How tall is does a 6-foot-7-inch quarterback look on a shorter, narrower eight-man football field?
What . . .about eight feet?
Well, not if he’s horizontal, as in on the ground.
Getting Nik Coble, the towering WACO quarterback, to the turf – or at least off balance – will be just one of the missions the rampaging Montezuma football team will be assigned when the 3-0 Braves host the Warriors for their homecoming game.
Kickoff is 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, at Badger-Gabriel Field.
WACO (1-2) has put up 48 points or more in three of its games. But it was last week’s contest that got everyone’s attention.
The Warriors extended defending Class 8 state champion New London (3-0) into overtime before falling, 56-50.
“WACO looks really good!” said Braves Coach Pat O’Brien.
It wouldn’t be quite accurate to call Coble the quarterback a one-man band for WACO.
But consider that he leads his team in passing AND rushing AND he’s the second-leading receiver!
“It looks like it’s going to be another battle,” O’Brien said. “We are excited for the challenge!”
Coble is 31-for-58 through the air for 554 yards and eight touchdowns. As a runner, he has 258 yards on 46 rushes (5.6 yards per carry) and another eight touchdowns.
And, he has run under nine passes (not his own) for 206 yards and two scores.
A year ago, the WACO game was a near-miss for the Braves. WACO won, 37-34. Coble was a modest 9-for-36 for 163 yards. The Braves were hurt just as much by a Warriors running back who has since graduated.
This season, WACO has won 48-38 over North Shelby, Mo., then came losses of 56-63 to (3-0) Janesville, and the defeat to New London.
The Braves positively bristle with offensive weapons. They’re tough on defense, too, when you consider how much time that unit spends on the field because of Montezuma’s 64-points scoring average.
Quarterback Eddie Burgess is 39-for-60 through the air (.650) for 922 yards as 18 touchdowns.
When he runs, the 6-2, 215-pound Burgess averages 8.5 yards a carry. He has gained 348 yards on 41 totes. That gives him 1,270 rushing and passing yards on 101 snaps. “Eddie reads defenses extremely well,” O’Brien told KGRN’s Chris Varney.
Burgess has thrown to a number of receivers.
Trey Shearer has 19 catches for 448 yards (23.6 per catch) and nine touchdowns.
Cole Watts has nine catches for 168 yards and four scores.
Others with between 78 and 122 yards of receiving yards are Kodie Strong, Brayden Arendt and Ben Jorgensen.
“Our receivers run crisp, hard routes,” said O’Brien. Burgess had help running the ball, too, from Brayden Arendt and Kodie Strong.
On defense, Jorgensen leads with 28.5 tackles and Brian Diaz has 25.5. Strong has 17.5 stops and Watts has 15.5.
Joey Kercheval, Connor Van Zee, Arendt and Burgess each have between 11.0 and 11.5 tackles. “We need to work on little things, like staying parallel to the line of scrimmage,” O’Brien said. “We pursue well, but sometimes our angles are too steep. We need to focus on closing the cutback lanes.”
“We have some great players making great plays,” O’Brien told Varney. The coach referenced a 65-yard pass-and-run throw to Shearer just before halftime. Shearer made a sharp cutback, then picked up plenty of downfield blocking. “Then we came out and scored 28 straight points in the second half,” said the coach.
NEW MARK, ALREADY – With their third win last week, the Braves exceeded by one the number of games they won last season, which was their first playing eight-man football.
JVs IMPROVING – Montezuma’s junior varsity football team didn’t win Monday evening, Sept. 16, but they showed improvement in a number of areas! Final was HLV 30, Montezuma 6.