Charles Huff says there’s nothing to the coaching-carrousel chatter, and for now he’s making it clear his attention stays on Memphis and Army.
With his name popping up online as a possible fit for one of the three Power Four openings that surfaced in the last week - Baylor, NC State and Maryland - Huff pushed back hard in his latest press conference. The first-year coach said he had already addressed the noise 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."
That offseason talk can wait. Memphis is 6-2 overall and 3-1 in the American, and Saturday night brings a heavy test at home against Army, which comes in at 5-2 and 4-1.
On paper, it’s one of the toughest conference games left for the Tigers, especially with Army’s league résumé already including wins over Tulane, Temple, Florida Atlantic and Tulsa. FAU sits at 5-2, while Tulane is the only conference team to beat Memphis so far.
The matchup also brings something Memphis hasn’t had to deal with in nearly a year: the option. The Tigers last faced that style on Thanksgiving against Navy, a 28-17 loss. This time the challenge falls to a Memphis defense built around playmakers like J'Mond Tapp, Taylor Burton and Elijah Kinsler, and Huff was quick to point out how different that prep work becomes against a military academy offense.
"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 right there in the standings. And for the Tigers, that means the usual early-game issue matters even more. Slow starts can be expensive in a game where possessions may be limited.
Quarterback Marcus Stokes put it simply when talking about the pace and discipline required against a military program.
"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 comes into the matchup after a huge outing that included five total touchdowns, good enough to land 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’s become the engine of the offense and, in a lot of ways, the emotional pulse of the team.
His style is all edge and urgency, right down to the way he attacks the sticks.
"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 intensity fits right in with the way Stokes has connected with Memphis. The St. Augustine native has embraced the city’s gritty identity, and it’s become part of who he is on the field.
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