FOOTBALL
Football grasps new offenseBY MONICA CRAWFORD ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2013
After a year of transitioning into a new offensive system, the Rose football team is finally understanding all of the new plays and has started off this season with an undefeated record of 3-0. Offensive coordinator, coach DJ Williams, has been working with the team since last summer on perfecting this different system of play.
“I only got here in the middle of July last year, so the kids were really struggling all through the year last year just trying to learn the offense,” Williams said. “Last year they were just constantly trying to catch up, but this year they’re understanding and doing better.” The team is running what is called the spread offense as opposed to the pro-offense that they ran two years ago. The spread is a much faster paced system that has been allowing the team to create more opportunities to score. The team is always in shotgun, which means that the quarterback stands a few steps away from the center instead of right behind him. The spread offense is run-based and tries to get the other team’s defense to run side to side. “The main idea with our offense is that we’re trying to spread the field,” Williams said. “We want to try to create gaps in the running game so that our athletes can get into those spaces and take advantage of their abilities.” The spread offense has been a challenge for the team to learn, but the players seem to enjoy it. “I like the high tempoed offense a lot,” junior Copeland Spell said. “It really tires out the defense, and we can get a lot more plays off which is what it’s all about.” One of the main differences between the spread offense and the pro-offense is that in the spread, the team does not huddle before making a play. While the team may not be spending as much time in a huddle during the game, but they are focusing on trying to come closer to each other as teammates. “We’re learning to work harder and work together,” senior Christian Pleasant said. “We’re more focused on becoming family oriented than we were last year.” The team has set high goals for this season, and hope to finish out the season with a successful record. “Obviously we’re a lot better this year than we were last year,” Pleasant said. “We’re just going to keep working hard and get better each week. Hopefully we’ll go undefeated” In order for the team to go undefeated, they will still need to put in a good amount of work according to Williams. “Our biggest challenge is execution,” Williams said. “I tell the kids all the time that if we can go out and execute everything that we need to execute, there’s not a single team that could stop us. We’re the only thing offensively that is stopping ourselves, but if we can go out and execute, then we will be successful.” HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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