After kicking off their season with a 38-6 home loss to defending American Southwest Conference champion and 16th-ranked Hardin-Simmons this past weekend, the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets begin a string of four straight non-conference games at 6 p.m. Saturday at Nelson University, the former Southwestern Assemblies of God.

Reflecting on last week’s outing, second-year HPU head coach Kevin Bachtel said, “We took an old fashioned tail-kicking. Hardin-Simmons is as good as they’ve been since I’ve been here. They’re so good up front, their quarterback’s really good, and they have a top 5 running back in the country in my opinion. We did a good job moving the ball, but we missed a field goal and couldn’t score on some other opportunities that I felt we could have. We shot ourselves in the foot inside the red zone, but I was proud of our effort and I look forward to playing them again, which I didn’t think I’d say that.”

The Yellow Jackets (0-1, 0-1) finished with 272 yards of total offense – 212 passing and 60 rushing – and turned the ball over once. Of the yardage, 74 came on HPU’s only touchdown, a pass from Zy Gravitt to Jackson Meller, who finished with a team-high three catches for 102 yards. The Jackets should be aided by the return of 2023 leading receiver Gus Charles to the lineup this week.

On the ground, Blessing Ngene rushed for a team-best 32 yards, and no other Yellow Jacket amassed more than 12 yards.

“We did move the ball and that was a bright spot, but we’re still behind with install and everybody gelling together,” Bachtel said. “We need more consistency, and to score points in the red zone whether it’s kicking field goals or getting the ball in the end zone. That’s the biggest thing. If we score in the red zone last week it’s a different game, maybe 38-28 or 38-31.”

Defensively, the Jackets yielded 432 yards – 240 through the air and 192 on the ground – without forcing a turnover. Jacob Korrodi earned ASC Defensive Player of the Week honors with his 15 tackles, followed by Kale Shaw with 10, Kadarius Carr with nine and KC Cornelius with eight tackles. HPU did not tally a sack and recorded just four tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

“We tackled pretty well, we flew around, but we got knocked off the ball at times so we have to stop the run a lot better than we did last week,” Bachtel said. “We also need to clean up some stuff in the secondary. We blew some coverages and that’s typically not like us.”

Bachtel does feel the Yellow Jackets hold a significant advantage in having one game under their belts while Nelson will be kicking off its campaign Saturday night. Howard Payne defeated the former Southwestern Assemblies of God, 42-10, a year ago.

“It’s a big advantage when it comes to game speed,” Bachtel said. “They’ve been practicing just like we have but you can’t mimic game speed in practice no matter how hard you try, and that’s a big thing. We also kind of have an identity after one game but what is theirs? Are they going to have to find one? It’s always huge to have one game over somebody.”

There are also some disadvantages to the scenario as well, as Nelson has an idea of what to expect from Howard Payne, while the same cannot be said for the Yellow Jackets.

“They haven’t played so we don’t have any film,” Bachtel said. “They have a new offensive coordinator that we don’t know anything about. Offensively, we were going in blind last week and defensively we’ll be going in blind this week, We don’t know what we’re going to get, but he’s been a spread guy. The head coach (Jared Hudgins) was the defensive coordinator last year so I think they’ll be pretty similar there.

“Their quarterback is back, their running back is back and they started against us last year. They also have three offensive linemen back, and a defensive end back that was really good. Other than that, we don’t know what all they have, but they were decent last year. We got some breaks on them and got up early. Hopefully we can do that again.”

The Nelson defense is led by Joseph Chavez (45 tackles, 7.5 for loss, 2 sacks) and Quavean Mitchell (10 tackles, 1 for loss) along the front line, Xavier Garcia (52 tackles, for loss, 1 INT) at linebacker, an Dylon Kaufman (34 tackles, 1 for loss) in the secondary.

Offensively, quarterback Briley Green (624 passing yards, 2 TDs) and running back Dakeevion Rose (656 rushing yards, 7 TDs) are back, along with receivers Zach Fuller (14-129, TD) and Kolby Tanner (11-101, 2 TD)

New additions to keep an eye on include linebacker Johnathan Bloom, defensive back Cole Worthington, and running back Marvin Sanders.