East Carolina head coach Blake Harrell isn’t spending much time getting caught up in the noise ahead of Saturday’s trip to Tuscaloosa.
Harrell, who joined The Gary Harris Show on Tide 100.9 on Thursday, made it clear that the Pirates are focused on their own standard as they prepare to face Alabama. East Carolina is coming off a 9-4 season under Harrell, and ESPN’s Football Power Index ranks the Pirates as the highest-rated non-Power 4 team an SEC program will see this season.
That doesn’t change the reality of the matchup, though. East Carolina enters as a 28.5-point underdog, and Harrell said the message inside the program is all about tuning out everything around the number.
“There’s a lot of external factors that go into this thing that people are like, ‘28.5, SEC team, playoff team last year that won a playoff game,’ and we just talk to our team about controlling the controllables,” Harrell said. “Control who we are and how we play the game, playing with great effort, playing with great energy, play with edge.”
For Harrell, the challenge is less about the label attached to Alabama and more about whether his team can show the identity it wants to build. He said East Carolina has to go out and play its brand of football in Tuscaloosa.
That brand starts with the basics. Harrell pointed to the season goals he and the Pirates have set, and he said Saturday offers an early chance to see where they stand.
“We want to be able to run the football,” he said. “We want to be able to stop the run.
We want to be able to create turnovers and do all those things. Let’s see if we can do that early in the season.”
Harrell also had praise for Alabama and for Kalen DeBoer’s work since arriving in Tuscaloosa. He called the Crimson Tide a strong team with a loaded roster and singled out several players he expects to stand out.
“Alabama is certainly a good football team,” Harrell said. “Coach DeBoer has done an exceptional job there.
Already got 20-plus wins, and they got a heck of a talented roster. I think the receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams is as good as there is in the country.
I think they got a couple of first-round draft picks.”
He added that he expects Alabama quarterback Keelon Russell to have a solid season and said the Crimson Tide’s secondary is fun to watch.
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