By Mark Robinson
In the middle of the week, Greenbrier East football coach Ray Lee had comments about the game against Woodrow Wilson, a 28-23 thriller that East won by scoring a touchdown at the end of the game.
“It was a defensive game the first half, we couldn’t get anything going on offense. We had a defensive score that put us up 6-0, Billy Honaker picked up a fumble and ran it in. We pretty much held them offensively to three points in the first half, so we go in at half time 6-3.”
“At half time we made some adjustments, some blocking adjustments. The running game picked up. Started moving the ball pretty good. That’s what halftime is for. You go in, see what’s working, what’s not working, where people are lining up. Make your changes from there.”
“You try to figure out if the other team is lining up in something different from what we practiced all week, and what we saw on film. So you start figuring out what you can do against that defense. Every coach has an area. Offensively, if they come out in a formation we haven’t seen, we make an adjustment. On offense, when they line up in a defense that we didn’t practice against all week, that we haven’t seen, we make blocking assignments based on that.”
“In the second half, after we made adjustments, then we could block the right people to spring our backs. We started blocking people, and we were able to start moving the football.
Three TDs in the second half. Billy Honaker scored the first TD of the second half, Jaylon had two after that. Billy ran his TD in about 22 yards. Jaylon scored a 71-72 yard TD. It was an awesome run. He broke two tackles as he came through the line, and then a guy was hanging onto his jersey, and he pulled away from that guy, and outran everybody to the end zone. A 72 yard TD, I think.”
“Woodrow made good adjustments also. They started running the ball better. One of their runs was 75-80 yards. He found a seam and he was fast and he took it to the house. They have some young good athletes. The last drive was a 20 yard run that Jaylon made. The big key in that drive was us controlling the clock. We did not want to give the ball back to them. Billy Honaker recovered a fumble with about three minutes left, on about the 40 yard line. We picked up a couple of first downs and Jaylon runs it in. Woodrow got the ball back. We stopped them with a minute plus to go, ran the clock out.”
“Devin Persinger played most of the first half. In the second half, Weis.We want to get all of our players on the field. Weis is a good football player. They both can play wide receiver, Devin and Weis. If we can change them like that … a lot of people say you can’t have a two-quarterback system, but these two guys, it’s not about their egos, they just want to win. They say Coach, wherever you need me, I’ll play. In the second half, Persinger was still going in the game at wide receiver, and you might see him at running back too.”
“During the week, we work on the motivation, looking to the next game. You have to keep them positive, motivated. You don’t let them get down on themselves. Last week is behind us, now we focus on the next opponent. Win or lose. It’s always good to win, it makes practices easy, but when it’s done, focus on the next opponent.”
“We try to put the right people in the right places. Let’s give so and so a shot at this position. The ones who add the fuel, that’s their position. A lot of it is based on watching film. Look at the opponent, and make a game plan, figure out what we can do on offense and on defense. We didn’t move a lot of people, stayed pretty much the same. Weis got more time at QB, and we put Honaker at tailback some.”
“When we look at film, we try to match up our best plays against their defense, to see what we think can be successful. We watch film and look for weak points we can attach. Try to find our strong points that we can use. Watch film over and over and over. Look for tendencies, clues they give away, so we know where to attack.”
“A lot of people think we just show up Friday nights. There’s a lot of preparation through the week. We coaches come in early Sunday morning, we look at film, get a game plan, a practice plan for the week, get that done as early as possible Sunday morning so we can get to church. A lot of people don’t see what we do during the week.”
This week’s game is at home against Preston High School.