DESPITE HUGE VICTORY, SELF-INFLICTED MISTAKES ARE A CONCERN
Steel-High coach Tom Hailey may not have had much to squawk about once the Rollers closed out their season-opening 63-0 victory over Halifax, but the one thing that did bother him was the number of penalties his club was assessed.
Thirteen of them — for 145 yards.
“Big time,” Hailey admitted. “But I’ll always tell you that you’ll get better from that first week to that second week. So we have a lot to coach — even in a win like this — we have a lot to coach up. But the penalties are one thing against any caliber team that you cannot have.”
Neither are turnovers.
And despite building a comfortable 50-0 cushion with just 1:53 gone in the second quarter, the Rollers (1-0) put the ball on War Veterans Memorial Field’s artificial playing surface four times. They lost two.
“We have to eliminate the turnovers and penalties — our offense is not going to be pedestrian — but we want to be sound,” Hailey added.”
DEFENSE RULES
With defensive coordinator Andrew Erby dispatching seven or eight players or more after the football on every snap, Steel-High outnumbered the visiting Wildcats at the point of attack and put constant pressure on beleaguered Halifax quarterback Mason Erdman, sacking the freshman nine times for minus-66 yards.
The 6-2, 140-pound Erdman, one of 16 freshmen on the Halifax roster, also was picked off three times and fumbled twice. With little time to throw and quick routes the only thing available, he completed just 6 of 21 passes for 26 yards.
As a result, Matt Maniskas’ youthful Wildcats finished with minus-44 yards of offense against a Steel-High D that pulled its starters early in the second quarter.
“In talking to a lot of the folks around and some of the staff, I know they were a relatively younger team,” Hailey said. “And so the stuff we’ve put in — we’ve been together for quite a few years — that was the disparity there. When you have a young quarterback or a young line, it’s going to be tough to pick up.
“It’s not that we saw a lot that we could do [during Halifax’s two preseason scrimmages], that’s what we’re going to do. It just happened to go our way.”
“Give Steel-High credit,” Maniskas said following his first game as a head coach. “They came after us. They attacked weak points. Good team.”
SO HOW YOUNG AND INEXPERIENCED IS MANISKAS’ FIRST HALIFAX CLUB?
While the Halifax roster features just a half-dozen seniors, the Wildcats’ youth and inexperience flows much deeper than that. Much, much deeper.
“I was counting up my guys,” Maniskas said. “Other than [Travis] Enders, [Jarrett] Hoy and [Jackson] Fuhrer, the rest of them had not started in a varsity game. They did not even letter. I have six letterwinners on the whole entire team.
“Talk about, ‘Welcome to high school football.’
Enders, a 5-10, 185-pound junior, certainly had an interesting night up front.
“We were plugging, plugging, plugging, you switch here,” Maniskas added. “Enders went from starting left tackle, he went to guard and then he went to center and stayed at center. He was all over the place.”
SIMPLE OFFENSE ROLLS UP BIG NUMBERS
Not forced to dig deep into its offensive playbook, Steel-High’s offense thrived by calling toss sweeps, dives and some designed quarterback keepers. The idea? Get the ball to the playmakers in space and let them go.
Let’s just say it worked.
In the first half alone, the Rollers amassed 342 rushing yards on just 24 carries.
And that’s with six guys — senior Zedaah Moffitt carried six times for 151 yards and a pair of scores — sharing the load. Even with everyone on the depth chart getting tested and the clock running throughout the second half, the Rollers finished with 416 yards on 37 totes.
That’s more than 11 yards per crack.
No wonder the Rollers threw just twice.
“I hate the term quarterbacks managing, but we don’t have a quarterback that’s going to throw for Dan Marino-like numbers,” Hailey said. “So that’s basically what we’re going to do, three-yard outs, slants, maybe a deep ball — which was dropped.
“Basically, that’s what we’re going to try to do, control the ball and play great defense.”
MICHAEL BULLOCK:mbullock@pennlive.com
BULLOCK ON TWITTER: @thebullp_n
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