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Gavin Patrick
BY GAVIN PATRICK / Multimedia Journalist
Tarleton State head football coach Todd Whitten said he hopes starting quarterback Victor Gabalis will be able to return Saturday against North Alabama.
Though he won’t know until late this week whether he will be at 100%.
Gabalis suffered a torn ligament in his right thumb in the first half of the season opener against McNeese and didn’t return for the second half.
He had surgery the following week and is on track to meet the three-to-four week recovery timeline, after some around the team initially feared he could miss the rest of the season.
Texan Football is in the midst of what will be the longest season in program history (standing at 12 games instead of 11), and last week, Whitten utilized the first of the team’s two bye weeks to get healthy.
“Mailk Pete, our left tackle, has had an ankle [injury] and he’s just about back up and running [at] 100 percent,” Whitten said. “We’ve had three or four other guys that were just about 60, 70 percent and would’ve kept playing, but it’s given them a chance to get back to 100 percent. So, really we’re just on the mend getting healthy… and spending a lot of time on fundamentals.”
The Texans head into their matchup with North Alabama ranked near the top 15 in both major FCS Top 25 polls, sitting at 16th in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25 Poll and 17th in the AFCA FCS Coaches Poll.
The rankings don’t seem to matter too much around the building, though. Whitten said he has high expectations for his team whether they are ranked or not.
“Not one time has that come out of my mouth with our team,” Whitten said, addressing the rankings. “I’ve never mentioned it, nor do I have plans to. We just try to get better, honestly, one day at a time, and especially in terms of the season, one game at a time. Every time we play a football game, in my estimation, it is just a really big deal.”
The last time the Texans were in action against Houston Christian, running the ball was a key factor.
With backup quarterback Daniel Greek taking snaps, the Texans handed off to running backs 53 times. Their total of 59 rush attempts was a school record in the Division I era.
When asked if Gabalis’s return could lead to a bigger commitment to the pass game, Whitten decided it was better to explain how the team approaches play-calling in the first place.
He said most plays are sent to the huddle as “two-way-gos,” meaning there’s a primary call and a secondary call -- one a pass, the other a run. Once the defense reveals its alignment, the quarterback has the option to check to a pass if a run is called or the other way around.
“If they loosen up, which a lot of people do, they’ll want you to go the long way (and run the ball),” Whitten said. “If they tighten down on us, then we throw the ball. It’s a little more than that, but that’s roughly the way it works.”
Whitten went on to say that the Texans have been running the same offense since 2017, so there’s not “a lot of secrets” to what they do.
The book is out, so to speak, on how to stop it, but according to Whitten, their personnel matches up well enough with defenses across the UAC to allow the offense to be successful -- if, at times, a little predictable. They place more of an emphasis on execution than anything else.
“If someone tells me we’re predictable, I take that as a compliment,” Whitten said. “That means we know who we are, we don’t have the 20 best plays of the week; we run plays that we’ve been running 12 times a day every day all through fall camp, all through the spring. They say practice makes perfect.”
He said it’s a matter of being the best at what you do.
“How does that saying go? ‘Jack-of-all-trades,’ master of that? That’s not us. We wanna master our trade,” Whitten said.
The “trade” has amounted to high levels of offensive production. Last season, Tarleton’s offense ranked first in the UAC in yards per play (6.4), rushing yards per game (201.7) and rushing touchdowns (25). It ranked second in points per game (33.3) and yards per game (430.5).
Through three games in 2024, the Texans rank second among the conference in rushing yards per game (189.7) but also have the second fewest passing yards per game (133.3). Gabalis’s return should help on that front, which could perhaps mean more targets for star receiver Darius Copper. Although, Whitten thinks Copper is getting enough touches as is.
“He’s caught 14 balls, so he’s almost at five-a-game. We say five to seven-a-game is what we think we need him to have in terms of touches, catches,” Whitten said. “And if you roll that out over the course of a year, that would be between 60, 70 balls, right? And that would be kind of an elite number… We’re hoping to find some situations where we can have some room to run by some folks.”
The game plan is to keep feeding Copper the ball.
“A lot of people build their game plan around keeping him from being the deciding factor. So, we just gotta keep getting him some touches, and I think those big plays will come,” Whitten said.
Currently, Copper is on pace for 56 catches, 804 yards and four touchdowns. His 14.4 yards per catch is the lowest mark of his Texans career since becoming a starter in 2022. However, three games is a small sample size to extrapolate.
The same goes for the defense, which Whitten says has bent but not broken to this point in the season.
“They’ve been getting turnovers, which is huge, and winning ball games,” he said. “We’ve been getting pressure on the passer, we played the run pretty well; [Houston Christian] last week had [88] yards. Actually, Baylor had a little over three yards-a-carry against us. So, a lot of positives to build on there. I think they’re on schedule.”
The Texans (2-1) will look to build on positives from all three phases against North Alabama (0-4) on Saturday night. When asked what needs to happen for his team to win the UAC, Whitten had a rather predictable response, which was coach-speak at its finest.
“First thing, and the only thing right now, is we need to beat North Alabama,” he said. “One game at a time.”
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