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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. 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. That 2.5 min/TD ratio includes all of the good defense PNG played in that game — Even with us getting stops and sacking the qb and making big defensive plays, they still scored on 1/3 of their true possessions, at the 2.5 min per TD rate. If we had gifted them more T.O.P. we would likely have lost the game. In fact, our 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. In other words, LC was on pace to match their typical scoring average but for the fact that we held the ball for ten minutes more than they did (for example, we only let them have the ball once in the first quarter). 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. If we let the game become a shootout, we’re turning the game into a coin flip. LC wants the game to be a coin flip - They want a wild high-scoring game with 30 second possessions on both sides. They have the advantage in that kind of game - 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. On the other hand, if we stubbornly and patiently hold the ball (with a heavy dose of running behind our biggest advantage, the OL), drain the clock and just keep getting 2-3 yards a run, with a few opportunistic passes when LC gives them to us, we make the game something LC desperately doesn’t want it to be. We can make their offense watch the game disappear from the sidelines. -
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Yeah, I readily confess that I should have qualified my statement, and put it in quotes, like "per my neighbor", or something similar. My neighbor has two kids attending HF, and he was at the scrimmage, so really I'm just quoting him. Anyway, it'll be a close game, I'm thinking. -
By Mr. Buddy Garrity · Posted
This is fact. I was told by her Jasper barely beat Lumberton 🤷🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️ -
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