HOWARD — After a tough season opening 55-9 loss at the hands of Coshocton, the East Knox Bulldogs have to regroup, refocus and face the visiting Grandview Heights Bobcats at Chet Looney Stadium on Friday at 7 p.m.
Both teams are looking for their first win of the season, but the Bobcats tell a better story last week. Although losing their opener at home, Grandview Heights battled the Utica Redskins to a tie after four quarters only to lose in overtime, 20-14.
The battered Bulldogs had a much tougher time, watching Coshocton return three interceptions for touchdowns as well as a kickoff return for a score. They have to get their ship righted in a hurry.
“We need to cut down our mistakes,” said East Knox coach Tom Holton. “Our mental mistakes and the turnovers hurt us. You’re not going to be in a ballgame when you turn the ball over seven times. Coshocton also got a couple of fake punts off on us and that’s like a couple more turnovers. We just need to fix ourselves.”
Holton is working hard with his punt return team as well as his kickoff team, but he would much rather explain this week’s strategy than think about last Friday. Of course, that means finding a way to navigate the East Knox offense through a very good Bobcat linebacking corps, who likes to force errors.
“They played Utica really tough,” said Holton. “It’s going to be a challenge for us. They like to blitz their linebackers. We’ve got to be able to pick up their blitzers and open up some spaces for our guys to run. We’ve got some traps that we run, but we have to be able to pick up their blitzer to get our trapper out there.”
On the other side of the ball, the Bulldogs seem to have a handle on the ground game. The Bobcats, however, have a few dimensions of their own there as well.
“They run a lot of different looks,” said Holton. “They spread you out. They run a pistol attack. The main thing is that each of our defensive players play their position and we play a team defense. We need to contain the quarterback. They want to spread you out and run the ball.”
The Bobcats also will want to exploit the East Knox secondary.
“They want to throw the ball downfield, too. Our (defensive backs) need to do a better job this week than we did last week on coverage,” said Holton.
Friday’s matchup will all come down to mistakes. More specifically, how the Bulldogs will eliminate mistakes.
“Defensively, I thought we played well,” said Holton about last Friday. “But then, we gave up some big pass plays. Rushing wise, we held their big running back to just around 60 yards rushing. We did some things right but, when you look at that score, it doesn’t look that way. We did things right but, we made so many mistakes and so many turnovers, you are not going to be in the game with a good team.”
