Rez

Our defense isn’t what it used to be. No speed

PNG 21-14, 11:24 in 2nd

PNG better find someone who can make an open field tackle against big runner

!!score: 7/14/1

!!score:7/7/1 lc runs back the kickoff for a td

1. Barbers Hill 2. PA Memorial 3. Angleton 4. La Porte 5. Port Neches Groves 6. Nederland 7. Bridge City 8. Huffman 9. Little Cypress-Mauriceville 10. Hardin-Jefferson 11. Carthage 12. Hitchcock 13. Anahuac 14. East Chambers 15. Orangefield 16. McGregor 17. Bullard 18. Newton 19. New Waverly 20. Woodville 21. Corrigan Camden 22. Colmesneil 23. Hull-Daisetta 24. Deweyville 25. Apple Springs

Score’s lopsided, but West Fork has been impressive, all things considered.

THIS

Holdren was really good. He was unstoppable against PNG in 2021, if I’m thinking of the right kid.

Yeah - have you seen his film? It’s almost eery how he just glides through the defense, only juking a tiny bit.

I’ve wondered the same thing. I’d say it’s twofold. First, LC might be seen as unproven. For the last two seasons they’ve run up the score throughout the regular season only to lose in the third round. The voters might simply not trust LC until convinced otherwise. Second, and related to my first point, the loss to Magnolia paired with them only having played a couple of private schools makes LC a question mark. We know they lost handily to a good team, but their big wins over private schools don’t tell us much about how good they are.

Rigdon has been crazy to watch. I don’t know if anyone will slow him down this season.

I’ve watched all three Nederland games. They’re definitely still finding an identity. I think the O-line is the biggest problem, and blocking in general. A lot of that can be improved with reps. So far there seem to be only Tezino and Thomas who are real playmakers on offense, but running Thomas to the edge every play isn’t going to be that hard for defenses to diagnose. Qb strikes me as a great overall athlete and a good leader. Also, his decision making has improved under the new coach and this staff is better about calling pass plays that work for him. Anything can happen - especially in Mid-County Madness - and I like Nederland’s chances against Dayton and Montgomery. Dayton seems about as good as Ned right now, and Montgomery’s opponents were 1-9 through three weeks. I haven’t checked if any of that changed in week 4. So, if the season goes how it looks right now with the top three being the top three in whatever order, and Nederland gets at least those four wins they’ll be in the playoffs. Rooting for ya’ll, except on October 25.

I had us at 1-2. I figured Klein Oak and La Porte would give us a lot more trouble. As it is, happy to be 3-0. Hopefully it will be 4-0 come Saturday.

I can’t find any full-game film on Lake Creek from this season. They return a lot of big names from last year, as does PNG. Like last year, it’s going to be two well-coached evenly matched teams. Three things I think we’ll need to win: (1) Defensive improvements. The defense has been good, and our performance against La Porte had a lot of bright spots. LP showed our weaknesses, and we got good reps against a violent, tough offensive line blocking for fast RBs who don’t go down without sure tackling. LC will be a more balanced offense, and I’d argue more talented than La Porte. We need to get better at outside containment and bringing the runner down at first contact. A single missed tackle is a touchdown for LC. (2) Avoid turnovers. That’s important for any game, but last year, two of Lake Creek’s four touchdowns came off PNG fumbles. (3) PNG must dominate time of possession. This was the most important part of us beating them last year. I went back through every play of last year’s game. Here’s some rough numbers: PNG held the ball 10-ish minutes longer than LC. (28 min vs 18 min). That’s nearly a full quarter more than LC. It gets more interesting: For every 2.5 minutes LC held the ball in a normal “true” drive, they scored one touchdown. [I didn’t count their scoop and score on a PNG fumble because it doesn’t tell us anything about how their offense moved the ball against our defense.] So, that ten minutes extra we held the ball was HUGE for PNG’s win. It might have been the main reason we won. In fact, our good defense actually didn’t stop them enough to slow their usual scoring rate much. They averaged around 56 points a game before they played us. If those ten extra minutes we held the ball had gone to LC, their offense was on a pace to score between three and four more TDs - or, between 48 and 55 points total. Obviously, this is based only on one game, but neither team has changed much since then. What does this tell us? With equal T.O.P., PNG likely loses. Our best defense is LC not touching the ball. They have the advantage in a shootout - frankly, their receivers are faster than ours, their RB is better than ours, and their QB is more than good enough. If we have to win by matching them score for score, we lose control. Our defense is good, but not good enough for our offense to gift LC extra possessions.

Titans by 50+

If it makes you feel any better, the superintendent just spent $76,000 on a motivational speaker.

I think BH wins this one.

Tt

Landen Williams-Callis. If he isn’t already, I expect a five star rating before it’s all over. I think he already has offers from pretty much everyone.

I watched this on TexanLive. It was a good game. Neither team played good defense, and Klein Oak continued its streak of shooting itself so hard in the foot you could drill for oil where they stand. But it was a classic, “who has the ball last” game. Klein Oak played far better than they did against PNG. Almost makes the PnG victory look a little better.

I haven’t done the precise math, but this is FBM’s worst loss since 2016, a 63-6 loss to Manvel.

Game 1, 2022 season

It’s a matter of degree. If Team A beats Team C by 60, and Team B beats Team C by 14, we’ve learned that both Team A and Team B are better than Team C. But I don’t think it tells us much about how Team A will do against Team B. Last year is a good example - PNG beat Nederland by 28. Lake Creek beat Nederland by about 50. If we went only by the scores we’d be tempted to say LC had a better offense and defense than PNG. PNG beat LC by 3. If you won by at least more than two scores, I don’t care about how much more you scored after. A stat I think IS transferable to the next game is something like 3rd and 4th down conversions, 3rd and 4th down stops, time of possession, and number of possessions. But I would want those to be counted over the whole season, not just against a common opponent. The things that lead to touchdowns or prevent opposing touchdowns that you can do consistently against a bunch of opponents get closer to telling us something about what you’ll do with the next opponent. In other words, I think the ability to get three yards when you absolutely need to against everyone you’ve played tells us more about your team than previous point spread.

There’s no transitive property in football. We can’t predict scores based on comparing who scored what against who. Matchups are what matters. There were a couple years (2014, 2015) where PNG beat a bad Goose Creek Memorial team 47-20 and 42-14. Nederland lost to GCM those years 56-55 and 18-14 (their only district loss in both years). Nederland beat PNG both years, despite PNG beating GCM by 17 and 28 points in those years. The point is, I don’t think we learn much, if anything, by LC losing to Magnolia and then Magnolia beating a team PNG beat. The only thing that matters is what can LC do on defense against PNG that specifically counters what PNG does, what can LC do on offense that PNG will struggle to counter, and how do both teams manage the game (play calling, clock management, etc).