Albany State returning to SIAC competition with trip to Miles

ALBANY — In the midst of a two-game losing streak, Albany State head coach Gabe Giardina said the Rams need to take a page out of Aaron Rodgers’ playbook and just relax.

Last week’s 48-16 loss to West Georgia saw the Rams have some uncharacteristic hiccups on offense. They gained just 207 total yards and 10 first downs.

ASU’s first drive was just 12 seconds long, and Giardina said it was a day of self-inflicted wounds.

“We’ve just gotta get off the field on third down on defense, and offensively, we just shot ourselves in the foot a bunch,” he said.

Offensive coordinator Newland Issac said the Rams aren’t executing as well as they were the first two games of the season.

“We went back and graded it, and there was a lot of missed assignments causing a lot of three-and-outs,” he said. “Those three-and-outs were getting us off the field and keeping our defense on the field a lot longer than we wanted.”

This Saturday, the Rams hit the road to face SIAC opponent Miles College. The Golden Bears are 2-2 on the season, as well, after a 27-24 win over Morehouse last week.

Miles hasn’t been the most potent team offensively this year, averaging 21 points a game and 263.3 total yards of offense. Defensively they’ve allowed 32.25 points a game while surrendering 434 total yards per contest.

At this point in the season, the Rams are averaging 23 points per game on 368 total yards of offense while holding to opponents to 25.5 points per game on 328.8 total yards of offense.

Giardina said he would still like to see his offense execute at a higher level and put more points on the board. Issac said they have to eliminate mistakes in the redzone in order to make that happen.

“We’re having a lot of missed assignments as far as running backs, receivers, o-line, across the board,” Issac said. “Really cleaning up those missed assignments is the key down there.”

Issac said the team has had a good week of practice and he looks for the team to come out sharp on Saturday.

“This is probably one of our better practices as far as executing and being locked in,” he said. “The past few weeks we’ll have one really good day then one really bad day and Thursday try to pick it back up. But this week right here, it’s been really, really good. The last two days have been a lot of focus, and people just really locked in on their assignments.”

As the Rams return to SIAC play, Giardina said he’s feeling good in terms of how the Rams’ out of conference schedule has prepared them.

“I think we’ll be battle tested. I wish we had played better the last two weeks, that’s frustrating, but it’s good to start off with some heavy hitters early,” he said. “We just gotta get our confidence up and get our swagger back and just go play.”