The 2008 East Jackson Eagles got their first taste of action Thursday night, as they traveled to Gainesville for a scrimmage with the Chestatee War Eagles.
Head coach Frank Caputo said he felt the scrimmage went okay, and gave his team a chance to measure itself against a seasoned program.
“Going in, we knew we weren’t going to play our first line guys offensively for probably more than 15 plays, and we probably got that 15 out of them,” Caputo said. “I thought the first group, for the amount of time that they were on the field, did pretty well offensively.”
Caputo said he also felt that the younger kids did well against Chestatee.
“I thought they did a real nice job of executing and doing what they had to do,” he said. “Granted, we had enough mistakes to last a lifetime, but we seemed to play pretty well when we got down in the red zone. We also threw the ball pretty well, and I was tickled about that.”
On the defensive end, Caputo said the Eagles really didn’t take a lot of time to prepare for Chestatee.
“We’ve just been working on ourselves,” he said. “Anytime you go against an option football team, if you don’t take the time out to prepare for them and do your assignments because it’s discipline football, they’re going to have some runs on you.”
Caputo said while he didn’t feel the team did a good job of tackling, he did see some good effort in spots Thursday night.
“I thought our younger kids played pretty well and ran around with more energy than the older bunch. We were looking for that energy. Unfortunately, for the older guys, they didn’t have it that evening, but we’re sure they’ll have it in the future.”
All in all, Caputo said, the Eagles are glad to have the scrimmage behind them.
“Overall, it was a good barometer for us. Chestatee has a fine football team and coach, and they’re a playoff team. I think we responded fairly well to the challenge.”
The next challenge is to take the lessons learned in Gainesville back to East Jackson, and work to fix any problems that came to light.
“We’re going back to our fundamentals,” Caputo said. “We’re working on blocking, tackling and shoring up our mental mistakes. We made a lot of mental mistakes, as far as which way to go, and our head placement.”
The focus this week, Caputo said, will continue to be on the Eagles.
“It’s a time for us to work on us,” he said. “We have an extra week to do that before we have to concentrate on West Hall. We’re going to work on us and get ourselves straightened out as best as we can this week, then start working on West Hall.”
East Jackson will kick off its 2008 season on Aug. 29, at West Hall against the Spartans.
