1-0, Woo-hoo

It's been a while since my last post. We played ina preseason tournament last weekend. Won our first game, lost our second game. Kids played pretty well, but we had quite a few penalties and other issues that marred otherwise good performances.

Played Mid-Rivers yesterday. This is the team that lost to St. Charles in the Super Bowl last year so we knew we would be in for a tough test. Also, this would be one of the teams we would be fighting for a playoff spot with.

They deferred to the 2nd half and we got the ball. I scripted our first 6 plays but we went off script at #4. We didn't gain much the first few plays and ended up getting stopped. We had the off tackle hole open, but couldn't run our play right.

So we go into halftime down 6-0. @nd hlaf they start out with the ball but go four and out. We take the ball and have a great drive right down the field ending with our QB taking it into the end zone for a great run. They get stopped again, we get the ball back and end up with a 4th and 15 on our own 20/25. We weren't going to punt because punting is a gain of about 10 yards, so I called a reverse, a play we hadn't run all game. Our Running back Brandon had a huge run, making several tacklers miss and got us the first down. We ran a sweep play next, and then we were going to run the naked bootleg off of that sweep with Brandon, but the nap wasn't very good and the ball was on the ground. Our HB(our running QB) picked it up, took it around the outside to the right, and about 50 yards for a score. It was awesome.

So we kick off and the kid picks it up and rumbles down to our 25 yard line. For a second I thought he might score, but he was a bigger kid and he ran out of gas because he had to cut back and forth across the field. Still, though, they were in great field position, but our defense stepped up again. A great game, great win. Put me in a good mood all day.

Ugh, not good

So we played St Charles, the team that one the Super Bowl last year yesterday in a preseason game. What an ugly game for us. First play from scrimmage my son throws an interception. We ended up losing 20-0 and I don't know that it was that close.

They are a much bigger team than us and really took it to us. We didn't look good on offense or defense. We were playing some kids out of position, but not enough to make it an issue.

Personally I don't think I called a very good game. The pass play on the first play could have waited until we were on the right hash mark. I kept trying to go outside when I should have been going up the middle. Oh well, two weeks until our next tournament, I'll look at the film and hopefully fix things up.

Jelly Jamboree

We had our Jelly Jamboree this past weekend. We did pretty good, our two stud RBs, Brandon(48) and Jack(21) both had good games. My son Ryan played some QB and did pretty well. Had a real nice long pass for about 20 yards. Our defense looked great as well, really swarming. I hope it wasn't the competition and we really are that good. The first team we played was decent last year, so I expect that our showing was pretty good. The 2nd team was all new players and is pretty far from being a good team.

Video is below.

Another practice

So we tried to have practice last night, but the rain blew in and took care of that. Didn't get much accomplished except for our drills at the beginning.

We're going to have practice tonight and then our jelly jamboree(scrimmage among chesterfield teams) tomorrow. I'm not expecting us to do that well, not because we don't have a good team, but because we use the scrimmage to evaluate players that more than likely won't play there. We also don't try to read the defense and take what they give us. We're going with a script tonight, down to player substitutions so that we can evaluate ball carriers and blockers.

I'll post after the scrimmage.

2 Practices this week

So we had practice on Mon and Tues this week inside because it was so hot here in St. Louis. Mondays practice started out as a disaster, but by the end it was better. Tues. practice was pretty good, the kids are getting the plays down. I don't think we'll look very good in the scrimmage on Sat, we almost never do, but we'll get to see what the kids look like and critique them.

We're trying to introduce the shotgun snap to our offense this year and the kids are having problems. We're at about 50% right now, so we've got a ways to go. We're still really weak on the offensive line and I'm not sure how we'll do this year. We're very small.

Practice #3

Great practice tonight. We threw in 38 Shotgun and they ran it great. Linemen did excellent, and the running backs ran well. I'm really happy and impressed with how the kids are picking things up this year, alot faster than they had in the past. I guess being in the system all last year really helped them out.

Practice #2

We practiced late with the kids because of the heat here in St. Louis.

Taught our players a play called 47 Speed. It's the first play we teach every year because its our home run hitting play. Kids did good tonight with a short practice, very impressed with how quickly they are picking things up this year vs. last year. Having pretty much the entire team back has made quite a difference.

We worked on handoffs tonight as well and things looked pretty good.

Supposed to rain tonight, hopefully it will cool things down, with the heat and humidity it's been awful.