CoachStew

One thing is for certain, the way these two teams run the ball, and defend the run, the only thing stopping the clock is penalties, a quarter change, or halftime.

Um, everyone has been better competition till today. Rushed well against Hamilton Badin until they made us one dimensional and did well against Beechwood so saying he struggled is a stretch. It's been 50/50 and not his fault we've struggled early. Today will for sure help his numbers though. Levi is and has been an absolute dude regardless of who is on the other side of the ball. Even with the early season struggles he is one of the best rushers in 5A.

THIS! I think it will be within 14 points though. Having seen these two in back to back weeks my pick would be the blue Colonels. CovCath doesn't wow you with size up front but they had a high level of physicality to make up for that and work really well as a unit.... really well. The best O-line we have competed against this year. Both great teams and no disrespect to Beechwood, but we at Dixie were injured, without a few starters for the first quarter, only had our complete O-line for one quarter, and it still took the Tigers until deep in the second half to get to a running clock on us. Beechwood will need a heck of a game from their studs and for CovCath to step on their own foot to get the win in my opinion.

I tend to agree with most of this. One part I'd like to correct is that we have not had much size on our lines in quite a few seasons. We are finally starting to see some and the next few seasons the line will finally have that look. But correct we should be more competitive than we have been showing. To our players credits, they have been battling through some key injuries, and HUGE deficits in certain key positions. In this particular contest we had some kids have to sit the first quarter due to some disciplinary issues. And Beechwood's first two scores were due to those absences (special teams/defense). Then you come out in the second half feeling pretty good about keeping it close and have a couple unforced errors (one being a crucial unsportsmanlike, muffed punt, and a turnover). Beechwood is going take advantage of those short fields and is going to win those games 99.9% of the time, and they deserved to win this one.

I agree. It's sort of lazy to just look at W-L and throw up your hands and be done with it. It ignores the fact of what was inherited. Coach Brossart left at the right time. Talent in the "have not' schools is very cyclical and outside of a few really good players here and there the other pieces weren't in place to compliment them. Parents had no patience and took their kids elsewhere to play. The scheduling is a head scratcher knowing the uphill climb this job was but Coach Burke has said it himself he'd change that and he has for next cycle. Then a transient Defensive Coordinator position where these poor kids have had 5 D-Coordinators in 7 years. It's all part of being the big whistle. But the kids respond to him and he has made some good hires in key spots. This season, a few former players have come back to help and try their hand at coaching. He built a freshman program (who is doing well now) where prior they were barely fielding a froshmore team. It sucks to have to do more with less and talent being cyclical, there is finally some size and talent coming up the pipeline to work with. This year is the first year the net height of the O-Line is above 6'. Since Burke got here I haven't had a d-lineman not named Rice who was taller than 6’-1' and heavier than 210lbs. So the question for the Athletic Director/Principal is, Option A, see this through another season where there could be a nice turnaround, or B take all the hard work done over the past few years and inject new energy into the program moving forward. My opinion, can't go wrong either way. Back to Badin... heck of a ball team, proud of how well we did against the run. Lots to fix in the secondary, and we desperately need to get healthy before a very winnable district stretch.

And your QB was about even in his running yards with your leading rusher outside of just two runs due to a mix of designed runs, and scrambles. For the SK offensive line, that's not getting it done. Not saying they aren't a good team, but that's got to get fixed moving forward if they have ideas of winning their district, or making a run in the playoffs.

This is a contest SK should win and I think they will. This past week and this week are two really good games to start the season. However, moving forward into their schedule they will need to address the O-line issues to be a legit threat. A lot has been made about their defense and that side of the ball no doubt has gotten a lot better. The QB spot has also gotten better, and more accurate. Obviously their backfield has RB’s that have home run speed, or get an extra yard. However, the front 5 has struggled at times to block effectively for them. When you remove the blue color lens the film tells you outside of just 4 runs in two scrimmages and one game, they are average on the ground. Talking to a Milford coach prior to their first scrimmage he said they were down and smaller. The Pioneers only managed two runs by Mo Smith of 50, and 16. Take those two runs away and the numbers are 3.5 yards per carry for the RB’s, and the QB was the leading rusher and was sacked/forced to scramble. Then they played a superior McNick team in a shortened scrimmage. 5 run plays of -3, -3, 4, 1, -3. Then against Dixie, who limped into that game, on 13 carries (according to HUDL focus) only managed 3 carries of 10 or more yds while allowing 3 carries for negative yards and allowing 2 sacks, and 8 pressures. They will win Friday but the next two weeks after figure to be a hard intro to September if they don’t figure out their front issues.

Had the pleasure of seeing 3 of these teams in 7v7's against us this pre-season. Can confirm Woodford is in a good spot and would not surprise me to see them at Kroger Field come December. Not only do they have a really good/veteran QB, they can also run the ball and have the line to control the LOS. That district is an absolute wood chipper.

Been an amazing event so far. Great crowd. SK vs COV Cath for 5th place. Cooper vs Walton for 3rd Highlands vs Dixie in 1st place game

Need to get pads on them to get a better evaluation. Spring Ball will give us a better idea of what we have. Sure they have their bodies picked out but nothing set in stone... yet.

We have lost a couple to the other side of the river as well that is correct. Cam Thomas and Trey Barnett went to Lakota West. Cam worked out with us till May then left before his freshman year. Trey played his freshman year and was upset about playing time on Friday and followed Cam the next season. Our starting center left two weeks before the season started last year to Winton Woods for a couple games before coming back over to this side and ended up on Holy Cross's roster. The Turkeyfoot RB this season is headed to Beechwood. Who knows who else will defect down the street.

It's a fair criticism to be sure. Nobody feels that more than the men entrusted to teach these players the game. It's also fair to say that the talent outside of the blue bloods is very cyclical. It sucks we compete with two of those schools right down the road for kids coming out of middle school. We have had quite a few great young men who do and have played at the next level (Including my son). And it breaks my heart they didn't have better seasons for whatever reason. Could you imagine Armani Gregg with a Highlands O-line? Brach Rice if he wasn't playing out of position? Mason Fields without receivers who dropped the ball and some semblance of a running game? Since Burke took over we have had one season where we felt good about the team as far as size and talent. And that year we didn't win a lot but we were really competitive. This past season early injuries (LB, RB, OL) and lack of experience up front hurt us. I'm sure if any of you talk to Lex he would second that. We go to war with the army we have. Speaking of, this season we will have a Senior D line, a more experienced O-line with some size, depth at safety, and our LB's will be light years better. Losing Mason Fields and Nishawn Goldsby hurts and they are irreplaceable. Trying to do that would be malpractice. So this spring we will get some helmets on, get after it and see what we have.

It is true. I’m in the building. I’ve seen the messages. I know what was said, replied to, and not replied to. I have the good fortune to have a Ryle coach as a co-worker and we had a good laugh a few weeks ago in our office about it. At any rate if the narrative is Dixie is ducking someone that just isn’t true. Just trying to schedule smarter to better suit our current talent pool. Some on here have been critical of the tough schedule and right, wrong or indifferent it was the right thing to do to drop Ryle at the end of the season.

"Chosen not to play" is a bit inaccurate. Tried to schedule them for earlier in the season but could not make it work. Clearly Dixie doesn't duck anyone at all as evidenced by playing arguably one of the toughest schedules in the state (up until this season). As some have suggested, you don't want to play a really good 6A team seven days before the playoffs and they couldn't make the earlier game happen. The off-season has been really smooth so far, staff is a great mix of experienced ball coaches, the weight room is being good to us, and excited for spring practice to get a better evaluation on the kids we have coming back.