Getting closer to where we want to be

Jason Beauchamp

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 | 9:42 a.m.

By Jason Beauchamp

Last week, winning in a do-or-die situation, it felt great.

I think the whole thing with pressure is that this team plays better with pressure. We enjoy pressure. I love pressure.

It really shows, and things are starting to come together now. What that game really did was give us some confidence and really made us just excited to be back where we should be, back where we've been working towards. So it's exciting to see.

Last year, a narrow home loss to Air Force was another one of those games which got away from us late.

From a defensive standpoint, the only thing I remember is that we were stopping the run, it was a tight game the whole time and they really surprised us with their passing game.

We'd been preparing for the run the entire week, and they surprised us with trick plays and just going deep down the field. So that's something we're going to take into consideration this week.

The key to affecting their run game was getting penetration. Cutting off some pulling guards, attacking them before they attack you. The safeties also came down and made tackles, made plays. Air Force forces the strong safety and free safety to come down and make plays.

As we get ready to face them this year, what impresses me most about their entire team is how they're technicians. They do exactly what they have to do, and they all work hard and they execute. On special teams, defense, offense, that's what impresses me most about Air Force.

We're going into this game as healthy as we've been all year as an entire team.

It's been huge just to be able to rally the troops. When you have a couple guys back to full health like Omar Clayton or myself, it creates a chain reaction. Not only are we back and playing at full strength, but guys around us are going to be back and playing well. I think that's the biggest thing is not just us being back, but being leaders to those around us.

Two games to go now.

There's always pressure. I guess this one has a little more pressure since we've showed people we can play. But like I said, we like pressure, so we're looking forward to it.