I have always felt the mid-season open date we get is perfectly scheduled; although after a difficult loss I have a team and coaching staff that would want to play tomorrow if we could. The HSC game was one of missed opportunities on the offensive side of the ball and I know at the QB position there are three Red Zone decisions that we would like to take back. In the big games when you get a chance to make a play you need to make it, and we were not able to do it last Saturday. The bad throwing choices, dropped balls, an ill timed holding penalty (that was accurate) that negated a TD, or a poor kick all kept points off the board for us in a game against a very good football team. I felt our defense gave us a chance to win that game, and I bet at year’s end those offensive numbers for HSC will be season lows.The step I have talked to this group about making is becoming a unit that forces turnovers themselves. Through five games we have only intercepted five passes and recovered one fumble. In the off week this will become a point of emphasis because I have always felt good defenses can go on offense themselves if they have to.
On offense, we will be more secure with the football at the QB position. Although the team will practice hard on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the QBs are going to work on Tuesday and Friday morning by themselves. We are going to not let one performance define us, because I do believe we are a better football team than we were a year ago and high expectations despite the injury bug that hit us hard are still here and not unreasonable. By Guilford we should get Rudy Jackson back at WR, Nate Jackson at RB, and Joel Francis and Dylan Higley on the defensive side of the ball. In the next two weeks we hope to define for David Arguad, who has chosen to delay his surgery and play with a braced knee, a contributing role for him. We are also going to do the extras with our two young place-kickers who a year ago let the in-house competition make them better. Both have had a sophomore slump in 2009. These are talented kids who, based on last year’s freshmen work, we chose not to even recruit another kicker this year. Kickers are like golfers who have to find their swing again, and the off week is well timed for TK and Will.
Guilford, who has the open date to match ours is always a dangerous team after an open date. Athletic and aggressive on defense, they will try to rattle our QB early and they are diverse on offense and have played a couple of variations of offense with two different QBs. We hope their 48 point performance against Southern Virginia last week might have settled them into a system. Homecoming is always a big game here and I expect the same second half improvement from our team we saw a year ago. There are five teams on our schedule we are capable of beating but they are all capable of returning the favor to us. I believe an 8-2 team with a 5-1 ODAC record will be in position to reach all of our goals.
We had our second JV game on Sunday night vs. Shenandoah and lost a close 24-20 game. If you ever want to see sports at its’ purest go to a JV football game. Everybody gets to play, plays hard to win; but shakes hands at the end and 10 minutes later nobody remembers the score. They are fun to coach and always give you a reason to hope because you get see a lot of future talent out there that just is quite ready for the Saturday spotlight.
