Hasn’t been a great season so far for ECU football

So we know about the struggles of state, right?

I mean, everything's relative. It's probably about where they should be this year, to be perfectly honest. The Wolfpack, everybody you talked to, well, everybody was going to be kind of a bridge year trying to get to the future. They were hoping that the offense would be better. As it turns out, the offense is not. North Carolina is doing what I think a lot of people expected them to do.

We're going to talk about them extensively, really, next hour. Duke is having a good year. App State's also struggling three and three. There are starting to be questions about App State football, which nobody wants to hear, but I understand based on the precedent set, the amount of success that program has had, I totally understand why there are, or there's some wondering whether or not Sean Clark's the guy. Not even speaking to that at this point, but it is clearly out there. If you are an App State fan, you know, and you are an App State fan.

I am. And it has not gone well this year. Yes. The home loss to Coastal. Coastal, look, that's a pretty difficult league. Yeah.

Right? Three and three overall. They played a challenging non-conference schedule. They beat East Carolina in a game where ECU actually had a lead.

Yeah, they did. I think it was a fourth quarter lead, but certainly a late third quarter lead up at Kid Brewer Stadium. Anyway, ECU was home to Charlotte, two one in five teams. And the one thing, as we bring in the head coach, Mike Houston here, and I appreciate your time, sir. You have, I'm going to get to the players in a second, but the truth of the matter is that you're not used to this.

You're not. Your history is winning. So, I'll get to the guys in a second, but how are you dealing with the struggles? Well, you know, it's certainly not, you know, what you want, and it certainly can be challenging, but, you know, at the end of the day, I have the opportunity to, you know, be in a phenomenal profession and to spend my days with these student athletes here at East Carolina. And I count my blessings every day I get up and come to work, and so I'm doing good. I'm keeping a positive attitude, and we're working every day to get better and to, you know, correct our mistakes and to build on the things we're doing well and, you know, give the Pirates a chance to win on game day. So I'm doing good.

When you go through film with these guys, what are the positives that you see that you can give to them that gives them maybe a more positive outlook? Well, I mean, you know, take, for example, last Saturday, you're playing SMU, which is one of the most talented teams in our league. They're probably the most talented team we've seen since Michigan. It's 14-10 in the fourth quarter, and we've got the ball and driving, you know, so you don't get to that point in the ball game if you're not doing a lot of really good things. But, you know, we've been in that situation in virtually every game. You know, the Michigan game, you know, we were behind a little bit more. In the Gardner Webb game, we were ahead by a lot, and the rest of the games have been just like that one.

So you're doing a lot of really good things. We played, you know, really, really well on special teams Saturday. We did some really, really good things defensively for the bulk of the day Saturday, and we did some good things offensively throughout the game. But we just, we have not been able to put it all together for, you know, for an entire game against a top-tier team yet. And, you know, we did not play well the last half of the fourth quarter Saturday, and that's the reason, you know, 14-10 turned into a loss.

Mike Houston is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. So how do you get out of the cycle of, I don't know if this is something that you're seeing, but expecting bad things to happen, because bad things have happened. How do you get out of that cycle if something like that is going on? Grow up. That's the biggest way, you know.

It's because it's, you know, it's, you got some veteran guys on defense, even though you don't have many seniors, you have a bunch of guys that played a lot. And, you know. With Sotik 2 for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, you could show off your skin again.

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Call 1-888-SOTYKTU to learn more. That has a lot to do with how to carry themselves. And then you've got a lot of new faces on offense and it's learning how to win. And it's learning how to mentally just keep yourself in a positive place in these tight ball games because we're going to be in tight ball games. And that's where the mental toughness comes in and the competitor comes in. And sometimes young guys struggle with that, but we've got to get beyond that. I mean, you're six games into the season.

You got to get beyond that. It's Charlotte coming up on Tuesday. This is a program that's new to your league. I mean, what do you know about them and what you expect coming up on Saturday? Well, the thing is, they're not just new to our league, this is a new team. And Coach Pogge has came in there and he has flipped the roster. I mean, there's, and I haven't counted them one by one, there's at least 50 transfers, maybe 60.

There's 20, I think 24 from the high school in Maryland that he coached at. You know, it is a brand new football team. I mean, the vast majority of the guys were not at Charlotte last year and, or the ones that are playing. And so it's, you know, you're getting to know not just a new conference opponent, it's, you know, how do these, and they went through the same thing.

He's trying to figure out who goes where, who plays together well. And so what you look at is I see a team that's very talented. I see a team that has a lot of explosive ability on offense. A team has played really well defensively. And, you know, they just like us have been in a lot of close ball games against a challenging schedule. And so, you know, I think we're up against a quality opponent on Saturday. And I think that it's going to be a heck of a ball game. Mike Houston is with us here. Two o'clock at Dowdy Ficklin Stadium.

It's East Carolina and Charlotte. So just back to the way to the situation that your team is in. And if you go back game by game by game, there are moments in games. And even in the Michigan game, we talked about it a long time ago.

It was early on, but there was an opportunity to make a play near midfield and it went the other way. Are those moments that you show these guys and you say, look, if something turns out different here, then the entire game is different. You're that close. Sure.

That's it. I mean, it's the last Thursday night. It's 14-10. We've got the ball. We're driving first down about the 43-yard line.

And, you know, you're sitting there as a competitor. You know, we're getting ready to go down here and score and take the lead in the fourth quarter. And you have two turnovers from that point that result in 10 points.

And that is the difference in the ballgame. And, you know, we got to do a better job of not committing those turnovers. So it comes down to, you know, doing a better job of coaching the ball security when you get in traffic, which is something we work every week. But, you know, we've got to do a better job with it. It comes to, you know, doing a better job with, you know, the quarterback and receivers being on the same page and seeing things the same way and reading things the same way and making the correct decisions. So we've got to do a better job of coaching these kids than to, you know, to make that play in that situation because you're literally, you know, one drive from taking control of the ballgame. And, you know, that's where you keep showing it to them. And they know, I mean, they know how close we are, which is why it's frustrating for the players and the coaches. But it's also why they have stayed, you know, motivated that we are so close. East Carolina is favored by four points over Charlotte.

I don't know what that says. May say that Charlotte is in a very similar position as the Pirates. But there is something to be said for, you know, a play goes here that, you know, one way or the other. It could. East Carolina could be in a better situation. Mike Houston is used to winning. This has to be eating them alive. Carvana value tracker visit Carvana dot com to start tracking your car's value today.