Frankly, there aren't many firsts left in Jau'von Young's Austin Peay State University football career at this point, so when he hits a new one, we celebrate it around here.

Saturday, Young plucked a deflected pass out of the air and returned it 18 yards into Lindenwood territory. The interception – Austin Peay's first of three just in the first quarter Saturday afternoon – set up the Govs for their second score of the day on the way to a rout which saw Austin Peay take down the Lions 52-10.

"My last interception was probably high school," he reminisced a few days after the game. "Yeah… my senior year, I had a pick-six."

The interception was Young's first as a Gov, another badge of honor for a trench monster who has terrorized opponents across five seasons, three leagues, two conference titles, and a pandemic, putting together one of the most inimitable careers in Austin Peay history. He might not be the one who leaps off the stat sheet or racks up all-conference honors.

But what Young contributes to, every day, is winning. No matter what it takes.

He stands out in the locker room for a variety of reasons, but this might be the biggest: think of something, anything, you can throw at a football player or student-athlete and Young has seen it, done it, and knows how to navigate it. The sage elder statesman also anchoring a defensive front that has posted six sacks and 16 tackles for loss over the last three games isn't just dispensing wisdom to the youth on the roster; he's also here to administer beatings to opposing offenses and he – and the Govs – are getting pretty good at it.

That's because, per Young, you can't just set a tone by coming in on fire because it's Saturday. It's about being an everyday dude, all the time.

"I've got to come in with the same edge every day," he said. "I can't be a guy who takes Tuesday and Wednesday off and comes in Thursday, Friday, and gameday and go hard. I have to bring it every single day and let guys know that this is what it's gonna take. We've got guys like Sam Howard and Kory Chapman, two guys off the top of my head that practice and play with an edge every day. We preach it every day. Enough is never enough; it takes what it takes, and you can't survive doing the bare minimum."

Young has something most of his teammates covet – playoff experience, from his freshman season in 2019 when the Govs won the Ohio Valley Conference and went on a deep run in the FCS playoffs. The potential is there with this group to do it again, which would make Young the ultimate rarity – an Austin Peay football player with multiple rings and multiple FCS playoff appearances.

"The potential of this team is crazy," he said. "I honestly believe this team has the potential to make a deep playoff run. The maturity of this team matches what we had in 2019. The fight, the tenacity, the will to keep going… I can see it, I can see flashes of it.

"[But] one thing I'm preaching to them is that once we get somebody on the ropes, we gotta knock them out. When it's 28-0, 35-0, that's when we keep going, keep hammering, make them not even want to come back out after halftime. That's what I'm trying to get into those guys."

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's a lot of football left. It just so happens that Austin Peay's last three weeks – dominating wins against ETSU and Lindenwood which sandwiched a hard-fought war at Stephen F. Austin – have given people cause to notice the Govs. While the performance against Tennessee is not supposed to have any influence on the playoff committee, a combined three-game aggregate score of 167-33 against three real-deal FCS full-scholarship schools should certainly garner a few eyeballs. Given Austin Peay's recent run of success and despite some of the… more curious polling choices of late, it's not hard to envision the Govs eventually garnering some of that hard-earned and yet still-elusive respect their season should garner, and perhaps sooner rather than later.

Yet another thing Young is uniquely positioned to speak on – earning respect and proving, time and again, that Austin Peay is an FCS force to be reckoned with. It might be frustrating at this point – the Govs have gone 31-20 during his career, after all – but the whole thing is nothing new for him.

"Every week, we're fighting for national respect," he said. "It's not going to be given to us, we've got to go out and take it. We take that mindset into every game, and every week is a statement week.

"We like it like that. We like it when the odds aren't in our favor, when people are counting us out. That's when we're at our best."