Fresh off their first district championship in 12 years and a trip to the third round of the playoffs, the Brownwood Lions kicked off their sixth football campaign under head coach Sammy Burnett Monday morning with practice at the high school.
The Lions return one offensive and six defensive starters from a 10-3 team that yielded 17 points and 269 yards – 153 rushing and 116 passing – per game, with 21 takeaways, while generating 40 points and 386 yards – 229 on the ground and 157 through the air – per outing.
Burnett reported approximately 110 players for the initial workout of the 2023 campaign.
“We had about 90 percent attendance throughout all teams,” he said. “We always have some kids that are having to work or do other things right now to finish up the summer but that’s a common thing. But we had a great showing with our freshman through varsity football teams.”
Regarding the first day of practice, Burnett said, “It was a phenomenal first day, I thought it went extremely well. We met with the kids first and set some expectations, set our goals and got focused in starting with today. We discussed our end goal and how we get there.”
Burnett further broke down what took place during the Monday morning session.
“We had a 10-minute screen period and at one point I counted more than 50 passes and 46 completions with only five drops and some of those were quarterback error, so that was good,” Burnett said. “Watching our line, we have some depth there. We have five or six bubble guys who are JV guys that we feel have the ability to play on Friday night, but we have to make sure they’re ready for that. We’ll give them an opportunity over the next few weeks to show us if they’re ready, which would give us more depth. I was really impressed with some of the younger guys and the way they went through drill work today. When we went through pass hull offensively and there were not many busted routes, the kids showed a lot of retention. The running backs looked solid, and we’re not sure yet who all they will be, but we may platoon them. On defense, just watching drills we have so many kids with opportunities to contribute. Our secondary dropped into coverage and handled motions and showed how much farther ahead we are than we were in the past.”
Burnett compared Monday’s start to the Lions’ 2022 season.
“Last year going into the scrimmages with Decatur and Lampasas we were very vanilla and busted some assignments because a lot of it was new, but what we’re doing isn’t new anymore,” Burnett said. “This has become second nature to them and there was a whole let less teaching today compared to years past. We’re way ahead of the curve right now.”
Looking ahead to the rest of the week of practice, Burnett said, “We’ll continue what we did today tomorrow (Tuesday), we’ll just flip it and do defense first with the varsity. We’re still working on install, what we did today and adding more plays tomorrow. We’ll continue to work on getting all our playbook in and to work on conditioning. On Wednesday, we’ll added some special teams – who can snap, punt, and we’ll find some return guys.”
The biggest surprise on the first day, according to Monday, was the preparedness of the younger players.
“Our varsity came in with a mindset and willingness to work and to learn and to try to grow,” Burnett said. “But I was also impressed with our subvarsity and how those kids coming in a year later had grown and matured into the athletes they want to be and how they work together as a team. You can’t always just open your eyes and play on Friday night, there’s a process it takes and to see those guys continue to develop and grow in size, strength and knowledge and execute on day one was really neat.”
More information on the Lions heading into the 2023 season can be found at the following link: 2023 Lions
The Lions will hold an intrasquad scrimmage Saturday morning at Gordon Wood Stadium, visit reigning regional champion Decatur Friday, Aug. 11 in their first scrimmage and host Lampasas on Thursday, Aug. 17 in the final scrimmage. Brownwood will kick off the 2023 regular season at Abilene Wylie on Friday, Aug. 25.
The Lions’ season preview story will appear on BrownwoodNews.com on Sunday, Aug. 20 to conclude the annual Pigskin Preview series.
