North tackles film room

Friday, October 17, 2008

Members of the Madisonville-North Hopkins football team may have enjoyed a brief respite from the stress of school this week, but that just means an increased time bulking up on football knowledge.

Instead of practicing as usual after school, the Maroons (4-2) woke up early and practiced 8 a.m. - 11 a.m. each day, followed by a film session, all in preparation for today’s 7:30 p.m. contest with Graves County (4-2).

“We feel good going into it this week where you don’t have to worry about school, don’t have to worry about grades,” coach Will Weaver said. “Our only focus this week has been on Graves County.”

Although the two teams’ records are the same, North brings a lot of momentum into tonight’s game after its offensive line and running game stepped up significantly to defeat Marshall County 36-12 last week.

Weaver said he respects the Graves defense, but has confidence his team will repeat the performance from a week ago.

“We should be able to run the football on them a little bit,” he said “Their secondary is decent, but they’re not the best secondary we’ve played this year. They’re well-coached, they play hard and I definitely think if we play the way we played last week we’re going to have some success running and throwing the football.”

While Weaver noted the secondary, senior offensive lineman Andrew Daugherty said he and his fellow lineman have been focusing on those defenders closer to the ball.

“I think their strengths would be their linebackers,” Daugherty said. “They like to bring their linebackers and we’ve been working all week on picking up blitzes.”

Weaver said he thought his offensive line graded out the

highest so far on the season against Marshall County.

The Maroons ran for nearly 300 yards, more than half by running back Ryan Robinson.

“We just wore down the defense,” Daugherty said. “We hit them hard in the first quarter and they got tired quick.”

Daugherty said the team’s running attack has benefited from the line’s switch to a three-point stance.

“We run-block better out of a three-point stance than we do in the two,” he said. “You’re lower to the ground when you take off. It allows you to get more momentum in a shorter amount of space.”

Speaking for the rest of his lineman, Daugherty said the transition was an easy one to make.

“All of us have been using it since rotary league football, so it’s just like second nature to us,” he said. “It was back just like that. We knew it like the back of our hand the second day we started going at it.”

Offensively, the Eagles will run a wing-T set and have small, yet quick lineman up front.

“They take good angles to the ball,” Weaver said. “They’re going to be tough to slow down, but I definitely think we have more team speed than they do and our linebackers are playing real well.”

The key for the Maroons’ defense will be to stop the run and force Graves to rely on throwing the ball, something they are not as comfortable doing. North employed the same strategy last week and forced Marshall County quarterback Denver Seay to make risky decisions, which allowed the Maroon secondary to come away with four interceptions.

“What we’ve done in the past is we’ve pressured the quarterback and put him in bad situations,” Weaver said. “We mixed up our coverage to where he comes out, he doesn’t always get the same coverage, his reads change a little bit. Our guys just did a real good job of breaking on the football.”

As for the North offense, the team will try to do exactly what the Maroon defense will try to limit: running the football.

By running the football behind a strengthening line, Weaver said he hopes to open up the passing attack, which will be highly important if North is to come out on top.

“I think that’s the key to winning this game – continuing moving the chains, getting first downs and being able to run the football,” he said.

For Daugherty, he thinks the key is more of the same from last week’s strategy.

“We have to stay low (on the line),” he said. “When you come off the ball, you have to be lower than the defensive player. If you’re lower than the defense, you can drive them wherever you want to put them.”