Tackling is the mantra this week for Culver

Courtesy of the Pilot News.

CULVER — Last week the Culver Cavs ran into a wall at Triton that many teams are going to run into. The loss was tough but highlights what the young Cavs will need moving forward.
“(Triton) Coach (Zach) Whitaker has done a really good job of getting his kids to embrace playing smash-mouth football,” said Culver coach Austin Foust. “We knew we were going to be kind of outmanned on the front. I thought we did some good things but I’m disappointed in the fact that we didn’t tackle very well. We tried to gum everything up in the middle and force them outside and we did that. We just didn’t make the plays we needed to stop them.”
Tackling is job one at practice this week, but working on it is also tough with the current mandate to limit hard physical contact during the week.
“Tackling is kind of a unique thing, with our numbers the question is how can you work on tackling without getting guys hurt?”, said Foust. “We’ve been doing the low-impact stuff. We’ve had to be creative.”
“We really need to continue to work on the little details,” said Foust. “We have to be able to play faster. We are close. There are things you see on film that if you get one block at a certain point it’s the difference between a two or three-yard gain and a 20-yard gain.”
This week the Cavs are on the road to take on a team in Winamac, that is a close mirror image.
“This is a game that is winnable if we play well,” said Foust. “That’s a tough place to play. They graduated a lot of seniors. I think they have 15 freshmen on their roster.”
“They didn’t get a week two game because they couldn’t find officials for the Saturday after the weather delay,” said Foust. “We’ve got a week up on them and we need to take advantage of that. They have a freshman quarterback who gets better every week. We will have to tackle way better than what we did last week.”
“Offensively we will have to spread it around,” he said. “Coach (Josh) Burgess does a great job of getting their defense to play fast and physical so we will have to get the ball to our athletes on the outside.”
Some of the other little things are on the Culver agenda.
“I want to see our effort and attitude improve,” said Foust. “I thought we did a better job of that against Triton. We have to not turn over the football and defensively we just have to read our keys and tackle. If we do that we should be in the game in the fourth quarter and then it just comes down to who makes the most plays and who makes the fewest mistakes.”