Katy Rolls to First Dominant Win over Oak Ridge

Posted by KT2000 at September 22, 2008

Katy's Offense Drives the Field

In case you haven’t seen the score yet, the Tigers won 27-10.

I thought the Tigers took control in the second quarter, and the team wasn’t threatened after that. Oak Ridge runs a tricky flexbone offense, and they gashed us a few times in the early going. They didn’t pop as many big plays after their first couple of drives. The misdirection plays are what gashed us early, and they also outflanked us on a couple of sweeps. I thought the secondary did a good job of making plays on the football. Oak Ridge passed the ball pretty well in their first two games.

Their QB appeared to have a decent arm. It was good to see the defensive backs react to the ball. Coverage wise, we play to stop the big plays primarily so we will sacrifice the underneath stuff from time to time. That doesn’t worry me as long as guys aren’t missing tackles when they come up to make plays. After the first couple of drives, the defense did a much better job of containing Oak Ridge’s offense.

The offense started very slowly in the first quarter, but looked very good in the second quarter. We had most of our running success down the middle. We didn’t get much on the edges. The third and fourth quarters weren’t as good as the second. It was good to see Parker Ray connect on the big plays, but we are still missing on the short/medium bread and butter stuff. We don’t have the play action game clicking yet. We had a 3rd and goal from the two, and ran a play action from the power set. We had the tight end (I think it was Callendar) and Roberson on layered routes to the play side.

Parker passed to the tight end, who was deeper in the end zone, and missed. Roberson was the easier play there. He was uncovered, as our FB usually is on those plays. Those are the kind of plays we’ve been missing on so far, and they are the meat and potatoes of this offense. There were a handful like that today. We have to be able to execute those in order to really get the offense off the ground. We had the deep ball to Brandt any time we wanted it. The big stat of the day was 0 turnovers.

Raul Balbuena was his usual reliable self in the kicking game. His kick offs were well taken, and he connected on 2 of 3 field goals (hit all 3 PATs). He missed his first FG try of the day. It was a 40+ yard attempt. I forget the exact yardage. The punting team had one kick partially blocked and another one blocked, which led to Oak Ridge’s late score. I am sure punt protection will be emphasized in practice this week. Of course, that can bite you in the butt in a close game.

Oak Ridge ran a tricky offense and appeared to have some skill talent. They weren’t a very deep team by any means (I counted 33 on their roster). Overall, I think this game will help the team’s preparation for Cypress Bay next week. Their offense isn’t identical to what Oak Ridge runs, but there are similar principles.