Intra-county rivals tune up for the start of the season at Harmon Field

Published 8:00 pm Friday, August 7, 2015

Dalton High School coach Matt Land knows it’s not going to be that easy.

His team is going to see different defenses, and other teams will make adjustments. But when the ball kicks off for real on Aug. 21, if his offense can strike with the efficiency it did in Thursday night’s scrimmage against Northwest Whitfield, his Catamounts are going to force opponents into a boatload of changes and adjustments.

It took his offense three plays to put up two touchdowns on the Bruins. On the night’s first play from scrimmage, quarterback Jase Chastain burst for a 69-yard run to the 1-yard line. Darien Hill plunged into the end zone on the next play for the night’s first score. The next time Dalton got the ball, Chastain found Zek Cobb streaking past the Northwest defense for a 70-yard touchdown pass.

Land said after the scrimmage he wanted to see his team get a lot of reps. But he didn’t seem to mind the quick touchdowns.

“Our big thing was, we needed to get as many reps as we can get,” Land said. “We’ve been drastically shortened because of the new heat and contact rules, and we just have not had an opportunity to work on some things that we needed to work against another defense, and work against another offense. I feel like we got the number of reps, we’ll get back and we’ll count our plays and kind of see. At the end of the day, we were checking effort and execution. We’ll keep working on that, but effort, I’m very pleased. I saw a ton of effort tonight out of all our guys, older guys, younger guys, starters, JV. I was very proud of them.”

The teams played a half of varsity competition. Each team scored four touchdowns. The third quarter featured each team working on situational offense. Northwest didn’t pick up a first down in its four full drives while Dalton picked up first downs at will. JV and freshmen units played the fourth quarter with Dalton picking up another pair of touchdowns.

Northwest coach Josh Robinson saw a lot for his team to work on, but was pleased with the progress it made as the scrimmage wore on.

“As a coach you always see the negative,” he said. “Definitely giving up the first two plays on defense being touchdowns just because of breakdowns, mess-ups, having a chance to make a play and we blow the opportunity, that’s disappointing. But, at least we came back and played. The negatives on offense, I feel like our assignments were good up front on offense but we weren’t as physical as we need to be. Really honestly, our offense played pretty well, our defense got a turnover and played better.”

There were also a good number of positives for the Bruins. One was the play of sophomore quarterback Luke Shiflett. The first-year starter  threw a pair of touchdown passes, one to Jay Jones for 15 yards and a 60-yard scoring strike to Will Blanchard.

After the game, Robinson said he wanted to see Shiflett trust his arm a bit more.

“I thought he ran the ball a little too quick,” Robinson said. “But I thought he did a good job on everything, executing the offense. He’s got the ability to run; he’s a very good runner. He pulled the trigger a little too early but he had some really good throws. He’s got to trust in his full ability. Overall he commanded the huddle, he executed the offense. He threw two bad balls, maybe one. Overall a very good showing for a first-time quarterback, just a sophomore.”

On the other sideline, Land said he was looking to see what group of guys are going to pave the way for a highly talented group of skill players.

“This tonight was about us seeing five offensive linemen,” Land said. “We feel pretty sure we know what we’re going to get out of our skill guys. … This was about finding those five offensive linemen that we need to find. The sooner we can decide on those guys, then we can move to really talking and thinking about our quarterback situation and some other situations. But right now, very pleased with all of our linemen, how well they played.”

Dalton opens the season Aug. 21 at home against Scottsboro, Ala. Northwest opens the next night, traveling to Ringgold.