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Observations from Cape Central’s football jamboree
Sometimes lining up against unfamiliar faces after competing against your teammates all summer can lead to more progress.
That was certainly the case for the Cape Central Tigers Friday evening at the Jamboree scrimmage held at Tiger Stadium.
“As a whole, I was impressed with the way we ran to the ball on defense and our tempo on offense was a lot better than last Friday,” head coach Kent Gibbs said. “The other thing is we got a lot of kids in on both sides of the ball and that's one of the things that we wanted to do. I can ninety-nine percent tell you nobody got hurt, so that's all positive. We needed to hit somebody besides ourselves.”
Demonstrating improvement in pass protection and showcasing their potent backfield and physical defense, the Tigers continued to assert themselves as one of the area’s premier programs on Friday against local opponents St. Vincent, Perryville, and Scott City. Cape Central played each team across the three-session round-robin-style scrimmage, which allowed both first-string players and backups to get quality reps and showcase their talent.
Offense improving each week
While the main storyline of last week’s intrasquad scrimmage was the defense, the Tiger offense stole the show after displaying noticeable growth in all areas on Friday.
“I thought we were a lot better on offense tonight with execution,” Gibbs said. “You're still going to see some things on film that we didn't do, but the execution of our offense with ‘did we block the right guy?’ or ‘did we throw it where we need to throw it?’ or ‘were our route combinations where they needed to be?’ I thought we were a lot better on that tonight.”
The second play of the scrimmage exemplified that.
In the opening session against St. Vincent, quarterback Deklin Pittman handed it off to star running back Keyshawn Boyd, who received a beautiful perimeter block from his receiver, which opened a big lane down the far sideline and led to an explosive 40-yard touchdown run.
That set the tone for the rest of the night.
In the passing game, Pittman looked crisp with both his arm and legs. In his first session against St. Vincent, the senior went two-for-four passing and showed solid mobility scrambling outside of the pocket. It was a good sign for Gibbs and the rest of the coaching staff.
“Deklin has done a really good job of getting better tonight,” Gibbs said. “He had one, what I would call a ‘bad throw,’ but his reads were really good. He's coming on. He ran the ball really well tonight, and that'll be a confidence booster for him because we want him to do a little bit of that. So, he's done a good job for us.”
In the trenches, the Tiger offensive line was more efficient and limited the number of mental errors shown last week. Gibbs said that most of the assignments were performed well, too.
“It's always going to be the small things with the offensive linemen,” Gibbs said. “They played well. Assignments for the most part were executed. We still need to work on finishing our blocks.”
Defense continuing to fly to the ball
Like last week, this ball-hawk-type defense brought a surge of energy to the field and played hard-nosed football in each session on Friday.
The biggest thing that stood out was how disruptive the defensive line was. The front seven did a tremendous job pressuring the quarterback, including a three-sack, one-forced fumble outing against Perryville and continued to prove that there is quality depth up front.
“I think we've got a pretty good rotation there,” Gibbs said. “Coach Moore does a really good job of playing about eight guys and we try to give them a set amount of plays and get a new group in and keep rotating. I think he saw a little bit of that tonight, but we feel like we got some athletes there that got a chance to be pretty good defensive players.”
Gibbs said that if there were any nits to pick on defense, it was to “sharpen up open field tackling in the secondary.”
All eyes on Friday night
On Friday, Aug. 30, Cape Central will suit up and kick off the 2024 season against New Madrid at 7 pm at Tiger Stadium. With the bar being set so high following back-to-back Class 5 state semifinal appearances and the roster now at full strength, expectations are greater than ever.
Gibbs said that taking things day-by-day is the biggest key in terms of reaching those expectations.
“We just want to see progress,” Gibbs said. “I think it's hard for young guys to stack good practices on top of each other, particularly if the sun comes out. So, we've talked more in line of, ‘Hey, let's stack days on top of each other,’ and days become weeks, and then all of a sudden, you're sitting there at the end of the year, and you've only gotten better. We just harp on getting better every day, every play. Get out of your feelings and get better.”