Oak Grove opened the season with an 18-15 win over Harrison Central.
While most teams would be pleased with starting the season with a win, Oak Grove coach Drew Causey believes his team has much to clean up.
Causey’s biggest critique was the Warrior’s passing game, as the team’s wide receivers dropped three potential touchdowns.
“Offensively, we have to be finishing drives and making plays when you are supposed to be making plays,” Causey said. “We just didn’t finish drives. We would have a big play and then a stupid penalty. We’d have two big plays and then miss a block up front and get tackled for a loss and get behind the sticks. We had three dropped touchdowns, and we had two or three overthrows.
“I think we had eight guys making their first start of the season on offense, so that’s part of it. There’s nothing not fixable. At the end of the day, we won the ball game and had zero turnovers. Our kicking game was pretty good all night long. We make three plays, and then we are sitting at 39-15. That’s a different look, and everyone walks away feeling different.”
Notably, JQ Gray looked to be in midseason form as he accounted for 159 all-purpose yards, including the go-ahead touchdown.
“The one bright side is that JQ Gray is on our football team, and he played phenomenally,” Causey said.
Oak Grove will now concentrate on Wayne County. The Warriors were supposed to play the War Eagles the last two seasons, but both games were canceled due to COVID-19 issues.
“We played them every year since 2013,” Causey said. “I don’t know a lot about the kids, the bunch (of kids) that they have right now. They have a ton of athletes. That’s what thing you know whenever you play Wayne County. They are going to be physical and have to be ready to play four quarters.”
Wayne County comes off a 6-3 season, which had the War Eagles open the year 6-0 before dropping the season’s final three games. Last week, Wayne County opened the year with a 35-28 win over Quitman.
“They are multiple on offense,” Causey said. “They are going to run some Wing-T principles. They may run some out of the shotgun. They are going to spread you out. They kind of do a little bit of everything, so our defense is going to have their hands full. We’ll be trying to figure out the main thing they want to do and try to stop that.
“Defensively, they base out of a 3-3-stack, but they’ll play a little three or four (man front). They move around a lot and will bring pressure. We have to play a lot better than we did last week to have a chance to win this game.”
Oak Grove will go on the road to face Wayne County, with kickoff set for 7:30 p.m.
“(Last Friday) could have been a lot better,” Causey said. “We played hard. We battled, and we came away with a win, but we didn’t execute as well as I would have liked to execute. That’s something we have to improve. We have to hit guys that are open for touchdown passes, and we have to catch touchdown passes.
“As a coaching staff, we have to do a good job of getting those things fixed this week. We have to make sure that we complete those passes that we should complete and make the blocks that we should make and score when we should score.”
