The Jaguars Are Ready For Army Prep
Brandon Ross diving for one of his two touchdowns in the Jaguars historic win over Hargrave Academy on September 5th, 2009. Photo courtesy of Doug Roberts.
The Jags are primed and ready for the second game in school history. After a three week layoff that seemed almost like an eternity, practices are over with and all that is left is execution on game day.
Obviously Coach Jones was worried about the long layoff between the emotional first game and the second game. But Coach Jones says the practices have been good. “The tone has been good out here,” he observed. “We have had some good practices the last two weeks. The guys have come out to work, practices have been real businesslike. The emotional level has picked up this week, which is what you want. You want to peak on Saturday – our kids understand that, they will be ready. I have not been part of anything like this, it has been tough. A lot of things in life can be negative but we were able to turn it into a positive, we’ve had a long time to get ready. We feel like we have worked against them every day for two-and-a-half weeks, that has got to help us.”
He also said that he is not concerned that the players were focused on only playing well in the program’s debut game. “The bottom line is that every game is a big game, and our kids understand that,” he said. “They want to have a great season, not just a great first game. We’ve been working a lot of hours so that any time that we go on the field we will be ready.”
The long layoff has given the team a chance to spend extra time practicing against scout teams that are running plays and formations that their next opponent, the Army Prep Black Knights, is expected to use against the Jags. But it has also given the staff a chance to thoroughly go over game film from the first game to identify things that need to be addressed.
Coach Jones said, “There are a lot of little things that we have been able to improve on the last few weeks. Our offense is always working on scoring in the red zone, it seems like we talk about that a lot because it’s hard to score down there. The Jaguars scored on three of five chances in the red zone against the Tigers. Defensively we did a lot of great things, although we gave up some short passes so we’ve been addressing that. This is a running team we’re playing against, though, so our challenge on defense this week is stopping the triple option.”
The Jags did a great job of stopping the run against Hargrave by only allowing 106 yards on 27 rushes out of the 344 yards they allowed for the game against the Tigers.
The Jags will have a walk through at Ladd-Peebles Stadium on Friday and will finalize preparations for the game on Saturday. Kickoff is set for 4pm. Also an online audio feed will be available for free at www.usajaguars.com with pregaming starting at 3pm as well as postgame wrap up afterwards.
Also read the great article posted today about Tony Threatt entitled “The Heart Of The Matter.” It is a very good peace about the freshman defensive back for the Jaguars]