We’ll open this week from a musical interlude from the Drive-By Truckers. Link is safe for work:

Sink Hole

Now why might I post that song? Turns out that the Flames are dealing with a sink hole of their own, right in the middle of the grass practice field outside the Williams Football Operations Center. After two days of heavy rain, a hole 20 feet deep appeared on the grass, and it’s almost like a cavern inside, football operations director Paul Rutigliano said. Workers were out at about 1 p.m. trying to fill the gaping hole to get the practice field ready for use.

“It’s huge,“ Flames coach Danny Rocco said. “Probably runs all the way to your house.“

Moving on to other Flames related news, as the team prepares for Saturday’s game against what looks to be a horribly overmatched Savannah State team.

Before we get to the Rocco quotes from today, I took one more tour of the press box. With only four days to go until the SSU game, there’s still a ton of work to be done inside. But there’s been an amazing amount of progress both in the suites and on the press level. Most of the cabinetry is done in the suites, and the furniture has arrived. Nice stuff. They certainly didn’t skimp on the chairs and couches. The press level was being painted today, and the cabinets and counters there are in. I finally got a real feel for where my seat was going to be, and the view will be pretty nice. The elevators are functional, but they were mostly used today for moving couches and other furniture into the building. They’ll be testing the functionality of the internet, etc., on Thursday, and on Friday, Liberty’s media relations staffers will begin moving game equipment into the building. There’s still a rush to get things done, but that will happen when you try to jam a 16-month project essentially into nine months.

Story plans for this week:

—In tomorrow’s News & Advance, we’ll hear from offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter and offensive lineman Alex Stadler about the importance of establishing the run game going forward.

—In Thursday’s N&A, I won’t have the usual weekly LU feature. Instead, look for comments from Atlanta Braves’ general manager Frank Wren and player development director Kurt Kemp about the Braves’ move into Lynchburg. The press conference was held last Friday, but because of my LU responsibilities, the story was pushed back a few days. Plus, the information was not terribly timely, and it gets better play here than it would have during a weekend of high school and college football.

—Friday, we’ll chat with Matt Bevins about the early season struggles of the field-goal unit.

—And check Saturday’s N&A for a front-page story on the press tower, plus the usual game-preview package in sports.

****

Rocco’s thoughts from today’s press conference:

—On James Madison’s defense last week: “After watching the film, I would have to say that was probably the best defense we’ve played against other than West Virginia and Wake Forest. We just didn’t really play well enough to win a big game on the road. I thought we did play really hard, and that was encouraging. But in a lot of ways, that should be a given. You should expect that each and every week that you’re going to play with a lot of energy and a lot of passion. Our kids certainly did do that. Defensively, we played a good football game. And we played a good game defensively at Ball State. We played a really good football game at James Madison. I think that’s a sign of what I have been talking about in reference to our defense’s ability to play with physicality and to play with speed. I think you saw that—and depth. We were rolling a lot of people in on the defensive side of the ball. I’d have to say that’s encouraging.

“But here we are four weeks into the season, and we’ve yet to really put together what I’d consider a complete game in terms of offense, defense and the kicking game.“

—On Liberty’s schedule: “You know, when you play away from home for four consecutive weeks, it’s not an easy thing to do. I don’t know how many teams in the country have experienced that this year. Oddly enough, I know the team we’re getting ready to play—Savannah State—has experienced that, as they’re also going through some stadium renovations. They’ve had some home games, but their home games haven’t been at their home facility. So we’re very excited about the opportunity to be home at last and to kind of regroup, refocus and recommit our efforts here this year. You guys have heard me say before, you are what you are. We’re 2-2. That’s what we are. There’s a lot of different ways you might could have sliced it going into the season. I don’t want to take away from our first two victories. Those were obviously very good performances by our football team. But we have to find a way right now to regroup and recommit ourselves to this game, this week. I’m kind of looking at this thing one game, one week at a time. Then after this week, we do start conference play, and obviously the stakes there will be extremely high.“

—On the improvement linebacker Kyle O’Donnell has shown this season: “He’s having a great year. I guess if you had to pick one guy at this stage of the year, he’s been the guy who has been the most durable and most valuable defensively. I’d have to say it is him. He plays somewhat of a hybrid position for us. When we’re in the true 3-4, he’s really an inside linebacker. When we play our 3-3-5 concept, he’s more of an adjusted or outside linebacker. When we play this four-man front, he’s definitely an outside linebacker in that package. So he’s finding himself doing a lot of different jobs. And he’s doing these jobs very well. He’s fast, he’s tough and he’s tackling well.“

—On QB Mike Brown’s health status. He was limited in practice last week with a sore right MCL: “I think he was (limited on outside runs). Even on the 4th-and-1 play, I asked Mike, ‘Are you ready to run this ball?‘ And he said, ‘Sure.‘ It’s different than an outside, vertical run. It’s good. His condition improved steadily all of last week. I really thought Sunday and Monday that we weren’t going to have him. Then Tuesday, he looked like he started to make some significant improvement. He wore a brace in the game. He’s got a knee brace on now. But I think it’s becoming something more and more of the past. What happens with Mike is what happens with so many of these skill players that have the ball in their hands as much as he does, is they get hit a lot. And they were hitting Mike a bunch Saturday on plays where he didn’t have the ball. He’d hand off on left end or right end and they were just assigning someone to hit him. Every play, you know. Those hits count too, not just when he has the ball and gets tackled. I think he’s a little banged up, but I don’t think his knee is any worse for the wear for his performance on Saturday night.“