I know you're supposed to get it out of your system, but how long can that stick with you when you lose a game you had in hand?

Oh, man, it absolutely stinks, man, because we had a chance to showcase our program again on ESPN on a Thursday night and, you know, back in the days.

Football players used to live for that moment to play on ESPN where the whole country is watching you.

We had it.

We were up 14-0, and we kind of let that thing slip away.

It's tough to bounce back from something like that.

The thing about a game like that is when you come back to practice and the meeting room, you got your players' attention a little bit more this week.

Did we just miss on quarterback and we're lost for the season and it's not going to get any better? What can we do to mask our issues there? Should we talk about the wide receivers and them not getting separation more and them not helping out the quarterbacks? What's the issue with the passing game right now?

But-

...

I think it's still the same.

Like I, all the time get calls like, "Hey, man, nobody's recruiting my son or my kid." I say, "Those coaches, they're paid.

They're gonna go try to find a gem.

Like, they're gonna hit all those schools in their, in their area and then..." Uh, and there's players out there, like there's a player last year that, uh, from Tarboro, um, the running back over there, uh, Moore.

You know, he was, they won the state championship.

Right

Mitchie's Coliseum.

Who is it cool for?

And until we can throw the ball, and eventually teams are going to stack the box and make us throw, right? But until then, it looks like we are a running football team.

Absolutely.

You can just tell that no one's feeling comfortable right now in our offense.

You like to see us.

I think we're still trying to figure out who we are.

The players are trying to figure it out.

It's a trend for the Pirates, a very negative trend, and it happened again on Saturday night.

Absolutely.

And as a coaching staff and as a player, offensive player, you hate to hear that because every time it gets stirred down, everybody in the stadium is thinking it.

Everybody on the field is thinking it.

So now your players, now that's in their heads.

So now you're playing tight and you've got to Getting that first down, got to get first, and then you don't do it.

And so now emotions start getting involved.

Will it come Saturday? What's your prediction for Saturday?

And look, I mean, knock on wood right now, it looks like weather's going to be

clear until – Maybe

And you said you've really enjoyed that.

Absolutely.

So they got a new little program out where you can put in a request, maybe a sideline pass.

You just kind of put on there what years you played, and they'll kind of go and review and give a few guys a wristband.

And that hadn't been around for years.

So now it makes you excited maybe to come back.

Pirates falling to Alabama 48-10. to 10 and i've heard a lot of when you only run 40 some plays it's kind of hard to you know talk about what you saw but in that brief moment of time what did you see from our offense good or bad

Well, like Coach said, you can't beat an Alabama team.

You can't beat a number 13 ranked team by beating yourself like the way we did.

So I was a little disappointed.

I had high expectations going into the game and thinking that, oh, you know, we were traveling down there to go make history, which is what we do as Pirates.

We go make history.

So it was a little disappointing that we didn't come out and execute the way like we wanted to.

So what are your keys for this time around?

Can you give us your thoughts on what you saw in the Alabama game from this East Carolina football team?

Okay, well, I'll tell you what I saw.

I was able to get over to the hotel on Friday night, and it was really – eye-opener because I hadn't really been around the team behind the scenes probably in like 17 years.

And I really walked away that evening feeling really good the way Coach Blake handles the team, the way he prepares them, the way they do their walk-throughs, the way they have family time and stuff the night before.

So I was really excited going into the game early Saturday morning.

Watching the team come out, I thought they came out with a great focus.

You know what I'm saying? It was just, like you said, it's a game of inches.

Junior, when you look at the running back room for East Carolina, what are some of the things you really like about these guys?

But both quarterbacks facing pressure, I think, for different reasons heading into this game.

Absolutely.

I think one, Coach DeBoer, I think that he has a little bit of pressure on him because, you know, they went, I guess, nine and four last season.

And if you've already won four national championships at Alabama, you know, there's high expectations there.

So just talking about that.

And now he's starting a freshman quarterback.

which the guy can play and really has a really good arm.

I guess.

So you just always got to be ready for whatever, right?

Yeah, I think he's proven to be like that pretty much most of his career.

Just doing my studying on his background, he came from Cal last year, and then before that, I guess he was with Texas San Antonio, so he's been in the league, and he's kind of had those three-headed monsters.

He's come from some good programs, and everywhere he's been, they've been productive.

The backs have been productive from the programs that he's came from.

So he comes in with confidence, and he knows that he's got a group of guys that, hey, it's going to be important when we get to November.

You win the American Conference because you're able to run the football in November.

two really good running backs there and yeah enjoyed my chat with TJ Engelman and these days Junior you don't have the school pride in a lot of guys that you did back in your day but I could tell talking to him like he was very proud of what he's been able to do his two years here and to see the school like that as well and you know you got so much to think about Junior as a player you're playing for yourself you're playing for your family your teammates but by your senior year How much pride did you take in putting on the ECU uniform, the ECU helmet? How much did you want to win for all the fans around here?

So as a player, you've got to have some sort of feelings about it, even if you like the guy.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what Coach Blake is dealing with right now is, now you got three proven champions, you know, that was a part of this, you know, two champions that they won back-to-back bowl games that, you know, so once you, hey, you welcome them back from that standpoint, but now you're dealing with all these other transfers, you're dealing with new position coaches, you know what I mean? So...

it's a lot you're attaching yourself with.

So he just added some more headaches to himself at night trying to deal with this.

Because you don't know what these guys went through.

They went through all that emotions of not getting drafted.

Like, he was live, sleep, eat, drink football.

Mm

... those types of things.

Uh, the complexity of the playbook.

You know, coming in and they hand you this playbook and pass protections and runs and passes and, and, you know, it was, I remember that part of it as a player.

And, and then from a, uh, from a medical standpoint, every practice you had to be taped.

You know, you had to go get treatment every day after practice and, and those types of things.

So that's what I remember as a freshman.

... communicate that to the guys?

yeah, he

might.

We came in the same class at ECU back in 1991.

But he texted me that morning and said, hey, man, Coach Steele passed away last night.

So I want to say condolences to the Steele family.

You know, when I think about Coach Steele, when I was recruited to ECU in 1991, Coach Steele was the wide receivers coach at ECU.

And he was also the recruiting coordinator on that team.

He's told that story here.

Junior Smith on if he knew Chris Johnson would make an immediate impact at East Carolina.

Yeah, I would say that I did.

When he came into my meeting room, I could just see that the kid was super confident and I knew that he was fast.

But the thing about Chris was he was so smart and he was physical.

Like the thing we could tell him, like, so the way we did our packages back then is we would do our run game.

We would name them all off after NFL teams.

Okay.

Oh, you played all four years? You must have been really good.

And, uh, yeah, I apologize to you running backs that we do that, but, um, How would you describe Junior Smith, the running back, for our newer audience that missed the glory days? What kind of running back has the all-time most rushing yards in ECU history? What kind of guy were you?

I would say I was...

I was like, my coach taught me at the time, Todd Berry was like, hey, you got to see it before you can do it.

Okay.

So to me, I was more like a slasher.

I would, like my first year, I don't know, you know, when Jeff Charles was around, he would say, hey, what are you going to do this year? I was like, I'm going to shock the world.

I'm going to rush for a thousand yards.

Let's