Palsgrove’s Points: Flames Football

So, this is odd. After weeks of dreading Liberty University Football games and being perpetually disappointed by the outcomes, we just witnessed a Flames performance where they genuinely looked like a competent program. On Saturday, Liberty defeated the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders 37-17 in what I would argue was the Flames’ best win of the season.

I was considering writing a column cautioning against overreacting to one good win, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s overreact to the Flames’ possible “get right” game. 

Kaidon Salter — Running back extraordinaire

With the first half winding to a close in Murfreesboro, junior quarterback Kaidon Salter had already rushed for a season high in rushing yards. He didn’t tally a single rush in the second half, and yet he still ended the game with nine carries for 94 yards and a rushing touchdown. When he’s ripping away chunk yardage with his legs like he was on Saturday, Salter unlocks a new element for the Flames and for himself. He forces the defense to adjust its rushing lanes and second-guess what would typically be a simple defensive assignment. 

Overall, the Flames were fantastic on the ground against Middle Tennessee, and one play that helped them to be so effective was their triple-option run play. If you’ve ever played “Madden” or “College Football 25,” you understand the feeling of calling a play over and over and over and over again because it seems broken and won’t stop being successful. That’s very similar to how the Flames treat their triple-option play. 

Now if you don’t know what a triple option is, let me break it down. In football, you have two main types of offensive play calls: a run and a pass. Run plays have dozens of subsets of play calls to give the offense an edge over the defenders, one of those being option plays. The idea of an option (or read option) is it gives the quarterback the ability to choose who runs the ball: the quarterback himself or his running back. A triple option adds in one more player the quarterback can choose, giving him the choice to either hand it off, keep it or pitch it to his outside shoulder for another running back or receiver to catch and run with it. 

It’s a play that college football fans are familiar with and one the Flames can run pretty well because of how their personnel matches the concept. At least when Liberty isn’t chucking the football away for a fumble, which happened twice in Saturday’s game. But when they’re not turning the ball over, the Flames can run the play consistently for a nice chunk of yards and even call trick plays off the concept, like the untouched 41-yard touchdown run Saturday by junior wideout Juju Gray. The play call only works when the defense is scared of Salter’s legs, and it was. 

This defensive line needs a nickname

There aren’t many things as lovely in sports as watching a truly dominant defensive line. For the past few seasons, the Flames’ secondary has been the driving force of the defense. I mean, last season the Liberty Champion nicknamed the Liberty secondary “Pick City.” This season however, the true backbone of the defense has been the defensive front seven led by sophomore edge rusher TJ Bush Jr., junior tackle Chris Boti, junior edge rusher CJ Bazile Jr. and the defensive’s pit bull linebackers, junior Joseph Carter and senior Jerome Jolly Jr. To continue the trend of the Champion nicknaming talented position groups, I hereby nominate this line “The Beast Boys.” Mostly because it rolls off the tongue, but also because they have Bush, Boti and Bazile, and the B’s work. 

Bush leads CUSA with 5.5 sacks so far this season, and he constantly looks like he’s been shot out of a cannon on the rush. Against the Blue Raiders, the Flames tallied five sacks and eight tackles for loss. That gives them a new season high in sacks and ties their season high in TFLs. Jolly was a major factor in that production, claiming one sack and 1.5 TFLs, but so was redshirt freshman transfer Ethan Crisp, who had two TFLs as linebacker. Crisp jumped off the screen in the game; he played fast and his ears were pinned back like a heat-seeking missile. 

Granted, Middle Tennessee leads the country in different offensive line combinations, which is not a stat you want to lead in, and one that definitely helped the Flames’ pass rush. The Blue Raiders have been banged up and injured on their line all season, and the Flames did take advantage of that and feast. That’s just the kind of line they are, though. They take advantage of the offense’s weakness and capitalize on their mistakes to consistently give their team an edge. The question going forward is, can they continue to be that line? Based on what we’ve seen recently, I would say yes.

Palsgrove is the sports editor for the Liberty Champion. Follow him on X.