Rockies plan to share the wealth this Friday

Courtesy of The Pilot News.

PLYMOUTH — A big opening night win for Plymouth left a lot of credit to go around on both sides of the ball. In a night of big plays, the Rockies had a lot of them.
Plymouth coach Adam Handley was pleased, but grounded.
“We were able to score 53 points which we are excited about but we still had a lot of little mistakes but it’s week one,” said Handley. “We expect that, I’m not mad about that but it just shows that we can still play better than we did.”
“Up front, we ran for 430 yards but at times we still had guys that were not going to the right guys and we had a handful of guys just looking for somebody to hit,” he said. “Luckily Exzander (Ramirez) and Finn (Holm) were able to make guys miss and make some plays on their own. Going into this week and on in our schedule we are going to be playing teams that I don’t think will miss those tackles in open space. We just need to execute better.”
Defensively the Rockies showed a lot to be proud of. A year the unit had its ups and downs.
“We were really pleased with our secondary,” said Handley. “They had some long pass attempts that we were right in position for. We had one breakdown on a switch route that we didn’t communicate for. The second long pass down the middle we had a linebacker there in coverage who made contact with him and just let him release for whatever reason.”
“Line wise we were really pleased with John (Klinedinst) and Avery (Rivera) upfront,” he said. “They did a really good job creating some havoc with the run game and putting some pressure on the quarterback.”
This week Columbia City comes to town after a 42-0 opening night win over Churubusco and presents an entirely different challenge with a power running game.
“They graduated a handful of guys. They still have (Stratton) Fuller who is committed to go play at Army next year as a wing-back,” said Handley. “They like to run the ball as long as they can. What happened last year is that we committed all our guys to the run and had some success but they had three touchdowns throwing the ball to guys that were wide open with nobody within 20 yards of them.”
“It’s just a matter of reading your keys and knowing which guys are blocking and which guys are pass setting and identifying that with the snap,” he said. “We got caught staring in the backfield and before we knew it there was a receiver running behind us. We have three new guys back there this year, (Ethan) O’Leary, (Andres) Medrano, and (Jaden) Yates who didn’t play in that game last year that are better in pass coverage.”
After proving what a dual threat he is, Handley knows that the Eagles’ defense will be zeroed in on Ramirez.
“They are going to try to take the ball out of 7s (Ramirez) hands,” he said. “I would as a coach. I would make sure we talked all week to not let 7 beat us and make other players like Finn and our receivers make plays. If that’s the case so be it, but I think that Exzander is too dynamic a player and that they are going to have to make adjustments to take the game out of his hands, whether it’s to put pressure on us in the passing game or some stunts and twists with our run game.”
“Our plan this week is to have other options. We know he’s (Ramirez) a playmaker and we have other playmakers too. We have to share the wealth and make sure we communicate up front when they do some funky stuff with twists and things like that.”