Offense Struggles, Defense Shines. Katy Advances.

December 12th, 2009

The positive for the day on offense is that Donovonn Young had his best game as a Tiger so far. Joey Chapman also did a great job running the ball as a fullback.

This was the first game all year that I didn't really understand what we were doing though. Game plans are up to subjective taste (coaches know a lot more than I do), but I was honestly confused for most of the game. I thought Katy was too slow to operate offensively. The blocking hasn't been working that well for the last three games, and the long developing play actions don't have much of a chance.

You have to stay on blocks to be able to execute those plays, and we haven't really done that all year. The last two weeks, I thought Katy had a very good rhythm with Haack in the game but that was obviously absent today. There were some sophomore moments, but that will happen when you are under that kind of pressure. The same thing happened to Stock. Haack will learn from it. He also made a couple of really big time throws to move the chains.

It's just hard for Katy to do anything offensively without a consistent running game. This scheme just flat out doesn't work without consistent running. DY was able to rescue things to a certain extent. I don't think NB was ready for him. They probably didn't think the big back was going to run on their big LBs, and focused mostly on LT.

New Braunfels deserves credit. They were ready to play and looked like they were the more determined team at times. They were quicker on defense than I thought they'd be. I was certain this would be a good game for LT, but it turned out to be a DY kind of game. The defense was pretty darn good after the first couple of series' for NB. They were a primarily running team this season, and attempted a lot more passing than usual. Defenders showed very good awareness on the interceptions. Run defense was lights out.

I have no idea what happened on special teams, but Holl's return was very nice. The punt receivers did a very good job catching the ball as they have all year. Survive and advance. You'd obviously like things to be sharper at this stage of the season, but you take a win however you can get it at this time of year.