With just three games left in the season, the American Conference Championship out of reach, and a record of four and five, FAU football is going to need to take two or three in order to reach their goal of bowl eligibility for the 2025 season.
And that is exactly what Head Coach Zach Kittley made clear this week during his team talks.
And they’re going to have to do it as underdogs the rest of the way as well. Checking in for Saturday the Owls are currently sitting at -17 versus the Tulane Green Wave
Hopefully they will be able to do it with the services of Caden Veltkamp who aggravated a shoulder injury originally suffered during the Memphis game after being driven into the ground rather forcefully.
Veltkamp indicated that he was receiving treatments for the injury during post game following the Owls win over Tulsa for homecoming.
But there was no clear indication as to whether or not that would continue without repercussions from the aggravation which occurred. Coach Kittley shed some light on that today during his weekly press conference in the Flagler Credit Union Stadium media room.
#FAU QB Caden Veltkamp took another hit to this shoulder on Saturday vs #Tulsa. Will he play on Saturday vs #Tulane? Coach @ZKittley explains 👇 pic.twitter.com/0AWCmZ8YJG
— FAU Owls Nest (@FAU_Owls_Nest) November 11, 2025
Kittley also doled out some praise for young players and talked briefly about the Owls’ remaining opponents.
Below is a select compilation of what he had to offer on these topics and a few others.
On Offensive Line Play Overall
“It’s been, it’s been a year in that room, you know, but the improvements been a lot of fun to see. You’re starting with the left tackle who was a tight end last year. This is really his first time playing tackle in college. Your left guard is a red shirt freshman. Your center is a guy that’s never played center before. Your right guard had missed the last few games, and your right tackle has been bumping all, all across, playing everywhere right now, and came in and did a fantastic job. So I’m extremely proud of that.”
What He Got From Working with the Line During Bye Week Recruiting
“The biggest thing we did is, if you watch the tape, we widened our splits out a little bit on the offensive line. And that was just something kind of, when you go back and watch Navy, I think that kind of that hurt us a little bit. We were screwed down too tight. Sometimes we’re stepping on each other, and so we’re not being able to combo and get better blocks.
“Some people call that old school air raid, the old school air raid splits, where you’re putting your linemen on islands more and they’ve got to win one on one blocks. I feel like we needed to do some kind of change. And so that’s the biggest thing that we did. It does change your run schemes a little bit, because now some of the combination blocks are not as easy whenever you’re so far away from each other.”
On Young Player Performances
“I can start with Damon Allen playing nickel for us, playing a ton of snaps, made some big time plays. He is getting better every week. Really, really excited about his future. You know, Zion Paret been playing a ton of football. I know he didn’t play this last week, but he should hopefully be back this week. He’s playing a ton. Josh Roberts made us some big plays for us on Saturday. He’s a true freshman.
“Brandon Hoch caught a couple big time balls and did some good stuff for us in the perimeter blocking as well. Jade card running down on kickoff right now, Hector Chavez running down on kickoff right now. There are a lot of guys that are playing and maybe some stuff that goes unseen. Talk about Big Mo Hinds playing as a young guy at the left guard position. It’s really hard to start in big time football as a red shirt freshman at the offensive line position. He’s came in and has done a fantastic job.”
On Possibility of a Bowl Game
“This is where you want to be. We can still control our own destiny. I live in reality. I don’t live in what could be or anything false. I told our team we are not going make to the American Championship game. That’s out of the window. But what we can control is find a way to find two more wins and get us to a bowl game and go play football in December. Again, that’s the beauty of where we’re at. You know, we can control that.
On Upcoming Opponents Tulane, UConn, and ECU
“UConn is seven and three, and they got the nation’s leading passer who’s thrown 25 touchdowns zone receptions, just because you pop stuff like that pops up on social media. I know East Carolina has a bunch of really, really good football players, and they’re starting to play their best football right now, because they’re in our league. I see crossover film, so I’m watching them play sometimes.”
“You know, this week [against Tulane] maybe the biggest one of them all, because we got, we got to start fast right now on this last three games stretch. But this league is crazy. Anybody can beat anybody. And you know, at the end of the day, we’ve got to play our brand of football. If we can play close to what we did this past week, I think we’re going to be in every game the remainder of the year.”
On Practicing in This Morning’s Record Low Temps
“We got started in the team meeting this morning, pretty fired up trying to get them going. I mean, I’m not naive, like I live in the reality some of these South Florida guys, it gets blows below 70 degrees, and they’re freezing. But I thought we had a great day. It was absolutely beautiful to me. I’m sure for my guys from up north…it was probably still really, really hot outside, but it was beautiful.”
What it Will Take to Finish Strong to Make a Bowl Game
“First off, can we create the turnovers that we did this last game. It just changes everything. We had so much momentum early because of what the defense is able to do for us, and it was fantastic. So if we can continue to create some turnovers like that, I think that’s going to be that’s ticket number one – turnover margin these last three games. I think if you look up and we’re in the positive, we’re playing in December.”
Injury Updates
“We’re getting healthier again. A lot of it’s going to be kind of you see if they can warm up and play. We had a lot of that this past Saturday, and some guys just didn’t feel comfortable. They probably could have gone, but they’re, they’re realist also. They are like if I go O am going to be at 60% and my 60% isn’t better than A, B or C’s 100%. So I do feel good about getting a lot of those guys back.
The Owls will kick-off against Tulsa at 4:00 PM EST on Saturday. The game will be televises on ESPN+ and be sure to follow along with our coverage on social media as well.