With the football season quickly approaching, Northwestern State University of Louisiana’s football head coach Brad Laird sat down with The Current Sauce to discuss what Demons and fans can expect from this season.
Laird is excited to see his new freshmen players come in, and he said that approximately 10 athletes are new freshmen. He is looking to see how they adjust to the change of scenery from high school to college football.
“Well for one, in high school, you’re the guy, whereas here you may be fourth, fifth or sixth on the depth chart and it can be difficult to transition from that, but I believe the guys we have are fitting in great,” Laird said.
Laird also highlighted his new staffing hires. The coaching staff has had four new changes heading into the 2023-2024 season: Chris Gistor, defensive line coach; Armani Lonardo, wide receivers coach; Jeremy Atwell, special team coordinator; Perry Carter, cornerback coach.
During the scrimmage on August 19, 2023, the crowd could see the energy from the field.
The energy the front line gave was efficacious towards the entire team, not just the defense. As the scrimmage went longer, both sides were up and ready to play for another hour. Laird compared it to last year, saying it was a nice change in motivation.
Looking to these coming weeks, Laird discussed the team’s gradual improvement and that this was the job of not only the players, but also the coaching staff. He wants his team to not look into the future and championships, instead to look at the day at hand and focusing on getting better, and then championships will come with that hard work.
There are three things the coach wants to see improve from last year, and one is the ability to handle adversity.
“In a 60 minute ball game there will be highs and lows on both sides and we can’t be too high or too low,” Laird said. Additionally he talked about the team’s skill to remain calm and collected in order to win against adversity.
The second point is consistency especially during a 60 minute ball game. “We got to have consistency and that means consistent execution,” Laird said. “Doing the right thing over and over again. Doing it when you’re tired, beat up, and frustrated. Consistency is the goal.”
The next point mentioned is controlling the controllables. In this case Laird means attitude and effort. “You can’t control what the refs call and you must be able to move on and not be fixated on that one moment,” he said. “Control what you can control and that is the next play.”
All he and his team want to do is “Win the Day.”
The first official game will be Sep. 2, 2023 at the Cajun Field. The team will be playing against the Ragin Cajuns of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Viewers can tune into live coverage by ESPN on September 2 at 6:30 p.m.
