3 Things Week 5

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 5’s 49-21 loss to Byrnes 

1-It was great to see Senior RB Trenton Lynch back doing what he does best.  Lynch ran for 228 yards on 23 carries and 1 TD.  His cuts looked right, his speed was showcased, his vision…well it’s always spectacular.  It’s his 2^nd game with over 200 yards rushing this season and now has 4278 career rushing yards.  He currently sits 4^th all time in school history.   He needs 44 yards to pass Mike Wannamaker for 3^rd all time, 224 yards to pass Stephen Davis for 2^nd, and 435 yards to pass Carnie Norris for 1^st.   

2-One of the things that’s been missing from our run game this season was the ability to run up the middle.  I thought our OL did a really good job of creating space for Lynch and Geter to run through.  The Vikings ran for 278 yards on the night and there were quite a few right between the A Gaps.  Byrnes has a very good front 6 in their 3-3-5 looks and the Vikings did a good job creating space. 

3-Big plays have hurt us a lot the last two games.  Dutch Fork scored on a long pass on the first play of the game and Byrnes had a 37 and a 67 yard TD pass, each in the 3^rd Quarter.  We have one more non region game to get that cleaned up.  Byrnes has a very good offense with lots of veterans as well as Dutch Fork.  But we have to clean up some things on the back end of the defense.  At the same time, we have to find a way to start forcing more turnovers.  I’ve been very impressed with several individual efforts and results with many guys on our defense, but as a whole, we have to create more short fields.