By By ZACH BROOKS
Sports Writer
This week the Escambia County High School Blue Devils will play Citronelle in what should be a hard-fought area battle after what has been, so far, a winless season.
Friday night, ECHS takes to the field trying to break a six-game losing streak, and they should have extra motivation since this is their homecoming game.
Citronelle has an explosive passing game that uses the shotgun formation to shred defenses apart. This is in stark contrast to the bruising running attack Robertsdale delivered in last week's 46-10 romping of ECHS.
ECHS Head Coach Frankie Bell said his team will focus on learning to defend against Citronelle's explosive passing attack.
Offensively, ECHS will run the same package, but with a lot of motion.
Citronelle runs a 5-3 defense, so the Devils will try to capitalize on the mismatch between the Devils' running backs and Citronelle's linebackers.
Atmore's special teams came within a block or two from running two kickoffs back in their last two games, so their return game is in good shape. The game plan offensively for the Blue Devils, will be based on what Citronelle dictates with their linebackers. Atmore will try to run the option and the sweep a lot to gain yards on offense.
Defensively, they will try to disguise formations and get a tremendous amount of pressure on the quarterback.
Citronelle, like Atmore, is a fairly young team and plays up and down. They played St. Paul High School last week, and almost won, but St. Paul had a game winning drive in the final seconds to win.
A loss will end the Blue Devils' hopes for a playoff berth, but a win will keep ECHS' hopes alive.
Last week, the Blue Devils fell to 0-6, largely due to key mistakes, including three fumbles. Missed tackles and a lack of a strong pass rush were detrimental in last week's game against Robertsdale.
Coach Bell said, "For the rest of the of the season we will move our freshmen up from junior varsity to varsity to integrate them into our game plan and keep working with our younger guys to ease the growing pains of a young team."