Every new season brings a blank slate and a great deal of hope. Yet for FAU football, that hope was lost very early on.

The Owls began the season with a tough schedule featuring the Florida Gators, the Michigan State Spartans and the 2010 defending national champions, the Auburn Tigers — all teams were ranked in the Top 25 at some point in the 2011 season.

The offense displayed signs of confusion,disarray and disappointment in their first two games, as they only scored three points and were ranked last (out of 120 teams) in almost every offensive category in the nation.

Then, against Auburn, the offense stood blow-for-blow with the Tigers and even had more first downs (20-16), plus won the time of possession battle (33:46 to 26:14).

In order to find out from the Owls themselves what changed, the UP had exclusive interviews with two members of the offense, running back Alfred Morris and tight end Nexon Dorvilus.

Nexon Dorvilus

UP: What was the entire offense’s outlook on itself after the game against Michigan State?

ND: Well, after Michigan State, we just looked to be more consistent and execute more. The theme for the two weeks before we played Auburn was ‘to have more fun.’ That’s why we all choose to play football in the first place when we’re just kids. We had fun, and that’s something that we weren’t really doing in those first two games. Everybody was kind of uptight, trying to do everything exactly the right way. We decided just to loosen up a little bit, have some fun and try to execute as consistently as possible.

UP: Against Auburn, the offense showed significant signs of improvement. What was the main difference in the two weeks leading up to Auburn and the approach to the game, compared with the game against UF and Michigan State?

ND: Finishing. Hands down…finishing. Finishing our assignment. When we broke down film, the difference between us last year and this year was that last year it was more people not knowing where to go or who to block and stuff like that. This year we had all that down but we weren’t finishing most of our assignments. That was something really big, just finishing and winning our one-on-one battles out there.

UP: You say finishing. You guys had 307 yards against Auburn. You held the ball for 33 minutes but you guys turned the ball over three times. What is the offense trying to do, going forward, to keep ‘finishing’ and execute all the way through? 

ND: Take care of the ball. Taking care of the ball was something we did really well in the first two games, we barely had any turnovers. But in the Auburn game, it came to fruition that when we turned over the ball that that was our downfall. So this week we are really focusing on just taking care of the ball, not turning over the football and basically taking what we did well in the first two weeks, what we did right against Auburn and putting those two together. Once we do that we will be clicking on offense even more.

Alfred Morris

UP: What happened in the two weeks between the Michigan State game and the Auburn game that changed the offense’s ability to execute on the field?

AM: We got a lot of good work in. We had a lot of good practices, some high intensity practices and high tempo practices. We focused in more. We re-prioritized what really mattered. We started studying film more, started executing in practice more because that’s where it starts. If you practice like crap it’ll show on Saturdays. Pretty much we changed up almost everything and it paid off a little bit. The two weeks of rest in between also helped get some guys who were banged up back on the field and back to 100 percent.

UP: Tell me about the different approach the offense took towards the Auburn game.

AM: We added some new packages and some new plays to get the ball in our playmakers’ hands as much as possible. The intensity was a big thing we changed. We were lollygagging in practice, not executing and making a lot of mistakes, just going through the motions so to speak. Instead of continuing to do that, we changed that to have high intensity practice, holding each other accountable for our mistakes and becoming more vocal. It really helped out because even though we didn’t get the result we wanted, we turned some negatives into positives and we have to make sure to roll with the momentum and keep it going.

UP: When I talked to Nexon he talked a little bit about the team trying to go out there and having some fun, did you notice that, too?

AM: Yeah, that’s a great point, that’s something we also tried to do. When you look at the numbers from the first two games, it almost forces you to change everything you’re doing, but you never think to have some fun out there while being serious on the practice field. But yeah that is something we needed to do and it worked as we were looser and ready to go against Auburn.