Rumors may be swirling around Charles Huff’s future, but the Memphis coach said Tuesday he has not been in contact with any other program and isn’t letting the noise pull him off the present.
Huff’s name has popped up online in connection with three Power Four openings that surfaced over the last week: Baylor, NC State and Maryland. He dismissed the speculation in his latest press conference and said he had already addressed it with his team.
"Yeah, no, I talked to them probably three weeks ago, I told them, I said every job that's getting ready to come open my name's gonna be up for," Huff said about informing the team of the rumors ahead of time. "We can control the volume, so I'm controlling the volume now.
None of it makes sense, not been called, not been contacted. You don't get a job in the middle of the season."
For now, Huff’s attention is squarely on Saturday night, when the Tigers, 6-2 overall and 3-1 in conference play, host Army in what shapes up as one of their stiffest remaining league tests. Army enters at 5-2 and 4-1, with conference wins over Tulane, Temple, Florida Atlantic and Tulsa. FAU sits at 5-2, while Tulane handed Memphis its only conference loss, underscoring the danger Army brings despite the different style.
The challenge starts with preparation. Memphis has to get ready for the triple option, something it hasn’t seen since last Thanksgiving, when it played Navy and fell 28-17. That means a different kind of game for a defense led by J'Mond Tapp, Taylor Burton and Elijah Kinsler, and Huff said the unfamiliar scheme changes everything from practice work to alignment.
"Obviously their different offensive scheme, it creates a huge challenge just because we don't see it a ton from a practice or competitive standpoint," Huff said Tuesday. "Got to find a way to balance what they do with adjusting what we do because it changes kind of how you have to align, how you have to play defense... you got to be a lot more efficient with every drive because you don't know how many you're going to get."
With Army and Memphis sitting third and fourth in the American Conference, the stakes are clear near the top of the league. Memphis also has another issue to solve: slow starts. Against an offense that can shrink the game and limit possessions, falling behind would be a dangerous way to spend the night.
Quarterback Marcus Stokes put the emphasis on discipline and handling the moment the right way.
"I think it's just controlling ourselves and controlling what we can control on the field," Stokes said about playing at the adjusted pace of a Military program. "It just comes back to doing your job and doing your one-eleventh, that's just kind of like how I see it."
Stokes is coming off a huge outing that included five total touchdowns, which landed him on both the Manning Award stars of the week list and the Davey O'Brien Award Great Eight for the second time this season. He has become the engine of the offense and, at times, the emotional spark for the whole team.
That edge shows up in the way he plays. Stokes isn’t shy about lowering his shoulder near the sticks, and he said there’s a reason he puts his body on the line.
"I like being able to have the opportunities to put my body on the line for my teammate because I think it also, you know, proves to them... I care about this team, like this team's my family."
That competitiveness has fit naturally in Memphis, where the St. Augustine native has connected with the city and its fanbase and made that toughness part of his own identity.
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