By By Tim Cottrell
When a team is battling depth and experience problems, the last thing they want to face is an experienced opponent with lots of depth; but that is exactly the hand the Escambia Academy Cougars have been dealt.
They will host the Rams of Faith Academy Friday night in Canoe. The Cougars have opened with Faith on several occasions in recent years, and despite the daunting task head coach Heath Gibson feels confident that his team can hang tough.
"We're really going to work on our base offense," Gibson said. "We want to slow the game down and keep the ball out of their hands. That will help tremendously because they're a quick-strike offense. If we can do that we can stay in the game."
Faith played in a jamboree Friday night, which the Cougar coaching staff attended. Gibson said that they often don't show their true schemes in those games.
"In the jamboree they came out showing an I-form," he said. "They were also running a 4-3 defense. They've done that a lot of years, though, and then come out running the Wing-T and a 5-3 defense. They tend to power teams down the field."
Gibson also noted that there were several scary players on the Faith roster.
"They've got a quarterback out of Williamson," he said. "He's extremely fast and he can throw the ball 60-70 yards down the field. He almost wants to run the ball more than throw it. We've got to keep him contained. They've got a big fullback that can pound the ball right at you. That's pretty tough to defend when you've got those two things."
Many Cougar supporters have been quite nervous about this game, but Gibson felt like his team would be able to give the Rams all they wanted.
"We hope to slow things down on offense," he said. "We'll mix things up on defense. We're going to keep coming from all directions so they won't know where they're getting hit from. I really feel pretty good. We've preached to the players to worry about Escambia Academy, not Faith Academy. If we execute, and worry about our assignments and don't make mistakes we'll be all right."
The Cougars will open their season at 7:30 p.m. Friday night.