Performance should serve as motivator, coach says

CHEROKEE — An hour before leaving for the scrimmage against Cherokee High School Thursday, Faith Academy football coach Russ Roberts went over each play with his players.

When the Flames arrived and began the game, their first offensive play resulted in an 11-yard gain. But in the next six plays, the Cherokee defense tackled the Flames for no gain or for losses.

That was the beginning of things to come, Roberts said.

“I don’t think we performed well,” he said. “We didn’t show any mastery of our own offense.”

Faith finished with 256 yards of total offense, averaging 5 yards per snap. Quarterbacks were 12 of 120 for 131 yards, while runners recorded 31 rushes for 125 yards.

“We threw the ball a whole lot better than we did last week,” the coach said. “We had 70 yards on one play. We were much more consistent.”

The Flames defense also had a hot start, Roberts said, but struggled to sustain it.

“We didn’t play consistently,” he said. “A little bit of that was confusion. We’ve been trying some new things defensively … and it’s been a notable experiment, but I don’t think that it’s very good.”

Cherokee is a member of the University Interscholastic League and the only public school Faith — a private Christian academy — will face.

Days earlier, the Flames dominated Round Rock Christian. Roberts said the reason wasn’t necessarily because the Flames knew the playbook better.

“We were better athletes and we had better athleticism. We went ahead and ran the plays fairly correctly without blocking,” he said. “And because we were better athletes, we were able to make some yards, break some tackles and make good plays. Last week we got big plays. (Thursday) night we got nothing.”

Still, Roberts said the scrimmage against Cherokee served its purpose.

“Our passing game made considerable improvement from the week before,” he said. “I thought Michael Penner did an outstanding job at middle linebacker. I thought Pete Perkins continued to lead well at safety. I thought our outside linebackers with Seth McAnally and Jake Diamond were better. I thought at times Brian Freeman looked like he was almost in midseason form, at times not. When Casey Clendennen was in (at defensive end), I thought he looked pretty good most of the time.”

The players understand they didn’t perform to their standards, which will make it easier to coach them, Roberts said.

“There was nothing to hide the fact we were unable to dominate,” he said. “We got our nose bloodied a little bit. And that’s probably good. That’s going to make our coaching this week probably a lot better.”

Faith will have a bake sale at Cross Stone Church, 2400 Commerce St., at 10 a.m. Sunday.

The Flames will open 
the season at Killeen Memorial Christian in Killeen at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

jfierro@thepicayune.com