By Coach John Beck
Braves Head Coach
No doubt the guys poured their hearts and souls into the BGM game. They gave a great effort, but unfortunately, we ended up on the wrong end of this one.
It was a game of who could make the least amount of mistakes? We ended up making more.
Missed assignments, penalties and turnovers all played roles.
On offense we ran the ball really well. Our ball carriers really did a great job of finding the running lanes. Brett Plants was very physical with his runs and was a workhorse all night. He had a career-high in carries and yards.
Brady Boulton also ran the ball well while weaving and cutting his way through the defense. Broox Stockman was a combination of power and speed as he also ran the ball well.
This started with the guys up front who had a pretty good night. Tod Geiger, Houston Van Roekel, Landon Morrison, and Simpson did some nice things on the line.
Our skills guys of Garrett Watts, Alex Black and Cruz De Jong along with our backs also did some nice things blocking.
As with anything there is also room for improvement up front as we missed some assignments and need to improve some techniques. Our scouting preview was to be physical and run the football and we did a nice job of that.
In the passing game we had some nice catches and did not have to rely on it as much as we have in the past with our run game being pretty efficient. Brady was effective and made some really nice throws and good decisions. From a route-running standpoint, we need to be better and we missed a few balls that we would like to have back. We had some nice catches, however there were a couple of plays that if we make the catch we put ourselves in a better position to win that ballgame.
We had two or three chances to change the outcome in the game.
We had the ball first and goal on the 1 and did not score on that drive.
We also had our first drive of the second half stalled out by penalties.
We had an opportunity to go down and score with about 6 minutes left in the game to potentially go up between 7 and 9 points and we didn’t get the job done on that drive either.
Defensively, we tackled well at times and had good coverage at times.
BGM had a good game plan and played mistake-free on pffemse. However we had opportunities.
Our run defense was pretty good, There were about 2 plays were we did not do our assignments and they both ended up in big plays and accounted for more than half their yards on the ground.
Geiger, Morrison, Braxton Plants, Briar Simpsona and Breck Simpson had a pretty good game up front.
Brett Plants and Broox StockmGarrett Watts, Carter Michalek and David Rose all tackled pretty well in space.
In the passing game our guys had a tough task and did well of being to the ball on the catch.
We had at least 4 opportunities to get an interception and we came up with none. We had them in 3rd or 4th down and long a handful of times and they were able to move the chains.
However, our defense did get us the ball back a number of times forcing either a punt or a turnover on downs against a pretty explosive offense.
Luke Erselius did a nice job on kickoffs for us and even got his first touchback of the year. However, we had a kickoff returned for a touchdown against us and had an early turnover on a kickoff return.
In the end, we made more mistakes and did not take advantage of some opportunities when presented with them. We made mistakes in all three phases of the game and that ended up being the difference in the game.
We will need to get better at the little things and grow as coaches, players, leaders and most importantly as a team.
A look ahead to Belle Plaine
Belle Plaine is a physical group. They are well-coached and want to run the ball first and fly around and make plays on defense.
We will need to do a really good job of reading our keys and stopping the run on defense.
he Alcott kid is a very talented and determined runner and we will need to tackle as a team against him. They are very tall and fast on the defensive side of the ball and present challenges in both our run game and pass game.
We will need to do our assignments very well. As it always is the game will be decided by the guys up front in the trenches.