HARRISONBURG — The attitude Rusty Wright wants his Chattanooga team to play with is probably the one it’ll need to get through the first month of the season.

“Hopefully your team takes on your personality to a certain degree,” the first-year Mocs coach said. “… We’re going to play our butts off. Win, lose or draw, somebody is going to be in a football game and I don’t care if we’re getting beat 40-0 or winning 40-0, we’re going to play like you’re supposed to play and we’re going to do things the right way.

“That’s what I’m excited about seeing, if we can get to that level and play that hard to where people just go, ‘Man, them cats, those guys play hard.’”

Chattanooga was 6-5 overall and 4-4 in the Southern Conference last year, but following the campaign former headman Tom Arth left for the same job at FBS Akron, opening the door for Wright, a former Mocs tight end, to return to his alma mater.

Wright said he was eager to get back to the place where he met his wife and the city where his daughter was born. He also had two previous stints as an assistant at Chattanooga, most recently working at UTC as linebackers coach from 2013 through 2016 on Russ Huesman’s staff while helping the school to three straight FCS playoff appearances.

“Having the opportunity to come back and try to get us back to where we were at one time four or five years ago was important to me,” Wright, who spent the past two years as inside linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator at Georgia State, said. “Being a former player, I have the pride and passion. And I know some of these guys that played before for me think eventually we can get to a point where we’re back in the talk of going to the playoffs.”

The quest for a postseason return doesn’t begin easily though – Chattanooga might have the toughest non-conference stretch for any team in the FCS.

After opening with Eastern Illinois, in three consecutive weeks the Mocs will travel to Jacksonville State and FBS Tennessee before hosting James Madison on Sept. 21 at 4 p.m. inside Finley Stadium. That’s a slate strong enough to put Chattanooga over the top if on the committee’s bubble for an at-large bid come late November.

“We’re going to find out an awful lot about our football team in the first four weeks, but I’m excited about it,” Wright said. “I think it’s great. I really do. I have not seen JMU play in the last two years, of course, so I don’t know what to expect, but I know they have great football players and great football coaches, so it’ll take all we got.”

The series with the Dukes is the start of a home-and-home as Chattanooga will trek to Harrisonburg in 2020, and Wright said he believes having Madison on his schedule is positive for his program.

“You don’t even have to look at the rankings because you know they’re up there,” he said. “So wherever they are whether they’re No. 1, 2 or 10, that’s good and we’re not quite at their level yet, but it’s going to be a great game for us.

“We’re going to have to do all we can do to hang around to be in it to give ourselves a chance to win, but I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s awesome for our level of football.”

When the Dukes get to the city that sits on the southern Tennessee border, they’ll have to be conscious of Mocs quarterback Nick Tiano, who Wright says has pro potential and needs to play well this season in order for the team to succeed.

Tiano, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound senior, began his college career at Mississippi State, but had his best season yet at Chattanooga this past fall throwing for 2,710 yards and 15 touchdowns compared to only six interceptions. Ahead of leaving for Georgia State, Wright played a role in recruiting Tiano to Chattanooga when the signal- caller decided to transfer.

“He is a guy that can make all the throws,” Wright said. “And we’ll probably spread the field a little more for sure than what these guys had done in the past. I doubt you see a fullback in the game like these guys have had [under Arth], so we’ll get back to some of those things [Huesman did], but we’re going to do what our personnel can do.”

Next to Tiano, running back Tyrell Price is back for his senior season after earning second-team All-SoCon accolades last year for his 697 rushing yards and nine touchdowns. Wide receiver Bryce Nunnelly, a first- team All- SoCon selection, returns as well. Tiano and Nunnelly connected 79 times for 1,237 yards and seven scores last year.

Wright said the team’s strongest position group is the secondary, and Chattanooga will likely play five defensive backs on the field at the same time.

“That’s where we’re best at,” Wright said. “We have some good safeties – Brandon Dowdell, Jerrell Lawson, D.J. Jackson, Rashun Freeman – all four of those kids are juniors and they’re all good football players. They’ve played a lot of football here.

“Matter of fact, Jerrell Lawson just graduated with a 3.3 GPA in business and he’s still got two years left, so that shows you the kind of young man he is, and that secondary wise, we’re probably better off. We have decent corners and that’s where we have a little more depth than anything else.”

The Mocs coach said they probably aren’t as deep at linebacker or on the defensive line as they’d like to be, but have a few standouts, end Devonnsha Maxwell and middle linebacker Marshall Cooper, to bolster those spots.

As for making a playoff push, Wright said the time between his playing days in the program and now as the one in charge of it proves its possible.

“Everybody says they’re a blue-collar program,” Wright said. “But 20, 25 years ago when I was in school here, downtown Chattanooga was dead. There was not a lot going on. They just built the aquarium a couple of years after I got done and there was not a lot happening, so this city strapped its boots on, went to work and made it a place people want to be and that’s kind of the same mentality we took when Russ was here.

“We found kids that wanted to be here. We fought some battles with some kids and won some and lost some, but half the battle in recruiting is getting kids who want to be with you. That’s what we did and we developed kids. We’d get ‘em into their third, fourth year and we played juniors and seniors instead of redshirt freshmen and sophomores and we were able to make a playoff run and play the game a little longer.

“… JMU is going through that now. They’re able to get that, but the more you practice and the more your younger guys practice and see those things and put the time and effort in, it’s all about getting into that cycle and getting into that routine.”