BATON ROUGE - The Southern football team was penalized a lot last season.

The Jags averaged the third-most penalty yardage in the SWAC in 2023, with 78.6 yards of penalties a game.

Overall, Southern committed 93 penalties, the fourth-worst in the conference.

One of the main goals of new head coach Terrence Graves this offseason was to limit unforced and unfocused errors.

On Saturday, the Jaguars had their first scrimmage, and Coach Graves spoke about his team's discipline.

“The penalties weren't to my liking, but they were aggressive penalties on the defensive side of the ball, and we didn't have any holding calls, any false starts, so that was good offensively,” said Graves. “We did have a couple of offensive pass interferences and we have to clean that up.
The other night, I asked the officials to call the game especially tight, I want them to call a lot of questionable calls for teaching purposes, I wanted to over-emphasize doing things technique-wise, and playing the right way, so, to get them some stuff on film to watch and correct and make them conscious (that) we have to be a penalty-free team if we want to get to where we wanna go.”

Southern opens the 2024 season on August 31 at McNeese.