One of the great skills in coaching is the ability to motivate a team when there’s little to play for, whether real or perceived.
In late October, Toledo was 3-4 and the preseason objective of winning the Mid-American Conference West felt like a fantasy.
Every season, teams quit when adversity strikes and conference championships become unattainable. The opposite occurred with Toledo, which played its best football in the month of November.
It all started with a beatdown of Western Michigan on Oct. 23, carrying over into the final month as the Rockets closed the regular season on a three-game winning streak.
“It’s easy to put sayings on the wall during the offseason,” Toledo coach Jason Candle said. “It’s easy to write them all up there and say ‘The video doesn’t lie’ and ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ They’re the pillars of your program, but to watch them come to life and for those words to come off the wall, it resonates in the locker room.
“It’s a testament to the culture of our program and the toughness and resilience of the people in this locker room. If you don’t have that, there’s nothing to build off of and there is no future.”
Toledo averaged 45.5 points, 548.5 total yards, and 253.0 rushing yards per game in November.
“Everybody realized the amount of work we put in during this offseason,” junior running back Bryant Koback said. “We knew we owed ourselves to make it pay. It doesn’t help to put your tail between your legs and fold. True winners are going to go out there and compete every time.”
During Saturday’s 49-14 win over Akron, Koback had 135 rushing yards, an additional 53 yards receiving, and three total touchdowns. It was his fifth consecutive 100-yard rushing performance.
In November, Koback has 639 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns on 70 carries, a per-game average of 159.7 yards and a per-carry average of 9.1 yards. The surge in production came via Koback’s natural talent and immense improvement along UT’s once-maligned offensive line.
“The running game is very rhythmic,” Candle said. “It’s Point A to Point B. It takes some time. When you get in sync and you’re able to keep safeties occupied because you have receiver talent on the perimeter and you can keep defenses honest, you’re running into clean looks most of the time. When you give a great player clean looks, he’s going to produce.”
Times got particularly tough in early November after the Rockets lost a shootout to Eastern Michigan. It was the third home loss of the season and came on a night the defense was uncharacteristically inferior. Dropping to 4-5 and playing in cold weather isn’t the romanticized version of college football.
UT didn’t care. A locker room that Candle applauded all season had its finest hour.
“We all leaned on each other,” said senior safety Tycen Anderson, a three-time captain. “The offense leaned on the defense, and the defense leaned on the special teams. We all just stepped up. When things weren’t going our way, we truly kept believing and leaning on each other. That’s been our motto since the beginning of the spring to now.”
All of the positive momentum — the efficient, high-octane offense, the physical defense, and the team-wide cohesion — coincided with Dequan Finn’s emergence at quarterback.
The third-year freshman has completed 67.8 percent (74 of 109) of his passes for 1,138 yards with 11 touchdowns and one interception in November, and he’s only been sacked once in the past three games.
“He’s done a tremendous job taking care of the football, and that’s usually not a characteristic a young quarterback has,” Candle said. “You have to stay composed. You have to say poised. You have to sit in there in tough moments and take some tough things. He’s done that, and he hasn’t wavered. He hasn’t shattered. He hasn’t broken. He hasn’t fractured. He just stays in there and stays consistent. Never has he folded.”
Neither has Toledo.
First Published November 28, 2021, 12:51 a.m.
