The Red Ledger: “Coach, this game against Wylie is the first district game of the season, what is the plan going into districts in terms of the teams goals?”

Head Coach Matt Green: “Well obviously goal number one is to make the playoffs. Obviously if you don’t make the playoffs your season ends after ten games. So that’s goal number one. Obviously what we’d really love to do would to be the district champions. So in order to do that if you win every game you’re guaranteed to be the district champion and that’s what we want to do. Sometimes you can share the titles and we’re kind of greedy around here, we don’t like to share but certainly we want to win the district title as well. So those would be the two goals as far as district play goes.”

The Red Ledger: “What is the plan going in against Wylie specifically?”

Green: “Well I’ll tell ya what; they’re a very physical football team on both sides of the ball. We’re going to have to match their aggression and that’s one of the things we really impressed on the kids this week. They are going to have to play physical from play number one. Number two they’re very fast, they have receivers running all over the field, they get open and they can throw it a long ways and on top of that they have quarterbacks that can scramble. So you can get in a dilemma where if you cover their receivers deep the quarterback takes off and there’s nobody left and on the other hand if you don’t guard their receivers deep or you minimize coverage to account for that they throw it over your head. So ya know they do some things that pose problems for us and then of course on the defensive side of the ball they’re kind of simple but they’re just good at what they do. They don’t do a lot of tricky stuff but they are good. I think for us we have to minimize mistakes, we have to make sure that we line up right, that we tackle well, and we cannot turn the football over. Those are the things that we have to do.”

The Red Ledger: “According to MaxPreps Wylie has a higher average in receiving yards per game than they do rushing yards, how will this affect the way our defense plays?”

Green: “Well it kinda goes back to what I was saying, one of the reasons they average so much is because their quarterback runs around and it takes them so much time for the play to develop and their receivers run down field and when the quarterback begins to scramble the defensive backs come off and come for the quarterback and he throws it over your head. So it takes a lot of discipline ya know you got to really be disciplined as a defensive back against this team. Also, they just have receivers that when you throw it to them and they catch it, they’re very, very athletic and they’re very, very fast and they just make the first guy miss and they get lots of yards out of the catch. So we’ve got to be sure tacklers.”

The Red Ledger: “The team lost their last game and then had a bye week, how does this affect the players as they have been preparing for the game?

Green: “Well I think the negative part of a loss and a bye week is that you have to wait two weeks to get a chance to rectify and that’s hard ya know it’s hard to get that out of your head that you got beat. However on the positive side, what it does for your football team and your coaching staff is it makes you hungrier to win and get back out there and get rid of that loss. I think our kids have been really motivated in practice and have worked really hard to correct the mistakes that we made. Obviously when you lose a game you made a lot of mistakes and we did so it’s giving us a chance to work on those things and change those things and tonight we get a chance to show that we’ve improved in those areas.”

The Red Ledger: “Who will be the starting quarterback for this game?”

Green: “Tonight, Dakota Michaels will be starting.”

The Red Ledger: “So what’s the plan with him?”

 Green: “The plan is going to be the same as it would be with Bowman. Nothings going to change, we’re going to try to be a 50/50 team in terms of running and passing. You’ve got to be balanced if you get heavy on one side it’s hard to win the game. We’ve got to run the ball effectively. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on our offensive line, not on our quarterback. We’re not going to put the pressure on Dakota, we’re going to put the pressure on our offensive line to control Wylie up front and establish a run game more and pass protect when we do need to pass the ball. So that’s our plan going in and I think that Dakota is going to do a great job.”