Each Week following Spartanburg Viking Football games, I’m going to take a couple of days and think about the 3 most important things I saw on the field. Some good, some great, some not so good. I’ll try to break through what mattered, and what not to overreact to. So here’s 3 things from Week 1’s 24-7 loss to Dutch Fork.
1-The WR core is has gotten off to a very solid start. Boy it helps having Justin Rice back who had 5 catches for 69 yards and a sweet move on a route for a TD. He hurt his ankle in the 4th Q but we should get him back soon. Zeke Bell Boyd and Zy Williams Bond each added 3 catches vs arguably the best secondary we’ll see all year. I’ve been very impressed with these 3 young men so far this season as we’ve faced 2 very good core of DBs.
2-I have full faith that our run game will get right. Both Trenton Lynch and Chris Sutton have proven themselves in the past, but right now…and to be fair we’ve faced 2 outstanding DLs…we haven’t come close to being good enough there. It’s a combination of the OL blocking, RBs hitting the right holes, and to be honest..health. We aren’t healthy in the backfield and it’s showing. These next 2 games are real opportunities to get this right and a bye week in 2 weeks will benefit this group.
3-Spartanburg has played 2 of the best teams in the state to start the year and we’ve more than held our own. A 1-1 start is absolutely ok with who we’ve played and I’m very excited to see what we can do going forward. There’s a ton to work on but once we get right, I think the sky really is the limit with this team. There were so many plays against Dutch Fork where our defense was in position to make a tackle, break up the pass, hit the right hole..and while let’s give DF some credit..they are very good…I felt that this team was there to make play after play but came up just short. Our DBs were step for step with their WRs…our LBs were in position to make tackles in the backfield play after play…our WRs were open…and so on and so on. I like where we are and over the next 3 weeks, I believe we will get a lot better.
