Five games into the season, Joe Harasymiak believes his staff has enough evidence to understand what this team is and what it isn’t.
Now, it’s the coaches’ jobs to make sure they’re asking their players to do more of the things they do well.
The first four games provided plenty of positive evidence as UMass opened the season 4-0. Saturday’s 38-14 loss to Eastern Michigan offered more concrete answers.
Some of the issues that surfaced against the Eagles weren’t necessarily new. They were problems Harasymiak had seen at different points during the undefeated start, but ones UMass had been able to overcome.
“We have to chase the best version of ourselves because ultimately the waters are now deeper,” the UMass head coach said. “There’s better teams, there’s better players, there’s better programs in general that have done it before.
“Some of that stuff, yeah, it did catch up to us.”
Against Sacred Heart and Stonehill, Harasymiak believes UMass was able to overcome some mistakes in part because of its overall talent advantage. The Minutemen were challenged in different ways against Sacramento State, but responded.
Eastern Michigan didn’t allow them to do the same.
“Everything kind of just caught up to us in this game all at once,” Harasymiak said.
Offensively, UMass entered the game believing it had favorable opportunities if the Minutemen could win individual matchups. Too often, Eastern Michigan won them instead.
There were other costly mistakes. After committing just one turnover through four games, UMass had two against the Eagles, including a fumble as the Minutemen were threatening to score and an interception that gave Eastern Michigan the ball deep in UMass territory.
Defensively, Harasymiak felt his team played out of character.
He acknowledged some of those problems had been “flashing in a bad way” even as the Minutemen built their 4-0 record.
The response isn’t simply demanding that the same things be done better.
Five games have given Harasymiak and his staff an opportunity to evaluate which things they should be asking their players to do in the first place.
“We need to assess really after these first five weeks now, what can we do?” Harasymiak said. “What do we do really well? What do we not do so well? And let’s ask our guys to compete in a way at the things they do well.”
That evaluation doesn’t absolve the players.
Harasymiak believes there were opportunities against Eastern Michigan when UMass had the numbers it wanted offensively, only to have an Eagle defender defeat a block and disrupt the play. Or defensively, a player had an opportunity to bring down a ballcarrier and simply missed the tackle.
“I think it’s obviously a little bit of both,” he said when asked whether the staff needed to reassess what it was asking of its players or challenge them to execute better.
“I think our players can play better.”
But the coaching staff has a role in the response as well.
For the offense, that means getting back to concepts that can create favorable opportunities, particularly in the running game.
“I think going into this week offensively, get back to some of the things that we can do to give our guys some angles, some numbers and things in the run game that we do well,” Harasymiak said.
Harasymiak sees the defensive evaluation somewhat differently.
He believes the Minutemen played well defensively for essentially four games. As the level of competition increases, though, the advantages become smaller and execution becomes more important.
That will be particularly relevant Saturday against Miami-Ohio, a program Harasymiak called the most talented UMass has faced this season.
The Minutemen don’t need to become a different team after one loss.
They just need to do what Harasymiak has been asking them to do since Day 1, be the best version of themselves. It’s just that now they should have a better understanding of what that is than ever before.
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