The FAU Owls will be heading into what will be their second home game this season against the Fordham Rams on Saturday.

Coming off the 38-6 victory over Georgia Southern, head coach Willie Taggart said that the team’s got to keep working to get better every week as the season continues.

“That’s our goal each and every week, striving to play [at] our best,” Taggart said. “We got to keep working in practice, do all the necessary things we need to do in order to be consistent and play as well as we did in the second half [of the game].”

Fordham currently stands with an 0-2 record, featuring a 52-7 blowout loss to Nebraska and a respectable 26-23 defeat to Monmouth. Despite having won no games yet, one of the Rams’ few bright spots in their season has been senior linebacker Ryan Greenhagen, who has made a whopping 59 tackles over two games. Taggart complimented him as “a machine” with his tackling ability.

“He can be out of position but he’s gonna keep running around and make a tackle. He’s a good example of getting to the ball, running to the ball,” Taggart said regarding Greenhagen. “He’s fun to watch and like I said, he just plays at a different level.”

Even though this will be Taggart’s first game against a team from the Patriot League, the conference Fordham is in, he said that he’ll continue approaching it like every other game.

“It doesn’t matter what conference they’re in or where they come from. We still [have] to play by the football rules and do the things we’re supposed to in order to win the ballgame,” Taggart said. “There’s a standard in the way that we want to play and in a way we want to practice and that’s not going to ever change and that’s gonna be the challenge each and every week to play up to that standard, no matter who we’re playing against.” 

The Owls host Fordham at FAU Stadium in Howard Schnellenberger Field on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN3.

Richard Pereira is the Sports Editor for the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him @Rich26Pereira.