The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Edsall confident of turnaround
Believes changing culture of team will establish strong program
STORRS — From snarky comments on social media, dwindling crowds at home games and media reports from the string of losses, it hasn’t been hard for UConn football coach Randy Edsall to get a sense of the contempt and perhaps frustration with which outsiders currently view the struggling Huskies.
However, even in the wake of a spirit-sapping home loss to a two-win UMass team, all it took was a text message from a former player to put things into the proper perspective for the veteran coach.
While Edsall didn’t name the sender of the message, it was a player who started on some of his first couple of UConn teams.
“He read some article and said, ‘Coach, think back, that’s exactly how it was my first two years,’ ” Edsall said at Tuesday’s news conference previewing the upcoming game at Tulsa. “Then we had leaders and we took off after that because everybody knows what the culture is, you’ve established that culture.’
“I could care (less) about how many we win or lose, I really could right now because if we don’t get the culture right, don’t get the program established, you’re never going to be a consistent winner anyhow. That’s how we got to where we were before. A lot of people don’t like that you have to go through those things.”
Edsall still has the note from former UConn athletic director Lew Perkins who told Edsall after he was hired that building a successful program was more important than immediate success. Edsall’s Huskies won only seven games in his
first two seasons. The Huskies lost by a combined score of 101-31 in his first two games at the helm.
Edsall referenced some of those early struggles Tuesday. The 2000 team, his second squad, finished with a 3-8 record. Heading into the 2000 season opener, 14 freshmen and 12 sophomores were among the offensive and defensive twodeep chart. When the freshmen on that team were seniors, they formed the nucleus of a 9-3 squad.
Edsall wasn’t ready to guarantee that the 2021 Huskies would win nine games, but with 18 freshmen and 13 sophomores on the updated offensive and defensive twodeep chart, he is trying to return the Huskies to their winning ways by following a familiar formula.
“There are strides,” Edsall said. “You don’t see it with the wins and losses, you aren’t going to see it with the wins and losses until the program is established and you have everybody doing the same thing; you have those guys taking ownership and taking control.”
Edsall drove home his point by not taking backup quarterback Marvin Washington on the road trip to South Florida. He announced on Tuesday that Washington again would be staying in Connecticut when the Huskies play at Tulsa on Saturday.
“People can speculate but it has nothing to do with anything other than you can’t be accountable to do the things he’s supposed to do,” Edsall said. “If I don’t do that for the kid now, he’ll be back in the streets of Orlando and I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. That’s the difference of what people don’t understand about college athletics and we’ve gotten away from that in college athletics, it’s all about winning, it’s all about the money. For me, it’s about helping these kids become the best person, best student, best athlete they can so they can go on in life and be successful.”
UConn is guaranteed its eighth straight losing season and Edsall said he isn’t as concerned about the final won-loss record as much as laying the groundwork for success in the future.
“I want to win just as much as anybody but we’re
not ready to win yet,” Edsall said. “We have a lot of youth that don’t know how to win, don’t know how to pay the price yet because they haven’t been here, and I’m not criticizing but they don’t know. They’ll know, they’ll figure it out, they are figuring it out and we’ll get there but everybody wants to sprinkle the fairy dust, wants to put in the microwave for five seconds and think everything’s good. That isn’t what it’s all about in my book and if people don’t like it, tough (expletive).
“This is probably a fiveyear process. I’m not crybabying or anything like that, complaining, I’m just saying this is the truth. I love these kids to death and they’re working their tails off. I have to make decisions based on what can help us be the best we can, and sometimes those decisions are tough decision to make but hey, I’m a leader and I have to make them. Some are good and some don’t turn out as well. I made a decision to play all of these young kids that weren’t ready to play but they were the best guys in my decision and in my coaching staff’s opinion.”
UConn has played 19 true freshmen and 13 redshirt freshmen this season. The number could grow, as true freshman quarterback Steve Krajewski was seeing some work with the second-team offense in Tuesday’s practice, so perhaps he’ll see some live game action before the end of the season.
In the meantime, Edsall is pushing his young team and asking them to set their expectations higher because the more work that gets done in the final four games of the season would benefit the team moving forward.
“It’s hard to play and win with a lot of young guys especially on defense but we have the talent, we’re just young,” UConn redshirt freshman defensive tackle Caleb Thomas said. “Like Coach Edsall said, we need to develop, get bigger, stronger and faster and that will come with time. We have to put the time in which I’m sure we ‘ll do because we are not proud of these outcomes, obviously, I don’t think anybody is, so we’re going to put that effort into making sure we’re better for the future.”