Want to stop

Edwards? It’s

plane and simple
By Steve Behr
sports@wataugademocrat.com

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Very few defensive coordinators have figured out how to stop Appalachian State quarterback Armanti Edwards.

They might be overlooking the obvious. Of all teams, Michigan nearly had it right.

Just make sure your stadium is not in driving distance. Then, Edwards may debate about taking the flight out of North Carolina.

“Those were the two worst flights ever,” Edwards said about flying in and out of Detroit last year at the Southern Conference Football Rouser last week. “I didn't want to (fly). I wanted to ride (the bus) with the band.”

It was a good thing, at least for the Mountaineers, that Edwards got on that plane that went to Michigan.

Edwards helped in shocking the college football world with a 34-32 victory over the Wolverines. In celebrating with his teammates, reality set in.

ASU quarterback Armanti Edwards is a Walter Payton Award candidate. Photo by Rob Moore

“After we celebrated after the game, I forgot we had to fly again,” Edwards said. “I said ‘Man, I have to stay or something.’ I was joking with Coach (Scott) Satterfield) let me ride with the band.”

It seems that heights, which includes flying at high altitudes, is the only thing that Edwards fears. The junior quarterback played through a sore shoulder all last year that he first injured in practice before the Michigan game.

Yet he showed enough poise, in front of 109,000 fans no less, to drive the Mountaineers to a game-winning field goal. His pass to CoCo Hillary, which Hillary caught at the 20 and took the Michigan 5-yard line, required Edwards to evade a Wolverines pass rush that harassed him for much of the second half.

Edwards bristles at the idea that Michigan was not prepared to play Appalachian State. He said LSU will likely be ready, as T-shirts that say “Not in our House” are already being sold.

Edwards said a picture of the shirt is in the ASU weight room.

“Some people are saying that Michigan didn’t practice and if they would have practiced, we would have lost,” Edwards said. “Actually, LSU is practicing, so they’ll be ready for us.”

The bad news for all but one of Appalachian State’s 2008 opponents is that they are all within driving distance, the farthest being SoCon newcomer Samford, which is located in Birmingham, Ala., and is about seven hours away on the road. LSU is the exception, but baring any unforeseen circumstances, Edwards will be on that flight.

“It’s coming too fast again,” Edwards said. “It was just like Michigan when we had to fly. We just popped right up and I was not ready for it.”

Edwards looks ready for the season to begin, even if it means a flight is necessary to get to the first game. He still stands around 6-feet-0 tall, but he’s also put on about 10 pounds of muscle and weighs 185 pounds.

“Yeah, I told him he’s wearing medium T-shirts now,” Appalachian State head coach Jerry Moore joked to the Associated Press.

He’s also the leading candidate to win the Walter Payton Award. Edwards, despite missing four games last year because of his shoulder, threw for 1,948 yards and 17 touchdowns in 11 games.

Edwards ran for 1,588 yards and 21 touchdowns, including 313 yards and four TDs in Appalachian State’s 55-35 win over Richmond in the national semifinals. Coupled with the 2,251 yards and 15 touchdowns passing and the 1,153 yards and 15 touchdowns rushing his freshman season, Edwards has accumulated 6,940 yards in total offense and has generated 68 touchdowns through the air and on the ground.

Not bad for a guy who was recruited by Clemson, Memphis and Vanderbilt, but not as a quarterback. He picked Appalachian State over Georgia Southern because Moore had switched to the spread offense Edwards ran in high school, and has no interest in leaving, despite rumors last year that he would bolt for Florida State or South Carolina.

“I don’t know where they were coming from. My brother asked me about that one,” Edwards said of the Florida State rumor.

So just how does a team, that is within driving distance of Boone, stop Edwards. Keeping him and the Mountaineers’ offense off the field is a popular answer with his SoCon rivals.

“I think you have to be productive offensively,” Wofford coach Mike Ayers said. “You have to move the ball and take some ticks off the clock.

“Defensively, you’ve got to be sound with your scheme. The tough thing about them is that they have so many weapons. He’s an unbelievable player with the ball in his hands, but they’re also going to have a back who can beat you and they’ll have four receivers who can beat you as well. There’s no tried and true way.

You’ve got to have 11 guys on defense that understand what they’re trying to do and all 11 have to execute that game plan.”

Edwards looks forward to proving that the Mountaineers’ offense won’t slow down, even though it lost receiver Dexter Jackson to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their all-time leading rushing Kevin Richardson, three offensive linemen, including current Washington Redskin Kerry Brown, and leading receiver Hans Batichon.

“Looking at it from a fan’s point of view, we lost some big names,” Edwards said. “From a player’s point of view, we have players who people don’t know about who are going to be there this year. Our spring practice went pretty well and everybody know what to do. We are looking pretty good this season.”