Cougar14.2

Dallas Skyline used to be one of the elite programs in the DFW before Reginald Samples left for Duncanville but has struggled since ever since. That being said, they’re still one of the more talented teams in the state and that’s a nice win for FBM. I don’t expect their game with Crosby this week to be close at all. They’re playing out of what’s maybe the best 5A-D2 district in the state this year so I expect them to be battle tested by the time they meet PNG in the playoffs.

24-0 Iowa Colony. Final. Hopefully only 8 more games left of this

17-0 Iowa Colony at the half. Calling this bad offensive football would be a compliment. I don’t even see Willis on the sideline tonight?

Iowa Colony is a poor man’s Fort Bend Marshall right now. A couple alignments from now they’ll start to look a lot more like the Manvel teams during the Jalen Preston era. IC has a ver good sophomore RB but offensively they struggle to throw the football at a decent percentage and their offensive line is average at best. However, they do have sophomore QB who already has several power 4 offers to play WR at the next level. He’s going to be a problem running the football for Crosby all night. With the weather being what it is, the talent of IC’s two main ball carriers and Crosby defensive alignment which allows for lots of running space, I wouldn’t be surprised to see IC put up 300 yards on the ground tonight. Lots of RPO’s with quick shows out to the flat to get their guys in space is probably what we have to look forward to tonight. Crosby also helps the opponent’s defense with our offensive play-calling which keeps us in the field most of the night as demonstrated in the Dayton game. I hope win so the kids can get some confidence but Iowa Colony has a lot more talent than Dayton and after a week of watching film I can’t point to any reason we would? Rough times on 2100

Seeing as how this s the easiest non-district schedule Crosby has had in a while it’s going to be disappointing to go 0-3 against it due to our inability to score in Willis’ system. It’s something that permeates all levels of the program. There will be games that the kids make more plays than the others but until we change our fundamental approach in relation to our personnel Crosby is going to struggle to be any more than a .500 program. I didn’t think it would get this bad but these are the results of the concerns I voiced on this board when we made this hire.

Well, the statistics back up the awful offensive performance. Luke Wheeler was the leading passer for Crosby with 25 yards. Yarbrough had an overall good night with 189 yards on 27 carries but if you look into it that's also pretty concerning. 89 yards came on the two TD runs in the first half but after that it's 25 carries for 100 yards or 4ypc. Crosby has a sophomore who I mentioned earlier in the week had Austin Walter-like ability but Dayton would have to deal with him because Willis was going to line him up in the slot. I believe he had two carries for zero yards and one catch for 11 yards. I mentioned Willis compounding his poor play-calling with questionable personnel decisions. The Crosby receiver that dropped the TD pass has consistently done so in practice as well as game situations but he's a senior and Willis continues to play him over kids who have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to make those plays. Willis constantly rotates the QB's at practice, I didn't think that was something he was going to carry over to the game though. Neither QB could get into a rhythm running windsprints over to the sideline after every play. Mediocre to bad QB play is something that has been consistent with Willis' offenses the last few years. Kids that were solid in Prieto's system look like they've neve played QB under Willis. I'm not sure that Crosby has ever had anybody on campus that knows more football than Joe Willis and he may be a great coach but he just doesn't fit the personnel at Crosby. He's an old school guy stuck in his ways and he's getting the brakes beat off of him by younger coaches with less talented teams running more dynamic systems. I think Coach Willis is a great teacher of the game and the kids love him but two weeks from now you're probably talking about a coach who's 2-11 through his first 13 games at Crosby after coming off of a 2-8 season at his previous stop. At the end of the day it's not Willis' fault, Crosby was desperate and probably paid a nice asking price. It's certainly not the kids' fault as they're still signing scholarships and going off to play college football. When somebody gets hurt at work we always look for the "root cause" of the injury. The root cause of Crosby's injury is their administration and particularly the superintendent. They say stuff rolls downhill and right now Crosby fans are standing at the bottom of a mountain. Hopefully we can finish with some type of respectability for the seniors and the admins. make the needed personnel moves after the season.

Coach P and Coach Poth were probably over there looking across the field thinking “We could beat us by 30 with our old kids”. Not surprising to me though, Willis couldn’t even move the ball on Baytown Lee in the scrimmage.

I fully expect Crosby to be blown out the next two weeks and head into district play 0-3. It’s a shame there’s already nothing to look forward to but this is the price you pay when your athletic program is hampered by arrogant administrators.

Congrats to Dayton. One thing for certain about Coach P is that if Dayton can produce a performance this solid in the opener he’s going to have them looking twice as good by the middle of district play. That used to be nice to look forward to.

Well, the game went exactly like I told you it probably would. Poorly coached and just wasted talent. This is just what the Joe Willis era is at Crosby. Hopefully he “retires” again at the end of the season and we get a competent guy in here before he drives the program completely in the ground.

It doesn’t mean anything at your new school, especially when it’s 180° out from the school you won’t at. Not to mention you were sub-.500 at your last stop also

Well, I said I thought North Shore was a 30 point favorite. I didn’t think they would make it look this easy though.

The last play of the half is an example of the Willis play-calling philosophy I wonder about? It’s the last play of the half and the entire stadium knows you’re going to throw it. Why the heck do you need to run a slow developing play-action pass instead of just a traditional drop back and let your protection get set properly? So instead of a shot at the endzone it’s a loss of 5. Like I said earlier, our game plan is to give it to Yarbrough and hope he can break it. There’s not much more “offensive coordinating” going on after that. I talked about personnel decisions. We just dropped a TD that hit the receiver in the facemask. Even though he does the same thing in practice Willis refuses to give more reps to the receivers who can make those plays.

Crosby will be looking to win their first season opener since 2018 This season the Cougars will be looking to make the playoffs for the 18th time in the last 20 seasons Tonight, Joe Willis will start the quest for his first winning season at Crosby During the 2024 season Code Red will be attempting to win its first district championship since 2021

I think this is an interesting game for SOC to finally get out of their DFW comfort zone. I think this one will end up with a similar score to their games with Duncanville. I have North Shore as about a 30 point favorite at home but all I need is a 24 point lead at any point in time to collect my 750ml from my buddy tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing Khaleb Bailey versus Keelon Russell in the state championship game. Duncanville lost some absolute beast off that team from last year. If North Shore is healthy they should be in good position to win round 6.

Well, Dayton has Coach P who looked like he was already in mid-season form the way he was tuning up officials last night but there’s potentially rain in the forecast🙏🏾 In all seriousness I think this game is going to come down to quarterback play. How ironic is that the two stud QBs Crosby had in their ‘27 class both left for various reasons after their 8th grade year but will now face each other a year later as sophomores on varsity? If the North Shore transfers are cleared that’s going to be a huge help tonight. One plays DE and has a similar build to McCoy Casey and the other is a kid who I think another poster was alluding to who can help at one of the skill positions. Even though Crosby doesn’t pressure much I think Dayton is going to have a tough time running the football on Crosby’s front 7. That being said the fact that we don’t pressure much is probably why Coach P is going to have success calling plays against us. It’s gets unsettling to watch Crosby only rush three and drop LB’s on 3rd and short. I think this is part of the new “playing the right way” philosophy being instilled? I think the gameplan tonight on offense will be to give it to Yarbrough 25-ish times and hope he can break son long runs to keep the offense functional. I’m not sure we’re settled enough at the QB position to really do anything else? Crosby will be extremely run heavy on 1st snd 2nd downs as usual but if we end up in a lot of 3rd and longs we’re almost assured to lose because Poth will start sending them at an even higher clip and Crosby showed very little ability to anything outside of a normal rush against Baytown Lee. Either way it goes I definitely still think the worst part of tonight will be dealing with Dayton’s parking situation and restrooms. Remember, Coach P had an issue with OUR facilities 👀

I don’t think it’s really a controversy, I think it’s a philosophy. We may line up in some modern formations but at the heart of it Willis is an old school, power run game football coach which requires Crosby to dominate the offensive line of scrimmage . . . which we can’t. In a standard 60-play game he probably wants to run it about 40+ times if we’re being effective so there are carries to go around. Running backs want the ball from the running back position. Not lined up in the slot and having it thrown to them, having to motion pre-snap or sprint post-snap to get it. Crosby does run some two back sets but the vast majority of the time the RB that gets the ball from the traditional RB position is called the B-back in our offense. Last year and this year alike Crosby had a RB that could average more yards from the traditional position than the player who will get the overwhelming majority of the carries there. If the play-calling philosophy relies on us leaning heavily on the B-back position then why not give a more equal share of the carries at that traditional position to players who can help make that play-calling more efficient? Josh Jackson has Austin Walter-like ability but teams won’t have to deal with it much because he’ll be lined up in the slot at A-back. Just a different approach than what we saw from the last two coaches.

Well, so much for that. Kind of had this one penciled in as a relatively uncompetitive district win since Kempner went 0-10 and was basically blow out of every game last year.

Kirk Martin came back so now Manvel has the same coach they had those years when they were great but their enrollment area is only about 1/5 of what it used to be. Most of the great athletes were coming from the Shadow Creek Ranch subdivision while it was being built which now has its own high school. The explosive growth has always been down HWY 288 and now Manvel just lost the fastest growing part of its attendance zone to Iowa Colony High School. Manvel’s offense looked pretty bad last night but just three years ago Carson White who’s IC’s sophomore QB would’ve lived in Manvel’s attendance zone and along with a few of their other prospects made that a completely different game. One of the downsides of coaching in a growing district like that is potentially getting a smaller piece of the pie which Manvel is feeling now.

Man, I thought Dayton's offense looked better than I would’ve expected actually. I didn’t really want to say that though. They picked up 83 yards in their first 5 plays of the scrimmage which is why I said they looked pretty decent and had several other opportunities for chunk plays if the receivers make plays on the ball, particularly #8 on the go route when he’s 1v1 on a small DB and the big kid #12 who couldn’t come down with a contested catch over the middle that was a for sure TD if he does. I wouldn’t call them fast or overly athletic but they have some solid personnel on the starting offense. Question is how many QB runs will Coach P call with Jr in there? I think Dayton’s defense looked good mainly because of GCM’s inability to execute a varsity offense. I think there are several games on their schedule where Dayton is going to struggle in the trenches if they don’t get early leads. Crosby should’ve been one of them but without the ability to run the ball consistently we’ll probably be in a lot of third and long situations where Poth and his creative ways of bringing pressure has the advantage over whatever we’re calling from our sideline regardless of personnel. I don’t know how anybody who’s seen both of these teams can say Crosby is a favorite, much less a big one to those who are thinking that? I think the days of Crosby’s talent and athleticism factoring into game results are done for a while. Unfortunately, we’ve digressed to just trying to put together respectable performances no matter the opponent across from us.

May have stole the show punting but I didn’t see him get a single rep at QB. I agree the controversy should be over though, Robinson should be the starter. If you’re a senior and it’s your second year in a system but you’re getting pushed by a sophomore who’s only been in the system for weeks then you need to go to the bench and let the more talented player develop. That being said I’m sure we’ll keep swapping the QB’s in and out and stall the offense even further. Those type of personnel decisions are part of the reason why Crosby isn’t any good anymore. We have the same issue at RB and WR too. Josh Jackson is the best RB on the team and probably the best pure runner we’ve had since since Craig Williams but Willis has him in the slot instead of the B-back position which would allow him to be our primary ball carrier. He loves the back who has averaged 4ypc over his career because he has major offers and will continue to feed him to the detriment of running an efficient offense.

Nobody scored in the live portion of the scrimmage. Both teams scored once in the controlled portion and Lee scored twice to Crosby’s zero in the red zone portion.

Dayton’s offense looked mediocre to pretty decent at times which I think is to be expected with a completely new system. Also have to remember the new personnel positions along with the QB being relatively new at the varsity level, he only made three starts last year as a freshman but at least one was a playoff game. Dayton has a lot better personnel than Lee and Crosby struggled to shut them down. Coach Poth is a great DC but but unless Daygon plays several kids both ways(which Crosby did when Prieto was there) the Broncos might be challenged on that side of the ball all year? Crosby hasn’t consistently shown the ability exploit team’s defense deficiencies under the new staff so Dayton will still probably be ok there. I think Dayton is going to play fast and loose while Crosby plays slow and tight. Maybe special teams decided it like some of the old classics?

He has a power 5 RB, one of the best inside LB’s in the area committed to UTEP, a left tackle committed to Air Force, a QB who will potentially D1 football and several other kids who will play at the college level. Not to mention the best prospect on the entire team being a stud sophomore. Talent wasn’t the issue last year and it’s not the issue this year. This issue is the questionable personnel decisions which get compounded by the questionable play-calling philosophy, mainly offensively.

If tonight was any indication it looks like it’s going to be another long year for Crosby. Looks like we picked up right where we left off last year. Coach Hurts exploited our defense with kids who looked smaller and less athletic than our freshman squad and the offense is more of the same from last year. Can’t get any movement in the trenches but we’re still going to run it on first and second down, throw an incompletion on 3&8 then punt. Was really hoping we would look better in year two but now I just think we are what we are until something changes.