Rockies ready for week one
PLYMOUTH — A solid showing in last week’s scrimmage and some players with game experience have Plymouth head coach Adam Handley feeling a little bit ahead of the curve to open 2023.
“We executed a lot of the things that we wanted to do during the scrimmage,” he said. “We had some sets we wanted to see, some plays we wanted to see and we were able to execute a lot of those. Defensively a lot of the things that we planned doing we were able to get those done.”
With 90 players in the Plymouth program, it has helped the depth chart considerably.
“We’ve got 11 starters on offense and 11 starters on defense right now and a few guys that can go both ways,” said Handley. “We are in a good position with 22 starters and we can finagle with that too.”
“Our depth is a lot better than it was last year. There are still some spots where we wish we had some more depth but overall we are in a good spot.”
Not having to have two-way players on every down is a must in a conference like the NLC.
“In this conference, it’s a juggernaut,” said Handley. “You are going to play the Warsaw’s the Mishawaka’s the Goshen’s whoever, and you are going to get beat up on one side of the ball and then you have to turn around and play the other side of the ball. It’s tough. But coach Letinski (strength and conditioning) has done a terrific job getting our guys not just in great physical shape in the weight room but the cardio thing to go both sides of the ball.”
Week one opponent Calumet was 9-2 a year ago and was eliminated in the Sectional semi-final by semi-state qualifier West Lafayette.
“We got some film on Calumet and they are a lot like Washington, very athletic so our game plan defensively is pretty much the same as it was during the scrimmage,” said Handley. “The scrimmage film is tough to watch. There’s no flow to the game but you can see where they have kids that are athletes, they have kids that are playmakers. The film we have is good enough to show us their base stuff. They probably have some stuff they’ve held back but every team should. The new thing they have to deal with is a new coach. On the film there is some learning curve things, learning a new offense. Learning some new terminology some of the same things we were dealing with a year ago.”
“Offensively they are going to spread you out, they are going to put a couple of receivers on the field and they’ll be in shotgun,” he said. “They have some pretty good tall, lengthy receivers, that are good athletes. Defensively what we’ve seen in film is that they are going to give us four men up front with a 4-2-5 look and they will roll a safety down depending on what packages we are in.”
“They are very similar to (South Bend) Washington which is good going into the week because it’s nothing new,” said Handley. “Nothing changes down front no blocking schemes are different so that’s a good thing.
On the Plymouth side of the ball, Handley is confident in his team’s preparation.
“Where we are offensively we probably didn’t get to until week six last year,” said Handley. “Everything that we have installed at this point is way, way ahead of where we were last year. Come first official practice this year we were already three, four weeks ahead of where we were last year. I like where we are.”
“We obviously want to get better than we were in our scrimmage,” he said. “We get to do special teams which we didn’t do last week so that’s another thing that we’ve been working on this week. That’s something that can make or break a game.”
