Shane Davis has been in the coaching profession long enough to know that almost all programs have to endure some bumps in the road. It’s just the nature of the business.
Yet, Davis is actually facing it for the first time as a head coach and the coach said earlier this week he only had to go through it once as an assistant. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier.
“It’s not any fun,” Davis said of the Wildcats’ 0-3 start in 2011. “You think about all the hard work the kids put in during the offseason and you hate for them to be going through this. However, we can feel sorry for ourselves or go back to work. There have been a lot of teams in the position we are in now and they were able to bounce back and we can too. We have to remember this feeling and work to make sure we don’t go through it again.”
The Region 8-AAAA slate certainly won’t get any easier for AHS this week. Seven days after falling to Salem High School 14-7 in a defensive struggle, the Wildcats will travel back to Conyers, this time to face undefeated Heritage. The Patriots are 4-0 and while they have yet to crack the Top 10 rankings, they do have an impressive 21-14 victory against Clarke Central this season.
“They have a lot of kids back from a team that was in the playoffs last season,” Davis said.
“They were already a pretty good team. They’ve been able to start fast and that momentum can pick up steam as you go along. Heritage is playing with a lot of confidence right now. It means a lot in high school football to have confidence when you take the field.”
Preventing the Patriots from making big plays will be key for AHS.
“They have two very good running backs and their quarterback has good speed,” Davis said. “We will have to get them on the ground.”
Trying to generate more offense will also be necessary for the Wildcats.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting our backs to the second level,” Davis said. “Our pass protection also has to be better. We had a couple of dropped passes last week and we also missed some open receivers. Up front, we missed some blocks. We have to do better in all of those areas.”
Sustaining long drives is something Davis is looking for his offense to do this week.
“We need to keep their offense off the field,” Davis said. “Our initial surge on running plays has gotten better. We must continue to do that.”
Offensively, Heritage runs the Wing-T, AHS defensive coordinator Matt Sorrells said.
“They get into many different formations and run a variety of different plays,” Sorrells said. “ They remind me of our team from our 12-1 season in that they have three backs that can hurt you at any time. However, you can’t overplay the run because their counter and play-action passing packages are very good as well. The story for us is still the same — all 11 guys must continue to get better at doing their individual jobs and trusting the other 10 to do theirs. We also must continue to limit our missed tackles.”
Wildcat offensive coordinator Joel Miller said Heritage presents a tough challenge for AHS.
“Heritage is very good,” Miller said. “They’re big, quick, fast, physical and very confident. Basically they have everything that you want in your defense. They are a base 3-4 team, but have shown a lot of other looks as well. We have to do a better job of blocking the correct people. Salem really hurt us with their aggressive defense, but we also hurt ourselves by going to the wrong person and missing holes when they were there. We will have to be sharp in all aspects offensively to move the ball on them. Our turnovers have been really costly the past few weeks and we can’t beat good teams when we turn the football over.”
