fourth-and-one late in the game Friday, the redshirt junior couldn’t help but celebrate.
With the Knights trailing 34-31 and about the get the football back at their own 44-yard line with 1:07 left in the game, things seemed ripe for another comeback win. But that quickly changed.
“I actually made the stop and I didn’t see the flag,” Mitchell recalled. “I saw Eriq Gilyard and Richie Grant come run on me and celebrate with me, but when I saw the faces on the sidelines, that’s when I knew everything changed and I looked back and saw the flag.
“I can’t blame anybody for that. We’re a team; we took that L together.”
What could have been a game-defining moment for UCF turned into an embarrassing and crushing blow as the team was flagged for 12 men on the field. The penalty gave the Golden Hurricane an automatic first down, allowing them to run out the clock and sealing the Knights’ third loss of the season.
“That’s on us as coaches and that can’t happen,” UCF assistant coach Willie Martinez said Wednesday. “When you’re trying to do matchups, there are no excuses for it and we take full responsibility for that. That’s not on the players; that’s on us.”
UCF was flagged a season-high 15 times for a loss of 120 yards Friday night. That’s the most penalties in a single game in more than a decade. The Knights rank No. 120 among Football Bowl Subdivision teams in penalties, averaging more than 70 yards per game.
“There were a lot of penalties that changed the way a drive was played; negatively on the offensive side of the ball that put us in long-yardage situations and defensively that extended a drive by giving them a new set of downs,” UCF coach Josh Heupel said of the penalties.
Five times in the game against Tulsa, UCF’s offense was flagged for a penalty on third or fourth down. On all five occasions, the Knights failed to convert.
The UCF defense was flagged on third or fourth downs three times, and on all occasions the penalty resulted in a Tulsa first down.
“That’s something that we work on every day and try to hold each other accountable for that and obviously it starts with the staff and holding those guys to that,” Martinez said. “We’ve just got to do a better job.
“There are too many good football teams out there, especially when you’re coaching defense when these offenses are so explosive. You can’t give people second chances and that happened to us Friday night and you’re not going to come on the right side of the outcome.”
For the Knights, it comes down to the small details.
“[Defensive coordinator Randy] Shannon and all the defensive coaches as well as the offense, we work on those small things,” Mitchell said. “He always preaches about those small things. But at that same time, that’s on us. We’ve got to do better as a defense and as an offense to not let those types of mistakes happen.”
The players say they are holding each other accountable for the excessive penalties.
“Yeah, most definitely. The little things that we do, we don’t let it go unnoticed amongst each other,” Gilyard said. “We hold each other accountable for the mistakes that we make. Everyone is held to a higher standard, so everyone around here has got to pick up the slack.”
McCrae update: Heupel said injured running back Greg McCrae continues to work toward returning from an apparent knee injury he suffered during the team’s win over East Carolina on Oct. 19. The junior missed the next three games against Temple, Houston and Tulsa.
“He’s been good and full go today and practiced a lot last week,” Heupel said.
Despite practicing, Heupel said the coaching staff decided to hold out McCrae against the Golden Hurricane.
“We felt like we didn’t want to play him in that football game and he was close to being 100% and ready to go, but we didn’t feel like it was the right time with a bye week coming on the back end of it and being sure to get him all the way back to 100%,” Heupel said.