There’s a 4-letter word buzzing around the Charlotte 49ers football locker room: Bowl
The Charlotte 49ers have played their way into a conversation that first-year coach Will Healy is eager to have.
After his team’s 34-20 Conference USA victory Saturday against Middle Tennessee at Richardson Stadium, the 49ers (4-5, 2-3 C-USA) are within two wins of becoming bowl eligible for the first time in the program’s seven-year history.
Before the game, Healy brought up the subject in the locker room.
“How many of you have heard this statement?” Healy recalled saying to his players. “You’ve got four games remaining. You should be expected to win this one and this one. If you can find a way to win one of these, you’ve got a shot.
“Everyone of them raised his hand.”
As recently as two weeks ago, that kind of pregame talk would have been considered far fetched. Healy was more worried about stopping a four-game losing streak, one that was halted Oct. 26 against North Texas. That was enough for Healy to start thinking about the postseason, and in a way only this ever-positive coach can.
“Our goal is not to play in a bowl game,” Healy said. “Our goal is to win a bowl game.”
The 49ers have three games left to get to the required six victories to become eligible for the postseason. They’ll be favored Saturday at Texas El Paso (1-7) and probably at Old Dominion (1-8) in their season finale Nov. 30. Their final home game of the season is Nov. 23 against Marshall (6-3) and former 49ers coach Brad Lambert, Thundering Herd’s defensive coordinator.
Under Lambert, the 49ers were in position to qualify for a bowl twice before, falling short each time. In 2016, Charlotte was also 4-5 through nine games, but lost three in a row to end the season. In 2018, the 49ers got to 4-4, then lost three straight, ultimately finishing 5-7.
“You go through a season where you’re close,” said senior linebacker Jeff Gemmell, who became Charlotte’s career tackle leader Saturday. “You see all the angles and understand what could have been and you just want it bad. We want it bad.”
Becoming bowl eligible wouldn’t guarantee an invitation. Nine C-USA teams have at least four victories and the league has tie-ins with five bowls — Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla (Tampa, Fla.), Bahamas, New Mexico, New Orleans and SERVPRO First Responders (Dallas) — as well as conditional agreements with three others.
The 49ers won their second straight game Saturday with starting tailback Benny LeMay — a legitimate league player-of-the-year candidate — out with soreness in both his Achilles tendons. The 49ers’ offense hummed along anyway. Led by sophomore quarterback Chris Reynolds (192 yards passing, a career-high 103 yards rushing) and backup junior tailback Aaron McCallister (104 yards rushing, two TDs), Charlotte rolled up 440 yards in total offense.
Defensively, the 49ers did just enough to contain Middle Tennessee quarterback Asher O’Hara, who rushed for 148 yards and threw for 118 more. Charlotte came up with two momentum-killing turnovers — an interception by Jacione Fugate and fumble recovery by Nafees Lyon (forced by Brelin Faison-Weldon).
Middle Tennessee scored two touchdowns to make it a two-possession game with less than nine minutes remaining — just close enough and with enough time left to make things a little uncomfortable for the 49ers.
But the 49ers killed off the game with a 15-play drive that lasted 8:36, ending on downs, but with just 10 seconds left.
“I told the offense that we had to put a foot on their neck,” said senior offensive tackle Cameron Clark. “I feel like we had them down. They came back and scored. When it was a two-possession game, you can see on the sideline that they thought they were still in it. That aggravated me. I talked to the offense about that. There have been too many times we’ve been in this situation as a team and failed. We had to put our foot in their throat.”
At Reynolds’ insistence, Clark was included in the postgame news conference, along with fellow offensive linemen Jaelin Fisher, Dominic Taylor, Jalen Allen and D’Mitri Emmanuel.
“Every week you see us putting up stats and numbers from Benny, (McAllister), (running back) Ishod (Finger), but the line gets kind of unnoticed,” Reynolds said. “They’ve dealt with a lot of injuries and pushed through a lot of things. Middle Tennessee threw a bunch of fronts out there and they adjusted well with opening holes. They needed to be recognized.”
It was the second straight big game for Reynolds, who had 432 yards in total offense last week against North Texas. Playing in front of a crowd of 13,879 that included potential transfer Caylin Newton (brother of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton), Reynolds was nearly flawless again, throwing for 192 yards rushing for a career-high 103.
There’s no doubt this is Reynolds’ team; it’s difficult to imagine anybody supplanting him as the 49ers starter anytime soon, much less over the next two seasons. As an unrecruited redshirt freshman, he beat out an incumbent (Hasaan Klugh) and Power 5 transfer (Evan Sherriffs) for the starting job. After missing the second half of last season with an ankle injury, he fought back and reclaimed the starting spot from South Florida transfer Brett Kean in the season opener against Gardner-Webb.
“Every day, starting in the spring, getting comfortable with the offense and expanding my horizons with what I’m seeing out there,” Reynolds said, shifting the focus to his teammates again. “These guys make it easy out there, carrying the vision for me.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2019 at 9:23 AM.