Semoball

NMCC seeks offensive balance, physicality

By Josh Mills ~ sd_sports@yahoo.com

NEW MADRID -- Experience or no experience, one thing that New Madrid County Central football will have year-in and year-out is an explosive offense. This year will be no different for the Eagles.

"We've got depth," said head coach Arlen Pixley of his offense for 2008. "We're the richest-depth running back program in the state. I'll tell you that right now. We've got guys that you'll know their names before the season's up."

Names like juniors G'Darius Stevenson (6-1, 195) and Jamareia Jones (5-9, 175), sophomore Rodney Anderson (5-11, 175) and senior Bryan Waters (5-6, 165) will now be found in the stat sheet instead of Lennies McFerren III, who put up huge numbers in his junior campaign for Pixley but has since transferred out of state with his family.

"We went from five-deep at the position down to four," said Pixley. "I'm not going to say that when you take 1,786 yards of offense and 20 touchdowns out that they can't be replaced, but those guys are working extremely hard. They're trying to prove everybody wrong. Everybody thinks we're doomed now because we lost one or two players but they're out to prove everybody wrong."

Pixley said if anything looks out of the ordinary coming into the early part of the season, it's that the NMCC squad lacks a little bit of experience on both the offensive and defensive lines.

"It's kind of been what we've expected," he said. "We're new up front with the offensive line. We have an all-conference, all-district, all-region offensive tackle in (senior) Dominique Thornton (6-1, 245). He's one guy that's played at the tackle spot that's done an excellent job for us. Everybody else is brand new.

"It was kind of unexpected that we had to replace four of our five guys up front (offensive line)," he added. "We expected three but the fourth one has been a surprise. We've been doing the offensive line by committee, and the oldest guy besides our senior (Thornton) on the offensive line right now is a sophomore. So, we're a little concerned with our inexperience up front."

The Eagles are only returning three offensive starters from last year's playoff squad, but the three coming back provide quite a bit of power and excitement.

Right now, offensive returning starters are junior quarterback Dontre Jenkins (6-1, 190), junior tight end Kony Ealy (6-6, 225) and Thornton at right tackle.

All three racked up impressive stats in 2007 as well as awards.

As for the NMCC defense, Thornton will line up in the front on defense, too, alongside returning starter junior Patrick Goforth (5-10, 175). Pixley said the entire crew at the linebackers position will be new except for Ealy and the secondary as well, except for Waters.

Pixley's only other concern is how tough the Eagles decide that they want to be coming into the first part of the season.

"Right now we're not hitting hard enough to get hurt," he said. "That's one concern I have is our physicality. We're fast. I've said that before. New Madrid's always going to be fast.

The last two years we've really had that ability to pound it at people and really step up to the point of attack on defense. That's our question mark going into this season is 'How physical can we be?' We've really hammered each other in practice in the last couple of weeks and we hit in camp, and I feel like right now our guys are beat up because we've beat on each other so much to try to toughen them up.

The concern doesn't lie in the fact that they don't hit each other hard enough, Pixley said, but that he doesn't know how hard they'll hit their opponent on Friday nights.

"In week one, against Poplar Bluff, when some of those different-colored helmets start pounding on you, are you going to start pounding back?" he said. "I'm concerned about that, especially with the youth. Normally they don't like to fight back against the older guys early in the season. They'll come around later. I've said this about our guys, I hope that we can withstand the barrage of our schedule early and hopefully we can be there in the end and make a statement in the end."

As far as leadership is concerned, Jenkins is the one taking control early for the Eagles, according to Pixley.

"He's exactly what you would've seen out of him last year at the end of our football season." Pixley said. "He's kind of one of those leader guys that lead by example. He's done an excellent job, and I've said this about our kids before, that if you show up early and you stay late, then you learn a lot in those early periods and in those late periods. I think he hasn't missed a workout or a weight-room workout unless he's been excused for basketball reasons. He's done everything right and we (the coaching staff) are going to reward him with our confidence in him."

Pixley also pointed out that a few players to look for are Anderson, Ealy and senior Josh Minner (6-5, 200).

"Anderson has worked extremely hard and physically, Rodney has put everything out there for us so far that we've asked for and then some," Pixley said. "And, I'm really surprised by Josh Minner, a senior basketball player that has finally come out this year. He's another 6-6, 200-pound receiver (and defensive back) that we have. We keep lining him up on one side and Ealy on the other and it's awful hard to throw a football over the top of them."

Pixley said that Ealy has been out quite a bit this summer playing AAU basketball and is a little behind the others but stated that he had no worries because he knows his junior tight end/defensive end will come around soon.

The Eagles are looking to repeat as district champions, but again will have to go through Aaron Pixley's difficult Dexter Bearcat squad to do so.

"The first game for us is going to be an evaluation game, and obviously it's important," Pixley said. "But, we look down the road and we're preparing for Dexter. They're week one of our district competition and that's when it really, really counts. We'd love to win the conference, but I think in our district if you can win our district then you're probably going to win the conference too.

"Like I said, those first three games on our schedule will be an evaluation period," he added in closing. "Hopefully, we can find some offensive balance and some defensive physicality, and if we find those things in the first part of the season then I think we'll have a chance to make a run late."

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