With all the noise surrounding the Border War, Drinkwitz wants players to focus on the game
Throughout the summer, Eliah Drinkwitz wanted to make sure his players knew the importance of this week’s game. The return of the Border War means a lot to a lot of people.
But once the opening kickoff is in the air, all the history goes away for those on the field. All that matters is executing your job on the next play.
“Once the ball is kicked, you got to play the game,” Drinkwitz said. “You got to play the game with execution of fundamentals, of technique, and the most important thing for us right now is to improve from last week’s performance. Both technically, fundamentally and execution wise.”
In the offseason, Drinkwitz had guest speakers come in to talk about the history of the Border War, the context surrounding the rivalry, and how much this game means to fans and the community.
But once the game begins, that’s all out the window.
“Our guys understand it,” Drinkwitz said. “That ain’t the issue. The issue is, are we gonna be able to execute? Are we gonna be so focused on the crowd doing this (getting the crowd hyped up) and we forget, it ain’t about that. It’s about hands inside, it’s about executing your assignments, it’s about having eyes on your keys. It’s about communicating formation adjustments, it’s about offensively making sure that we’re all on the same page on our identifying the fronts that they’re going to be in.
“That’s going to be way more important than whether we had a guest speaker tell us about … 1854, or 1960 they played an ineligible player.”
That history matters, which is why Drinkwitz spent the summer focusing on it. He wanted players to know exactly how important it all is.
Months of buildup to lead to a game that players can say is, “Just another game,” but isn’t. It’s the Border War and it’s back after more than a decade.
Staying calm
But with the extra energy in the stadium and surrounding campus this week, Drinkwitz wanted to make sure players knew they need to ride the fine line between the right amount of emotion and too much.
“Now it’s about execution,” Drinkwitz said. “I think there’s a fine line between over-hyping and getting so emotional that you don’t have poison control. You want to have the energy, you don’t want to be emotional. And we want to have great, positive energy, and be excited to play. And I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. I think our players are going to be excited about Faurot Field being sold out. I think they’re going to be excited about playing a quality opponent and testing where they’re at as a team.”
All those speeches, the history lessons, the buildup, none of it matters from 2:30 p.m. Saturday until the final whistle. All that matters is writing this team’s portion of the history with a good performance between the lines.
“I tell the team all the time, ‘The pre game speeches don’t execute in the fourth quarter.’ So like, you know it’s all good for SEC Now, and to put it out there. The mini movie’s gonna capture it. But at the end of the day, man, in a two-minute drive, or on swing eight or money downs, ain’t nobody thinking about ‘Coach Drink said this,’ or ‘This guest speaker said this,’” Drinkwitz said.
So that was the focus this week. Drinkwitz got all the extra stuff done in the offseason. Now the sole focus is this game and starting the season 2-0.
