Nothing Florida Atlantic sees this week at Air Force will be entirely new to its team and coaching staff.
The Owls have already played in front of 86,000 at No. 11 Florida, so the crowd size won’t be overwhelming to them regardless of how many file into Falcon Stadium.
Florida Atlantic has already faced run-heavy Georgia Southern and shut them down, so though Air Force’s style is different the general idea of facing a ground attack will not be foreign.
And just in general, this is an Owls team coached by Willie Taggert (formerly the coach at Florida State and Oregon) with veteran coaches Mike Stoops (longtime assistant at Kansas State and Oklahoma and former coach at Arizona) as defensive coordinator and Michael Jonson (served stints as offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers and UCLA) as offensive coordinator.
The quarterback is N’Kosi Perry, who threw for 228 yards in the Cheez-It Bowl last year for Miami against Oklahoma State before transferring. Coming out of high school, Perry was a four-star recruit and the No. 7 dual-threat quarterback in his class — just behind players like Tua Tagovailoa and Sam Ehlinger.
So, any hopes that this might be a pushover, knockoff-brand opponent that Air Force can control the way it did, say, when Georgia State visited in 2016 and Air Force won 48-14 and held the ball for more than three quarters of the game; those can be put to rest.
“They are really sound,” Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said.
The Owls have always envisioned themselves as a big-time football program, as evidenced by the big-name hires it has made. Since the program was launched in 2001 they’ve hired five coaches. Three of them were Howard Schnellenberger (the architect of Miami’s turnaround in the early 1980s and a national champion there), Lane Kiffin (the wunderkind who had coached the Oakland Raiders, Tennessee and USC before rebounding with the Owls in Boca Raton, Fla., and landing again in the SEC at Ole Miss) and now Taggert (recently one of the profession’s rising stars and looking to follow Kiffin’s trajectory).
“They’re highly committed to their program,” Calhoun said.
While Air Force (2-1) is looking to rebound off a crushing, 49-45 loss to Utah State that included a blown, 10-point lead in the fourth quarter, Florida Atlantic (2-1) is looking to establish itself as a team that can go to a place like the academy and win.
“That's the next step with our football team and the next challenge of what we have to do if we want to be the championship team that we aspire to be,” Taggert said. “To go out and be able to win on the road.”
Kiffin had the most successful run in Florida Atlantic history, leading the team to an 11-3 mark in 2017 and 10-3 in 2019. The Falcons visited Kiffin’s Owls in 2018 and lost 33-27.
Air Force players, many of whom were part of the 2018 team, don’t need a reminder of that loss for motivation. They just needed to experience Saturday evening’s game in which Utah State put up 630 yards and then turn on film to see a similar offense featured by Florida Atlantic.
The Owls are averaging 298 passing yards and 178.3 rushing yards and have outscored opponents by an average of 32.3-18.33.
“Since they’re so similar offensively (to Utah State), we’re diving deep into the film of Saturday’s game and taking what we learned,” Air Force spur linebacker Vince Sanford said. “We learned that we’re probably not as invincible as we thought as a defense, but practice on Monday we honed in on our mistakes and we’re going to get those fixed on Saturday for sure.”
If not, Florida Atlantic has the experience to exploit those same areas.
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