Q&A: Coach Rick Stockstill wraps up 2021 season

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — It was a roller coaster of a season for Blue Raider football. Heck, nearly every season is for almost every team in college football.

But after playing four different quarterbacks throughout the season, dealing with crucial injuries and maladies in the team's final two games, and battling through it all, head coach Rick Stockstill remains extremely grateful for the players that got his team to a 7-6 season and a Bahamas Bowl win.

"I'm just humbled and proud and appreciative of these players," Stockstill told GoBlueRaiders.com during a sit-down interview.

Ahead of the winter break on campus, and the 2022 season, Stockstill met with GBR.com staff writer Sam Doughton to discuss the team's unique adversity this season, what National Signing Day was like from overseas, and the future of the Blue Raider program.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

With you starting four different quarterbacks this year, all the injuries, missing three offensive starters for the bowl game, would've you have believed y'all had the ability to achieve the success you did achieve this year given all that was thrown at you?

There's always going to be injuries during the course of the year, there's always going to be adversity, every team, every year. But, this is the first time in my career as a head coach and an assistant coach that we've ever gotten to our fourth quarterback. So if you had told me at the beginning of the year that you're going to have 16 guys have to have surgery in the postseason, and have 4-5 guys that get surgery earlier in the year, I would have told you it would be a tough mountain to climb. So that's a lot of injuries that this team played through and we had to overcome. And then you play your last five games with a true freshman quarterback that you planned on redshirting...I'm not going to say no, but I'd say it would be hard.

Then you throw in losing three starters for the Bahamas Bowl. And it wasn't a starter over here on defense, a starter over here on offense, it was all on offense. You practice for two weeks, you formulate a game plan, and then at eight o'clock, nine o'clock the night before a game you play then you have to make yet another adjustment.

I told them Friday morning, pre game meal, I said 'We're three down. Three good players down, but no excuses, we're not using that as an excuse, we're going to get this sucker done.' And you think about 18-year old, 19-year old, 20-year old kids going 'man, we just lost our leading receiver. Man, we just lost our starting tackle. Man, we just lost one of our fastest guys.' But they didn't flinch, they didn't bat an eye.

That's why I said after the Bahamas Bowl and really even after the FAU game, that it's not what is said about you, it's not the circumstances that you have to deal with that define you as a man, that define you as a football player. It's what's inside you that defines you. I constantly said that in preparation for Toledo. I said it at halftime for Toledo, I told them how much I believed in them. How I believed we were going to win, how I believe you're made of the right stuff, now go out and prove it. And they did that.

I knew this team had great leadership. A lot better leadership, more maturity than we've had the last two years. And that's no slap in the face to those previous two teams, but we had guys (this year) that have been through some battles and really played well. You throw it all into the mix, I'm just really proud of our coaches, our players, and our team.

It seemed like it wasn't just the senior leaders that had that extra "want-to" inside of them down the stretch, it was really everyone on the roster. Is that more of a credit to those leaders, or to just the character of those on the roster in general?

You know, I said this after the FAU game, and I'll say it now after the Bahamas Bowl, but I don't think you can get a true perspective of watching this team play on TV. I don't know if you can see how hard they played, how hard they competed. Just the amount of effort that they put into it, throughout that game.

Down 17 at FAU, come back and win. You're down three at the half (to Toledo), you come back and you score 17 in the fourth quarter to win. Just the heart, the guts, the toughness, the determination, the competitive spirit that this team has. It's leadership. It's guys that have been in this program that know how to practice, how to compete, that know how to work. Our coaching staff, everybody involved in this program is the reason why. And obviously, mostly it's the players. I don't know if you can get a true feeling and understanding on TV, because man, it was a relentless effort watching them play.

You had the first national signing day of the year take place while you were down in the Bahamas. What was that like, and how did your staff adjust to the unusual circumstances?

(Director of Player Personnel) Eli Miller did a fantastic job, our coaches did a good job. I thought we did a good job of educating our signees before we left. Because of our phone service and internet and WiFi being spotty, I was probably more worried about that.

When they say they're going to send that fax in, and nobody faxes any more, but when they say they're going to send that in at nine o'clock and it doesn't come, now you start worrying. And now, you're out of the country. We had practice that morning, we're eastern time zone down there, we're waiting on the central time zone. A couple of them came in early, and then you're waiting and waiting.

But we pulled it off without a hiccup. There was still a little bit of nervousness, probably from only me, just because it was our first time being out of the country on signing day.

Of course, you don't have your full class ready after this early signing period, almost no program does. How big a boost does the end of the season give to the message you can send out of players in the portal, at the junior college level, or still in high school, that you're still targeting?

You end your season in a bowl game, that's special, because that's a childhood dream of everybody that wants to play college football. There's eight year olds, ten year olds on Friday and Saturday, watching bowl games. I remember watching the Rose Bowl with my dad when I was a little kid. And I always dreamed, 'Man, I want to play in a bowl game one day.' Every kid in America that ends up going to play college ball, that's a goal and a dream.

So we can tell them about our success that we've had here, the consistency that we've had. Now you win that bowl game, that's a little bit more of the icing on the cake. When our players come back in January, they can walk around proud that they're one of a handful of teams that won their bowl game. So I think it'll help recruiting along with the facility project that you can continue to attract portal guys, high school guys, junior college guys, as we fill out this class.

You've had a very stable staff through large portions of your time at Middle Tennessee. Obviously, with Siriki Diabate taking a job at UConn, you've got at least one coaching position to fill. Do you anticipate any other changes coming down the pike, or do you think this core group that made this year possible is going to stick together?

It's hard to say. I've been in it long enough to never know when change might happen. The money is so good at places now that if you get offered, it's kind of hard financially to turn it down. I mean Siriki doubled his salary. So you never know.

But our staff did a nice job this year. I'll evaluate our team, I'll evaluate our staff here in the next few weeks and see where we are. I don't ever do that during the course of the year. I mean, you're constantly evaluating, but as far as making decisions, I don't ever do that. So I'll sit down now that our season is over, and there's a dead period here in recruiting for a few weeks and evaluate. But I've been in it long enough to know that once you think everything is stable, somebody gets a phone call.

Finally, looking ahead to the first part of the 2022 season, when the team returns for the start of winter workouts come January. I know that the turnover focus for the defense this season started as soon as everyone got back on campus in 2021. Is there any area you want to make sure your team is really really good at that can start as soon as you return?

One area that sticks out, obviously, is that we've got to get a lot better on third down offensively. We were better down at the Bahamas Bowl. But we weren't good enough or consistent enough on third down. I've got to go back and study if it's because we weren't very good on first down, or we weren't very good on second down, and therefore we were always in third and long situations.

We've got to continue to improve throwing the ball offensively. I'd like for us to be more explosive. Obviously, we've got to get some running backs in here, we've got to run the ball. Our offensive line needs to be more consistent, we've got to get better offensively in a lot of areas. We just weren't consistent enough in a lot of statistical areas.

And then defensively, they did a fantastic job creating takeaways. We were not very good on third down defense (in 2020). I thought we were a lot better (in 2021), but I still think there's room to grow. We averaged giving up about 25 points a game defensively. In this day and time, that's phenomenal. We were really so much better there, because last year we were maybe 35 points a game.

In the kicking game, we blocked kicks, we returned kicks, we covered better. Again, I just got back Saturday morning, going to evaluate everything and see where we are. We're losing some good players on both sides of the ball that obviously we'll need to replace in recruiting. But we did a lot of good things in all three phases.

I'm just humbled and proud and appreciative of these players. You know, when we were 1-3, I told them after Charlotte that I believed in them and that they were going to be in a bowl game. They came to work every day. We kept battling.

Middle Tennesee State University Athletics

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