SAN DIEGO — At the team's weekly press conference with Aztecs Head Football coach Sean Lewis, we learned even the coaches would take part in accountability drills to build the program and culture they are striving for.
San Diego State will play Central Michigan on Saturday and the Aztecs need to eliminate the number of penalties they have been committing to increase their chance of winning.
The Aztecs have had two full weeks to ponder their propensity to draw yellow flags out on the gridiron. San Diego State is the third most penalized team in the nation, behind only New Mexico and Hawaii, both also Mountain West Conference schools. Head coach Sean Lewis knows that penalties are impeding them from getting victories, and he says there will be a change at Central Michigan.
"Everything that we do each day is about our culture and the discipline that we want to have in it and how we go about our approach," Lewis said. "The execution of what we've been doing. And the end result of the amount of flags that are on the field is not what anyone wants to have. You know, we've been doing Up Downs. So that Sunday after we came back from Cal I mean, as a team, collectively myself and some of the other coaches as well, for all the 15 yard penalties, we banged out some Up Downs, as some good accountability. Right now, there are obviously too many errors, and that's on me, and we need to continue to stress how we're building our culture, the attention to detail that we need to have with it. But again, the energy, the enthusiasm, the way the guys have responded from those challenges. They know what they need to clean up and how they need to fix it. They've taken ownership of it as well, and I know that we'll continue to get better with that as we go forward."
Coach Lewis says the team and some staffers did 45 up-downs, three sets of 15.
"There were three 15-yard penalties that go against our standard in our culture," Lewis said. "So we did three sets of 15. Knocked them out. We all better for it, and away we go."
Lewis says the penalties that draw the Up Downs are the ones they can control.
"The controllables. The ones that are controllable. Yeah, the personal foul, absolutely. That's not who we're going to be. We're going to represent this university in a first class manner, everyone that's associated with it, the former players, the community, the alumni, everyone can look to it and be proud of the colors that where they're wearing, the way that they represent, and they're a part of this family, that's for sure, will never be tolerated, will never be accepted. That's not who we are. It's not what we're building.
So it's the Chippewas versus the Aztecs. Come Saturday night, Central Michigan plays in the Mid-American Conference, the Aztec's lifetime record against MAC teams are 16-1-1. Let's hope that winning tradition continues on Saturday.
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