PLYMOUTH – It was hard to find anything to worry about in film for Plymouth’s Rockies from Friday’s win but it did show a need to take care of some things.
It was kind of different for us we had a lot of kids that played a lot of snaps,” said Plymouth coach John Barron. “We looked at that this week trying shore that up a little bit, maybe try to play some younger kids or move some kids around to try to keep one way guys. We have a goal to start 19 different kids and we’re going to work to make that happen.”
Finding anything to be upset about on the defensive side of the ball was even more difficult.
“We did a lot of good things like stopping the run and making them throw it,” said Barron. “I know they (Bremen) want to throw it but we did a good job getting them off the field. We made some big plays ourselves – most of our touchdowns were big plays. We have players with big play capabilities, we don’t gear anything around that but we have some kids that can go 50, 60 yards on a single play.
“Our front guys didn’t have a whole lot of tackles but they did their job. They didn’t get driven back too far, when they got double teamed they got down, they didn’t lose contain when the ball was on their side, we tackled the dive, they really disrupted things for us.”
The defense also answered an important question going in for the coaching staff.
“We tackled well,” said Barron. “You can’t bring people to the ground all summer so we were worried about that. Our secondary guys run to the ball real well. They can cover. Our linebackers were very active. They did some really good things.”
“The biggest question marks we had we answered by moving people. It wasn’t a matter of being angry and firing somebody, it’s playing 120 snaps and let’s see if we can get somebody different in there and let some guys concentrate on one side of the ball.”
The ground game of Rochester’s Zebras makes staying fresh even more important.
“I like what Coach (Mike) Zehner does,” said Barron. “They play really hard. Rochester running backs run very hard, they never come off the field they’re out there every play. They did lose a lot of really good seniors from last year but these guys look good themselves.
“They lost their quarterback last week in a really horrible injury and he’s a very dynamic player. We have to be aware of what they want to do offensively with a new quarterback, hopefully it doesn’t take us very long to figure it out.”
“Its important for us to get off to a good start on senior night. We have to match their phsicality. They are going to run the ball. We’re going to see a lot of double tight ends, a lot of run heavy sets and we have to react to that.”
