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Butch Jones on some players who have gotten early season attention:. Robert Stevens III The senior linebacker was named the Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Week for the West Georgia game.  Stevens forced a fumble and grabbed an interception becoming A-State's first player to do both since Jayden Jones in 2024 against Southern Miss. It is the 12th time since 1995 an A-State player had done so. Stevens had six tackles, including a tackle for loss, a quarterback hurry, forced fumble and interception in the contest. His forced fumble led to a 68-yard touchdown return by Noah Flores, one of two touchdowns scored by the A-State defense in the game. "He's another newcomer that's growing into our defense and he's what's happening is it he's starting to reveal himself as one of our playmakers on defense,'' said Jones. "He's  very, very active, highly competitive young man. I'm so excited about him and I think the biggest thing for him again is reps, you know we spoke about it this team really doesn't have, especially on the defensive side of the ball, very many banked reps.  So every week that you have and prepare with a different opponent, we really had to prepare in the first two games,  we've had to prepare for two totally different offenses and challenges schematically with different things." OT Tanner Welch  "We talked about in the post game the value of a repetition.  The value of a rep, it doesn't matter if it's one rep, three reps, five reps and that was the exciting thing is our kids were excited about their reps. Tanner Welch is an individual who came in at left tackle and performed you know I think a lot of individuals I think they valued their repetitions so it was great to get them in RB Ezell Jolly RB Solomon Baggett "Ssome some things we need to continue to improve upon but thought he did some good things as well and Solomon (Baggett)  kind of stood out and you know there comes a point in time you have to compete for your playing time, you have to earn the right to play on Saturdays by what you do throughout the course of the week and we've tried to build this football team where we have that competitive depth were every practice you show up.  It's kind of a philosophy is the walkthroughs have to be like practice, the practice has to be like game day football game and your core values and your capacity for work and how you approach the day and all those things. Our players have done a pretty good job with that in the players that do that in their  development you're going to see them take big big steps in moving forward by the way they practice.  So every rep is valuable so I thought we had a lot of players step up and play winning football. OL Will Saxon one of the best individuals I've ever had the opportunity to coach.  you talk about an individual who is really really grown in our football program and he owns our football program, he owns our football team. He is one of our captains and never has a bad day Always stops in to see me and never has a bad day.   He always plays with toughness and Arkansas State and winning are very very important to him. He is integral to what we do on and off the field and  I can't say enough about him. DL Elias Sherman He has continued to progress. We saw progress from week one to week two.  Now this is going to be a monumental challenge for him and an exciting challenge to see how he embraces it but he has been one of those individuals who has been extremely stable for us and very very consistent. We talk about consistency in performance all the time and that is what we know what we're getting with Sherman.  He had to go through, just like with everybody, our standard, our style of play with our effort and all of those little things. Again all of these newcomers are kind of learning the way of life. Football is a lifestyle and you have got to live it every single day and it's that lifestyle with your effort strain,  the ability to play 4 to 6 A to B. It's not coach speak, it's real and that's how you make plays come to life. But he has been one of those individuals who has been extremely consistent for us and he's going to do nothing but get better for us down the road.