PLYMOUTH – A week after an emotional win over a ranked opponent it isn’t a let down that Plymouth head football coach John Barron is worried about.
“I have a feeling that this is a team (Elkhart Memorial) that’s telling themselves ‘Why not? We have talent, why shouldn’t we be able to beat a number one team?’,” said Barron. “I’m not worried about a let down. I’m worried about playing Elkhart Memorial. They are talented and well coached.”
And coming off a big come from behind win of their own a week ago against Warsaw. New to Memorial – though hardly new to football with 199 career wins in 27 years of coaching – Crimson Charger head coach Scott Shaw has the program moving in the right direction.
“He’s obviously a veteran coach who knows what he’s doing. They are riding a high and they have a ton of athletes and they play hard,” said Barron. “The Hawkins kid (Zach) at quarterback is explosive and the Johnson kid (Micah) at running back is a gnat back there.
“What they want to do is run it but they will throw it to the outside. Their run game is different than what we’ve seen mainly because of the size of guys they are pulling. They will pull both guards, back side guard and tackle. It’s another one of those weeks where we have to decide how much we have to commit our outside linebackers to help with the pass, because they will throw it deep.”
Defensively the Rockies aren’t quite sure what to expect, except for one thing – pressure.
“They are going to stunt,” said Barron. “They’ll put a lot of people on the line of scrimmage and dare us to throw the ball down the field. Hopefully we’ll get a handle on those packages and still be able to run the ball with option football.”
The Rockies escaped a very physical contest with Northridge a week ago, but other than a few wounded warriors being limited in practice they’ve been relatively unscathed.
“Our kids were really sore Saturday but not like I expected them to be,” said Barron. “Our strength and conditioning has boded well that we don’t have a lot of kids playing two ways. There were a lot of collisions there and I think as the game went on that helped us and hurt them.”
A big game from Cam Eveland on offense was also a pleasant sign of things that are hopefully to come.
“As the playoffs wore on (in 2014) Cam took a lot of the pressure off of having to get the ball to (Justin) Drudge all the time,” said Barron. “He can run, he can block, he can cover, he can catch it’s great to see him getting involved the way he did.”
