Rod Broadway, head football coach of Grambling State University is a potential candidate for the vacant East Carolina head coaching job, according to the Deriso Report.
Broadway has flirted with leaving the FCS program at Grambling before, interviewing with Duke and being linked to the coaching search at Florida A&M. He’s not the only coach on ECU’s wish list, however. Other names circulating include Temple’s Al Golden and Middle Tennessee’s Rick Stockstill.
I certainly wouldn’t classify Grambling’s season as a failure, and I doubt most people outside of the program would. But it appears that we all would have a hard time convincing GSU head coach Rod Broadway of that sentiment.
“We’re just trying to win a ballgame,” Broadway said. “We’d like to finish this thing out strong. We want to play better and play with more pride. We’re totally disappointed where we are as a football team and as a football program right now.”
Courtesy of the Deriso Report, here’s Grambling head football coach talking about the Tigers’ loss to Prairie View in the State Fair Classic.
Grambling running back Frank Warren was expected to do great things in 2008, but conditioning was one of the early reasons given for what ultimately turned into a sophomore slump that yielded just 546 yards and four touchdowns on the season.
Greg Dillon came into his own last season, but his early problems with turnovers and quick decisions were the stuff of media wonder.
But now we know what may have been the true culprit for both sore spots of the Grambling offense; a suspect offensive line.
Rod Broadway and Co. have been focused on keeping Dillon in the pocket, further exposing fundamental problems in blocking.
“We’ve got to do a better job of protecting him,” Broadway told me. “We’re passing blocking and we’re getting pushed into the pocket. It’s hard throwing out of a well.”
Meanwhile, Cornelius Walker and Frank Warren haven’t been able to find another gear in the ground game.“The running backs are going to have problems if we don’t block anybody,” Broadway said. “I don’t care who you have running the ball, if you are not blocking, it will be hard to get yards.”
Obviously, Grambling can find success in spite of a porous offensive line, and it doesn’t seem like other teams in the SWAC can do much about it. Only four teams – Prairie View, Jackson State and Grambling, yielded fewer than 120 yards rushing per game last season.
But it does make for an interesting story line for the Tigers’ quest to repeat as SWAC football champions in 2009. If Greg Dillon is discouraged from running out of the pocket for his life, does it mean even more turnovers on forced throws or fumbles?
Time will soon, and very convincingly, give us the answers.
A conference call was held this afternoon in anticipation of the upcoming MEAC/SWAC Challenge in Orlando. Below are some key notes from participants on the call, MEAC Commissioner Dennis Thomas, SWAC Commissioner Duer Sharp, and MEAC/SWAC Challenge Executive Director Nikki Godfrey.
J.P. Tillman, the transfer quarterback from Missouri who helped the Grambling State Tigers to their first victory on the season last week, will get the start this Saturday against Northwestern State.
There had been position shuffling between Tillman and sophomore quarterback Greg Dillon, but Tillman appears to have solified his chances for securing the job with a 12-of-25 performance for 143 yards and two touchdowns in their 29-0 victory against Alcorn State laste weekend.
“Hopefully, I’d like to see one of them separate and start playing well, so we don’t have to keep playing double quarterbacks,” coach Rod Broadway said today. “We’re going to try what we need to do to win the football game. Tillman came in and got us moving a little bit. He protected the football and managed the game.”
Greg Dillon, a sophomore who ran the scout team for the Grambling Tigers in 2007, has been named the starting quarterback for the 2008 campaign, head coach Rod Broadway announced yesterday.
Dillon won the spot over sophomore Missouri-transfer J.P. Tillman and freshman Brendan Crawford by throwing the sole touchdown of the preseason. He will get his first start against the University of Nevada this Saturday.
Said Broadway, “We’re playing a lot of young guys. We’re probably going to have three freshman on the offensive line. Nobody wants to be in that position. We have a quarterback with no experience and we have new receivers. … We have to shorten the game and play great defense.”
Things could work out well for the Tigers behind Dillon and running back Frank Warren, who was a star freshman in 2007. But to listen to Broadway, it certainly doesn’t seem like help will come from under center?
There’s already big questions at quarterback for the Grambling State Tigers, but will there be questions at running back as well?
Frank Warren, the team’s star running back who rushed for more than 900 yards as a true freshman last season, came into camp with 10 pounds more than what he left with. Warren attributes it to an off-season weight lifting program. Tigers head coach Rod Broadway calls it out of shape:
“Frank came in a little bit out of shape,” Broadway said. “We’re disappointed in his effort and his conditioning, so if he’s gonna play, he’s gonna have to work his way back into playing condition.
“…He’s young. He’s a sophomore. I guess he didn’t quite understand completely how much work it would take, and didn’t quite work as hard as we had hoped he would, because we thought he had a heck of a career ahead of him with the way he played last year.”
If he gonna play…those are some strong words from a coach who has few options at quarterback, and many eyes around the SWAC on the developing situation at the position. Maybe it was just Broadway speaking out of disappointment, but to give the impression that your primary offensive weapon may be an afterthought to begin the season doesn’t look good for Tiger football.
