 Hello and welcome to the Ed Hodl Show presented by Buffalo Wildlings. I'm Greg Royce, show in my students and football coach Ed Hodl. Coach, a couple weeks ago you closed out the season, now you're up in Susquehanna for the Max and Tenille Bowl. You know, pretty defensive battle, kind of both ways, and they just were able to make a couple of plays right at the end. But overall, pretty close battle, like I said, both ways. Yeah, it was a good football game. It was exciting, you know, if you like touchdowns and scoring, probably it wasn't your cup of tea. It was definitely a defensive battle, and ultimately it came down to turning the ball over. We turned the ball over five times, and you know, whenever you have turnovers like that, you're going to struggle and you're going to put yourself behind a little bit. And, you know, unfortunately for us, you know, we fell to a pretty good football team and, you know, but it was a good environment for the kids, good experience. And, you know, hopefully we'll have an opportunity again next year to play in the postseason. Yeah, obviously, you know, this straight year in the postseason, obviously those kids, you know, getting that extra game, I know, just the extra we could practice everything else is huge as you continue to try to build the program and get to where you want to go. Absolutely. You know, I think as you look at football in general, you have such a limited time to actually practice your sport. I mean, we have the non-traditional, but it's unpadded. You know, whenever you have the opportunity to get out in pads and actually practice the game that you play, the value of that is immense. And, you know, graduating a senior class that, you know, had an opportunity to play in 44 games, you know, that's another month of practice over the course of their career. So for us, that's very, very key and something that, you know, we hope to continue. And, you know, look, I think that's a lot of the reason why you see, you know, in the NCAAs, a lot of the same four to eight teams go deep because they have that practice and they have all those extra reps. Absolutely. You look at teams that are, you know, perennial, you know, powers that are in, you know, playing two, three, four, five games. Extra a year, you know, you're talking about, in the course of two seasons, another 10 games. You know, that experience is certainly significant. Yeah, absolutely. Just to take a kind of look back at the season as a whole, obviously eight and three overall, like, sort of fifth straight postseason appearance, kind of a little wrinkle in the middle. You kind of had to switch up the offense a little bit because of, you know, a couple injuries and things like that. But just overall, you know, you have to consider a pretty good season. I think it's considered like a sort of change in some personnel losing some key eyes. Sure. You know, I think, you know, as you, as you look back, you get over the loss in the bowl game, obviously, and everybody's upset about that. And it takes a little while to kind of start to sink in, you know, what we were able to accomplish. In fact, losing, you know, two of the most important people to our offense, you know, very proud of the guys. You know, we had an opportunity, we won five games in a row to close out the season, which is quite remarkable. You know, winning football games is hard. And, you know, for our guys to rally and, you know, kind of come back from really the worst three minutes of the season. If you go back, you know, losing Pat and then losing Dan just a couple of minutes later to be in a rally from that, you know, was exciting to watch. And I think the work that we put in in the offseason last, you know, starting last February, you know, in spring practice and the things we've done in the weight room really helped us, you know, battle that adversity and put ourselves back in a postseason situation. Yeah, and then obviously, like you said, you lose, you know, a great senior class, you know, well-graded, but obviously you have a lot of guys coming back. And how do you build off this season as you go into, you know, the spring and next year? Well, that's the challenge for the current leadership, you know, the guys that are rising seniors is, you know, how can we replicate what we did next year, you know, and even take the next step. And literally, we were off the bus for about 10 minutes and I had the leadership guys in the conference room downstairs. And we, you know, we were already talking about moving forward into 2019. So for us, you know, that challenge has already started. It's the second we walked off the field in Susquehanna. We were on the clock for 2019. So that's kind of our challenge to players and our challenges and staff. You know, how do we get back there but take the next steps? And again, for us, it's just, it's hard work. You know, it's coming to work every day. It's the guys doing their part in the weight room in the offseason, us doing our job and recruiting. You know, as we look at spring football, it's making those 15 practices as productive as we can be and then moving into the summer program and then obviously preseason. Yeah. All right, Coach, well, congrats on a good season and thanks as always for your time and for your time all season this year. Greg, I appreciate it. I want to personally thank you, you know, you and your staff, Sam Murray, Joe Wamba, you guys did an awesome job all year. You know, I really appreciate the support and looking forward to a great 2019. All right. Well, thanks, Coach. Well, for Ed Hoddle, this is Greg Royce. This has been the Ed Hoddle Show.