The Brownwood Lions owned one of the stingiest defenses in the Class 4A Division I a season ago, notching four shutouts – including three in a row – while allowing just 32 points with 14 takeaways over the first seven games, and yielding an average 200 yards per outing during that span.
The bulk of last year’s unit has since graduated, but in Friday night’s Maroon-White intrasquad scrimmage at Gordon Wood Stadium, the defense once again stood tall.
“Defensive play was way above par from what I expected,” said Lions third-year head coach Sammy Burnett, who owns a 15-8 record over the past two seasons. “I was worried about us being physical and I was worried about us having kids in positions that didn’t really know what they were doing. But from what I saw during the course of the game, I thought we played very fast defensively and physical.”
Between the Maroon and White defenses combined, just one touchdown was surrendered while one pass was intercepted. There were also a handful of tackles for loss and a couple of quarterback sacks.
“The thing I’m taking out of this right now is on both sides, when we split the teams as even as we could, we played great defense,” Burnett said.
Among the standout plays, Jason Jackson picked off a pass in the end zone, Hunter Day tallied a sack, and Kris Hobbs recorded a 9-yard tackle loss after blowing past the offensive line. Another Brownwood sack was negated by a facemask call.
Offensively, most of the line returns – anchored by Ethan Pesina, Jimi Brown and Brad Robinson—but the majority of the skill position players are new and at times it showed.
“We moved the ball on the ground well enough when we wanted to, but we were trying to spread the ball around and give kids opportunities,” Burnett said. “We had some kids that didn’t know what they were doing at times which will kill you offensively. We had some busted routes and a couple of busted blocking assignments up front, but that’s to be expected when you’re splitting your offensive line that’s used to playing together.”
In the quarterback battle, Baylor Tidwell saw the most snaps of the three contenders and accounted for the lone touchdown of the scrimmage with an 11-yard strike to Malachi Revada on a fourth-and-six slant. Blaize Espinoza churned out yardage on the ground while Chance Jones completed a pair of passes, and two more were dropped.
“The quarterback play was pretty good at times, and at times it wasn’t so we’re still going to have to grow in that area,” Burnett said. “We caught some big balls, and had an opportunity to catch some bigger balls but we just didn’t get the ball to them.”
The longest pass play was a 30-yard connection between Tidwell and Day on a flag route, while Royshad Henderson ripped off a 30-yard gain on the ground. Henderson, Cade Jetton and Dryden Anderson shouldered the load out the backfield.
“The running backs carried the ball extremely well,” Burnett said. “If we were scheming a game Royshad Henderson would have got a whole lot more touches behind the line when it’s fully loaded, which will be able to open the play action stuff. We didn’t do very much of that tonight on purpose, but we’ll get to it and I think that will give defenses some problems.”
Temperatures reached a record high of 108 degrees in Brownwood Friday, but had cooled off by the time the varsity Lions took the field. Still, Burnett was thrilled with the conditioning the team displayed.
“We went 16 more plays than I expected to,” Burnett said. “I wanted to check their cardio and they were fine. We also wanted to give those quarterbacks and a couple of other guys more reps and a couple more plays to show us what they could do.”
The No. 15 Lions will be back at Gordon Wood Stadium Thursday night as they welcome Godley in their lone scrimmage prior to the Friday, Aug. 28 season opener at No. 3 Lampasas.
“We have to get 11 out there on defense that we think are going to be our starting 11 and evaluate them and see if we have any surprises when we put in the 2s,” Burnett said of the goals leading up the scrimmage. “The same goes offensively, we have to put a group of 11 guys out there on offense that we feel is going to work as unit and I want to see execution. I don’t want to see busted assignments, I don’t want to see the yellow flags, I want to see us out there executing and moving the ball and getting first downs.
“All in all tonight was a good start. I’m really pleased with the way we looked defensively, that was a fear of mine, and offensively we’ll get there.”
