helloworld

I do not believe it was a successful season for the Ryle Raiders and I will attempt to show why. This Ryle team had more talent top to bottom than the 2006 and the 2010 team. I sought out old coaches and players familiar with both teams/years to check this. This was the consensus. Just an opinion, not worth arguing. This Ryle team had three grades of boys (10th, 11th and 12th) that ALL beat the SK and Cooper teams as freshman. No significant talent has been added or lost since those years. These three grades are LOADED with talent. I think the passing offense and general offensive game planning was well done. Ryle scored more points on average than any Ryle team before, over 38 pts per game (06 was 30 and 2010 was 34). But against hard teams when plays were needed Ryle fell short offensively. The SK game and the and Cooper game both had junk TD’s, so collectively Ryle really scored 37 points in the three games against those two teams, averaging only 12 points per game. Where the Ryle coaches failed these players – *Personnel. As already mentioned England was severely underutilized. But he was not the only one, it was common amongst this team. Example – here are seven players that would be potential “stars” anywhere else that by the ¾ mark/end of season were playing ONLY 0-25% of the total snaps in a game – Colin England, Jacob Hiles, Aaron O’Hara, Lex McGregor, Mitch Bateman, John Haus, Jake Long. All seven of these players have been absolute stars and game changers at their positions throughout their whole time as players. Englands lack of time has been noted. But it is inexcusable that all these players were not on the field 50-75% of the time. The rumor is that Kyle England (8th grade RB star, Colin’s younger brother) will be going to CovCath because of this issue, Bateman basically stopped playing for the coaches (used an injury reason), O’Hara has already stated he will not be returning next year. Lex McGregor literally quit several weeks ago. He met with the coaches several times asking to be utilized somewhere but the coaches couldn’t find anywhere for a kid with 4.4 speed, dad played D1 ball and was one of the strongest lifters on the team. If anyone is familiar with any of these kids… I promise they would be star players for any team, including Cooper and SK. *Two platooning. This year the team was zealously committed to two platooning. They had literally two teams with two head coaches. Woolf defense, and Engler offense. Every player was only on one side or the other. Teams like Cooper that have less overall talent than Ryle beat them because they were willing to get their 5-6 best players time on both sides of the ball. That alone should be a statement against the 2platoon system. However, here is a specific example – In the Cooper game, the defense played an excellent first half. At the midway point of the third quarter the score was 3-0 Ryle, Dante Hendrix had been held to 3 catches/45 yards. At that point the starting DB was injured, out for the game. His replacement was a boy that never stood a chance (because in a hardline two platoon system even a school with Ryles numbers can’t field enough depth to keep up). Cooper rattled off 27 straight points, Hendrix had 5 more catches/120 more yards and a TD. If some of the more athletic WR’s had been taught/trained at DB they could have possibly contained Hendrix and Cooper’s offense better. It should be a statement against a strict two platoon system in high school that Ryle lost to Cooper this year. Kids like Batemen, Hiles, Scherr, Ashley, Haus, England, and Long should have been utilized on both sides of the ball and this cost the team dramatically. *Poor utilization of talent. Good coaches create a scheme that suits the strengths of their players. ESSPECIALLY in high school where you only can play with the hand your dealt. College coaches have the luxury of recruiting players that fit their “system”. High school coaches do not. Ryle uses a zone blocking scheme. This style needs a shifty RB with good vision. By the end of the season Chisholm was clearly the better RB for this scheme and deservedly so got 75% of the carries by the last game. Colin England was moved to the slot position and was attempted to be utilized from there. It wasn’t until the end of the season until they finally found a good place for England, he needs space to get power going. But England, Batemen and McGregor are all great RB’s in a downhill, FB oriented scheme. Power running. Not until the final SK game was anything remotely close to that attempted to be utilized (and then just a little). Vince Jarvis is one of the best run blocking FB’s and he saw maybe 2-3 plays all season in that role. All season fans were befuddled by the lack of running plays. To the point that fans would cheer loudly when a run play was finally called (Dixie game). This team had the perfect talent for a 50/50 run/pass split, but that was not what happened. Tanner Morgan, one of the best pocket passing QB’s around, was asked to run a read option type scheme all season. Tanner has fine speed and athleticism, but he’s not a running “threat”. In fact the coaches tried to resort to wildcat schemes (England at QB, Chisholm at RB and Morgan lined up at WR) in the final game to try to have a running threat out of the read option. This was a failure, SK LB’s knew the moment it was lined up it was a run and came downhill hard – no chance that was going to work. That’s a middle school idea. That’s a perfect example of coaches trying to make players fit their system. The team wanted to pass the ball but was plagued by drops, poor route running and size/athleticism problems among the WR’s. For some reason the coaches insisted on rotating 8-9 different players through for plays. The thinking was likely a need for fresh legs, but if your talent depth can’t keep up then good coaches shift their system. Against SK (a final/huge game) they tried to get a new kid on the field who was literally lost, they wasted multiple plays trying to get him involved, instead of putting the ball in the hands of star players. There was no WR deep threat. You would think a passing team would understand the importance of a deep threat to keep the deep coverage back pedaling. Once teams figured out they could rush three and drop eight and stop Morgan that way, this made it easy. SK safeties were 9-10 yards(9-10 yards!!) from the line of scrimmage. SK LB’s were 5-6 yards. It seemed like the Ryle coaches didn’t think that the speed, size and athleticism (hands) of the WR’s mattered. Eight defensive players in a 15-20 yard deep box from the line of scrimmage is crazy difficult for any QB to thread in passes. So drops, not being open enough, and short WR’s running fly, corner and post routes made for many stalled drives against good teams. Being a good high school coach is about identifying your playmakers and getting the ball into their hands as much as possible. England, Bateman, Chisholm, Morgan, Long, Scherr, Ashley, Cusick, Jarvis, O’Hara, J.Selby and McGregor have demonstrated for a decade that they make plays for the three grades represented. Anyone other than these players touching the ball was poor decision making on the coaches part. (this is not a knock on players not listed here – this is just a fact of history) Some of these players listed here NEVER touched the ball, ever. Some were rarely on the field. As mentioned before by others the lack of touches that England had was borderline crazy. But kids like Long, O’Hara and Bateman should have gotten the ball in their hands a lot more too. The players played their hearts out and were devoted to each other all season. In that sense the team had a great year. But if this thread (maybe a new one should be started?) is about evaluating Ryles season and coaches in the end, I think it was a failure. These kids wanted a state championship run bad and they had the talent to get there.