Will Healy has placed a major emphasis on special teams since he arrived as East Tennessee State’s head football coach.
The Bucs blocked their first punt under Healy’s tenure, in last Saturday’s 34-16 win over The Citadel. Freshman Josh Buckhalter scooped up the ball and returned the punt 9 yards for a touchdown.
“Obviously blocking punts is an emphasis for us and it has been for the last two years,” Healy said Monday at his weekly press conference. “For us to finally break the streak, that was big and a massive play in that game.”
Like many FCS teams, the Bucs put starters on their special teams units. ETSU (5-2, 3-0), which is currently ranked No. 20 in the Stats Perform Top 25 and No. 24 in the coaches poll, leans that way a little more than other teams, perhaps.
On Monday, tight end Charlie Browder rightly noted that, for FCS players, “A lot of times if you want to have a chance to play professional, at this level, you gotta play on special teams. And I think too, as an older guy, having some of us on those units, too. You see me or Sudie [Suderian Harrison] out there on speical teams, we’re not whining and moaning about it. As a young guy, you can look at it like, well, I have no right to whine and moan about it either.”
“How hard we play on those units, I think it’s the culture of our football team,” Harrison added during Monday’s press conference. “Seeing guys, starters, your best players go out there and give everything they got on those snaps, it means a lot to the team and obviously it contributes to winning.”
Bye week plan
The Bucs plan to practice Tuesday through Thursday, then take Friday and Saturday off.
“This bye week for me is about continuing to develop depth. It’s about making sure that we shore up some things that we did not do a great job of in the game on Saturday,” Healy said. “We got a lot that we’ve done got to improve on. It was not clean by any stretch and so you know, making sure that our vets don’t take it as a week off, that we’re locked in that we’re present, focused, but also making sure that we use a week to develop some depth and get guys healthy is a big deal.”
Healy said that, every season during the bye week, he experiences a game as a fan, letting his older son Eli choose any game he wants to go see. This year’s selection? Tennessee and Alabama. A father and son trip to Dollywood — Healy has two kids, both boys — is also on the agenda.
A different feel
Healy noted how he has dealt a different energy in the Johnson City community in recent weeks, as ETSU has put together a four-game win streak that includes victories against its two big geographical rivals in the Southern Conference: Western Carolina and Chattanooga. He recalled a trip to Chick-fil-A on Friday, before the team departed for Charleston and the game at The Citadel.
“It felt like, you know, ‘Remember the Titans’, where there’s 15 people, saying good luck and encouraging you,” Healy said. “I mean, I’ve wanted that. I’ve craved that at this place, and I’m feeling that right now. I feel the excitement, I feel the energy, and with that comes a lot of responsibility in my eyes to continue it. I’m just appreciative of how our players are treated here and how our fans support them and encourage them. I feel like they are having a tremendous experience because they know it’s important to play football at ETSU and it’s cool to play football at ETSU and that means a lot to me.”
Down field threats
Harrison leads the receiving corps with 25 catches for 368 yards with a touchdown, but he’s one of five pass catchers with at least 17 receptions. Three of the five have 240 or more receiving yards.
Harrison, on Monday, said, “It’s pretty disrespectful if somebody comes and plays us man to man. We’re just trying to run by people and make plays downfield.”
“Five or six guys, any given moment, it’s their game,” Browder added. “Any given Saturday, one of us is gonna have a big game and I think that makes it really tough for defenses to decide who to focus on and helps our offense be as explosive as it can be.”
Both Browder and Harrison had high praise for starting quarterback Mason Mims, a redshirt freshman who has thrown for 1,644 yards and completed 70% of his passes, the third-best completion mark among all FCS quarterbacks.
“A lot’s been said about how he’s not a major talkative guy. But I think he’s definitely gotten out of his shell,” Browder said. “He’s the same dude every single day and that kid works his butt off. You know what you’re going to get from him. He does a great job of communicating what he wants from us from a receiver standpoint, getting our input on things. But I think he’s really grown into the leader we need him to be and just the person he is every day.”
A deep room
There’s more depth and flexibility at tight end for the Bucs than last season. Browder has made 17 catches for 197 yards and two touchdowns. Vashawn Nalls has grabbed two TDs among his four receptions. Khristian Means has added five catches for 49 yards.
“I think in high school, everybody’s comfortable running routes and catching the ball, but at the tight end spot, ut’s really important to just understand hat placement, hand placement, footwork, what every run play takes,” Browder said. “I’m a firm believer that if you focus on the run game, the ball’s going to find you. And that’s what’s happened in our room.”
Byrd watching
In the previous two games against Chattanooga and The Citadel, ETSU has brought out sophomore Jackson Byrd at quarterback in certain red zone situations. Byrd, who threw for more than 10,000 yards at the high school level, has been used primarily on designed runs in these scenarios. Byrd was one of four quarterbacks to see the field for ETSU in 2025, as injuries wreaked havoc on the depth chart there.
“We’ve had that in in our scheme since week one, we just hadn’t used it,” Healy said. “And so we’ve used it more.”
Protecting Mason Mims, who went into the bye week beaten up, is part of the reasonins.
“The beauty of it for us with Mason beat up is, I think time and rest will help him get back to 100%,” Healy said. “And so yes, we’ve just used it because we want to take some running off of him.”
Dadgum hard
Healy had high praise for defensive end Charles Woodard, who currently leads the Bucs in sacks after joining the team this off-season as a transfer from junior college.
“He just plays so dadgum hard,” Healy said of Woodard. “He’s so smart. He’s such a great teammate. He’s such a great leader. He has been a pleasure to coach. And you know, I feel like that we’ve seen in the second half especially up front on the defensive side of the ball, where it’s like we’re close in the first half, but we get there in the second because we’re just playing a lot of guys.”
Referring to the defensive line, Healy added, “We’ve got a group that is playing extremely hard and at some point in time, we’re going to get there. And I think that’s shown up in the second half the last couple of games.”
Learning the craft
Harrison had never played receiver when he started his college career at Virginia. A three-sport standout in high school who also played baseball and ran track, Harrison quarterbacked his high school team in South Carolina, Harrison had more than 3,000 yards of total offense and accounted for 49 touchdowns as a high school senior, making all-state.
When Harrison got to Charlottesville, one of the veteran receivers on the Virginia roster was Malik Washington, a first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection in 2023 who holds the Cavaliers’ single-season records for receptions and receiving yards. Washington is currently in his third season in the NFL, for the Miami Dolphins.
“Learning from him every day, learning the position, just becoming a better player kind of helped me,” Harrison said. “I still to this day study his game and watch him and talk to him every day, just trying to pick his brain on how to get better each and every day.”
Sign of the times?
ETSU is 3-0 in the Southern Conference for the fourth time, joining the 1996, 2018, and 2021 teams. What do those squads have in common? In each of those years, the Bucs went on to win at least a share of the Southern Conference championship and reached the FCS playoffs.
Buc bites
ETSU has won seven straight conference games, dating back to the four-game win streak in league play to end the 2025 season. That’s tied for the second-best winning streak in conference action in team history. The Bucs won their last two league games in 1995 and their first six in 1996. … The Bucs scored touchdowns in all three phases against The Citadel, the first time that’s happened since ETSU revived its football program in 2015. … Heading into its bye week, ETSU ranks fifth in the FCS in third down conversion percentage at 51% and has 50 total conversions on third down, tying Alcorn State for the national lead in that statistic. … ETSU racked up 14 tackles for loss against The Citadel, a season high and the most for the Bucs since a 2024 game with Samford. … ETSU returns to action Oct. 24 at VMI. Kickoff for that game is set for 1:30 p.m., and the game will be televised on ESPN+.