Troy is Still in Control

Troy took an unexpected shot to the chin on Saturday when it only mustered 16 points in a road loss to Liberty.

The Trojans struggled to finish drives and were plagued with costly turnovers.

After finally having third down success against Georgia State, Troy could not extend its drives against the Flames. This was often due to untimely penalties and odd playcalling.

Quarterback Sawyer Smith completed just over half of his pass attempts for 135 yards. He could manage the offense, but was wildly inaccurate beyond 10 yards.

This isn’t Sawyer Smith. The redshirt sophomore has dime-dropping capabilities that he has already displayed in a real game situation before.

On Saturday, though, it looked as if the coaches may have had more confidence in Smith than Smith had in himself. If he can relax and move on, Smith will have himself a game against South Alabama.

By no means was the Liberty game the fault of Smith, though. Undisciplined play combined with an oddly near-spotless game from the Flames put Troy well behind the penalty yardage eight ball.

Other than that it was just poor execution by the offense and all involved in it.

Regardless, it’s not a season-ending defeat.

In fact, Troy took an even worse hit to its season at this time last year. The Trojans fell to conference rival South Alabama last October and ended up winning a share of the Sun Belt title and earning a school record 11 wins.

At 3-0 in the Sun Belt, Troy is still very much in control of its season. Yes, its toughest conference games still lie ahead but the Trojans will get a chance to create some momentum with a Tuesday night road trip to Mobile to face the hated Jaguars.

Since 2016, Troy is 6-0 following a loss with the average score being 38.7-14.2. That’s not bad.

Neal Brown and company have repeatedly shown the ability to make the necessary adjustments after a loss. Furthermore, if the defense continues to play the way it has then the Trojans will be in a position to win every game the rest of the way.

In the last six contests, Troy has given up an average of just 19.3 points per game. If you were wondering, South Alabama is scoring 20.3 points per conference game thus far.

The Liberty loss hurts from a national perspective only. Even so, it was buried in what turned out to be chaos week. It might as well didn’t happen.

That’s how it’ll feel, at least, when Troy beats the breaks off of South Alabama on Tuesday.