“It’s important to go out and keep the opposing offense from scoring, which our defense has done a good job of doing,” Bearcats head coach Robby Jones said. “Brewer got a late touchdown on us or we would have had two straight shutouts, but what was big for us last week was the offense. The offense finally started clicking a little better after facing two really good defenses in the first two weeks. Brewer’s defense is not a bad defense, but our guys were able to go out and throw and run the football. When we’re starting to get the ball out to our playmakers out wide, you can see how explosive our offense can be.”
Aledo fans got a taste of that with a breakout performance by star senior Kaydon Finley, son of former NFL tight end Jermichael Finley. The younger Finley showed his NFL-caliber projections and that football is in the bloodline with a five-catch, 131-yard, two-touchdown first half against the Bears secondary. Jones hopes that while Finley continues to produce, opportunities will open up for the rest of the talented skill players catching passes.
“Well, he’s going to be a big focus of our game plan. He’s going to Notre Dame for a reason,” Jones said. “He’s got great size, speed and all the skill sets that you need to be a great receiver. We’re going to make sure that we’re trying to get him the ball, but we also have to get the other receivers involved. We’re not just a one-receiver team, we’ve got other good receivers. When we put Lincoln (Tubbs) out at receiver, he’s really good for us out there. Jamal Hollister is another good receiver and then Bayne Martin, who’s a junior, is a good one. We also have two tight ends that we can use at any time that can catch the ball. They are good receivers as well. The offense has an opportunity to be a very explosive offense.”
If Aledo’s offense has the potential to be explosive, then Friday night’s contest against Brewer could serve as the first of many detonations. The Bearcats amassed 561 total yards of offense – 237 on the ground and 324 through the air. In addition to accumulating more than 300 passing yards, the Bearcat quarterbacks distributed the ball to eight different receivers.
“Last week, we went with Nash (McElree) a little bit more. He was being really accurate with his passing and, when he’s in kind of a groove like he was in, we felt like we needed to keep going with him,” Jones said. “We put Lincoln out at some receiver more than quarterback at times because of that, but both of them have been throwing the ball well during practice this week. I stood behind them most of practice today and Nash was continuing with that accuracy, but Lincoln was matching it today. I feel comfortable with both quarterbacks and we’re going to continue to use both of them right now. You may see Lincoln at receiver when he’s not playing quarterback, but we feel good when either one is back there.”
Now, Aledo has its sights set on its next district foe in the Birdville Hawks. Through three weeks, Birdville has wins at Crowley (34-27) and Granbury (35-14) with one home loss to Grapevine (24-21). The Hawks have averaged more than 250 yards per game with at least 100 yards rushing and receiving in all but one game.
“I feel like their rushing attack is pretty good with some good running backs,” Jones said. “Then out wide, they’ve got some guys that we’ve seen on film that, when they get the ball to them, they can take it to the house. They’ve got some speed out wide and their quarterback plays a lot better than they did at the position last year. They (Birdville) were on their second quarterback when they started the game against us last year and ended up with their third quarterback because the guy starting now (Zach Wells) got hurt against us. I just see a lot of improvement with Birdville, which we kind of expected. It was their coaching staff’s first year last year, so now that they’ve felt things out and have an idea of the right direction which they want to go.”
Defensively, the Hawks have made some schematic changes and, thus far, have shown improvement. Through its first three games last year, Birdville surrendered 98 points compared to 65 through its first three contests to open this season.
“They changed their defensive scheme going from a 4-3 to a 3-3 stack with three safeties, which is kind of a fad defense right now,” Jones said. “It causes some problems because that middle safety is hard to account for. He’s going to be a run-first guy, but he’s not somebody that the offensive line is really accounting for, so it makes it difficult on the run game and the pass game.”
Aledo expects to keep its goals intact and continue to build on the successes they experienced on the field against Brewer in its second road contest of the year.
“The expectations are for us to show improvement from last week,” Jones said. “We want to clean up some of the things that we weren’t doing as well as we should have. Our receivers need to do a better job blocking – we can’t leave our buddy out to dry by missing a block outside. Defensively, we want to make sure that we’re making tackles – no missed tackles. We had a guy out of his gap and another guy not fill his lane correctly on that long touchdown run. Even with our backups in, we want to make sure that we’re executing at a high level.”
The Bearcats (3-0, 1-0) will hit the road for another district matchup at 7 p.m. Friday at Birdville.
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