West Lincoln came away with a 41-21 win but graduated a significant amount of seniors, including the Bears’ starting quarterback and running back that rushed for 1,600 yards and 23 touchdowns.
Despite losing several key skill set players, Sacred Heart coach Ed Smith believes that the Bears are just as talented this year with its linemen.
“We played them last year, and they had some pretty good players that were seniors,” Smith said. “Luckily, those guys are gone, but they still have about 40 something kids.”
“They are very big up front and have a couple of 300-pounder kids and a couple of defensive ends that are 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-5 that are between 230 and 240 pounds that are both seniors,” Smith said. “Even though they lost some things, they still have a good group of seniors, so it’s not like it’ll be a young, inexperienced team. They’ll be the biggest team that we play all year.”
While it’s unknown who will play quarterback for West Lincoln, the Bear do return running back Enrico Price, who ran for 1,078 yards and 11 touchdowns.
“He seems to have pretty good speed,” Smith said. “He had a few good plays against us. Their senior did most of the damage last year. This kid still showed that he has good speed and vision. He’s a good running back.”
The Bears also bring back top returning wide receiver Chris Freeman, who hauled in 373 yards and two touchdowns.
“They tried to throw the ball a little bit early against us last year, but they have big guys and fast running backs,” Smith said. “I’m sure they’ll throw the ball if you try to pack the box too much. They have one kid at wide receiver who is a good size and runs pretty well. We’ll have to respect the deep zone. Just like every week, you have to stop the run, control the run and try to make them throw it, then hopefully you can cover them. If you can’t stop the run, then it’s going to be a long night.”
West Lincoln was forced to cancel its scrimmage due to bad weather, which has given Sacred Heart not much to prepare with.
“They were supposed to scrimmage, but it got canceled due to weather,” Smith said. They moved our game to (Copiah-Lincoln Community College), so we don’t have much of a scouting report. We’re flying blind from that standpoint.”
Defensively, West Lincoln’s defense allowed 30 points per game last season. The Bears return their top three tacklers, most notably linebackers Tate Smith and Caleb Nations, who made a combined 183 tackles.
“They do an 8-man front,” Smith said. “They move their guys around a little bit. They can give you an odd 50-look or a base 4-4 look and usually play three deep behind or man coverage.
For Smith, his team’s biggest concern is properly executing and avoiding mistakes that proved to drive killers for the Crusaders last season.
“The biggest thing is emphasizing taking care of ourselves,” Smith said. “Part of our problem, offensively, is that we stopped ourselves with penalties or turnovers—things like that you lose a down. We can’t have five-yard penalties and mishandled snaps where we give up a down. That’s the biggest thing we have focused on in the first couple of weeks.”
