After allowing six sacks during the past two games, the shaky play of Ball State University's offensive line has concerned Cardinals' coach Brady Hoke.
With the lack of a productive running threat, Hoke said, opposing defenses have been able to focus in on Ball State's passing attack.
"When you don't establish a good enough run game and they can load up on your throw game that hurts you," Hoke said. "And it wasn't with their pressure as much as it was their ability to play a couple different coverages. But we didn't protect as well as we needed to."
The leader of Ball State's offensive line is junior captain and starting center Dan Gerberry, who said the group has acknowledged there has been a problem with its play recently. Ball State has allowed 16 sacks this season, which is the fifth least of the 13 teams in the Mid-American Conference. In the past three games, all of which have been played on the road, the Cardinals have given up eight sacks.
"The first thing you have to do is realize we're not playing well," Gerberry said. "You have to identify the problem, and then you have to figure out what is the best way to fix it. The best way I know how to fix it is hard work, so we have to go out this week and work as hard as we can."
When Ball State began its second road trip of the season the offensive line didn't come ready to play, junior tackle Robert Brewster said.
Brewster said each offensive lineman needs to improve his fundamentals, but more importantly, the offensive line needs to improve its consistency as a whole.
"It's been all of us together," Brewster said. "Some of us will be on point and some of us won't be. The key with the offensive line is that we're a chain. If one piece of the chain falls off, it's going to mess everything up. We weren't all together during the past three games, but we're going to all get better together this week."
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