The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It was a game of threes last night for the Jackets as they traveled to McQuiet last night. The Jackets won the game as expected by all except for some idiots who have never seen a football game but somehow make predictions for the Daily Oklahoman sports page.

Anyway, as a Sofie, you know where to get your quality information right here on the SofaKing blog.

So as mentioned before, it was a game of threes so let's dive into the hard hitting, stat crunching, honest reporting that you have come to know and love.

1. THE GOOD:

We won 21-14. For those who don't know 21 (total score) divided by 7 (points accumulated when a TD and extra point is scored) is 3.

D.OG.S of the game were SofaKing athlete Jax Sternberger, Harrison Evans, and Wrigley Kennedy. Again, 3 dogs- game of 3s. Jax had a hell of a game on both sides of the ball. The O line made Swiss cheese of the McQuiet line and he took advantage by racking up yards on many exciting runs. Harrison Evans was back with a vengeance laying killer blocks, making a catch and run for the first TD and sacking the opposing QB so hard that he is still looking behind himself this morning just to make sure that Jerry isn't running him down again. Wrigley provided a solid performance on both sides of the ball, be it sealing off whatever side he was on in offense or creating havoc on the defensive line (when he was actually utilized) by getting penetration and allowing the rest of the defense to stifle any attempt to gain yardage. Wrigley impressed me more with his leadership. Even sitting in the top row, I was able to hear Big Wrig "motivating" his team to play to their abilities.

Dallen Barton continues to improve. Barton was forced to be the main RB last night as Ethan Karcher is recovering from a tough ankle injury. He has always been a strong runner but last night he showed some aggression that we haven't seen before. Barton started to engage contact rather than try to evade would be tacklers. Runners like Karcher, Evans and Blake Hill are bruisers who look to run over the tacklers often find success in doing so, and this writer feels that Barton could find similar success if he continues to do the same.

2. The Bad

Penalties. The Jackets had too many silly holding penalties. Granted, holding can be called on almost every play, these holds are so obvious they are begging to be called. Holding is generally done when the OL is beat by his opponent. If you have one person getting the majority of the holding calls....well I'll just leave it at that.

The McQuiet band/cheerleaders were baaaad. I've never seen a band and cheer squad practice off to the side of the stands DURING A GAME! WTF?? It just goes to show the level of preparedness McQuiet provides to their students. Hell, the Jackets have an award winning marching band just sitting there ready to perform the Marvel soundtracks in order to entertain the crowd. Let them give the McQuiet fans a taste of what they could have with a little hard work and leadership.

Referees using pink flags and markers. I'm all for breast cancer awareness and I'm assuming that was why last night's crew threw pink flags (too many of them, but anyway) and used pink markers. But it was confusing using both. Pink flags-fine; pink markers- overdoing it a bit. It's not like breast cancer is going to say, OMG the hometown McQuiet referees are using pink stuff and run and hide. I applaud the effort, but it was a bit much.

3. The Ugly

The Jackets secondary. McQuiet barely moved the ball for three quarters but in the fourth began throwing and completing passes as if their QB was replaced by Patrick Mahomey and the receivers were Travis Kelce and JuJu Smith-Schuster. The secondary has always been somewhat suspect, but performed poorly last night against a bad team who happened to have the wind behind them at the right time.

The McQuiet coaching staff pulled out all their gimmick plays and tactics to try to steal a win. They were almost successful but fortunately the Jackets stood up and made the necessary plays. It's a shame too because there are a few kids on that team that could really contribute and thrive if they were in a better coaching environment. Sadly, rather than trying to coach their team, the McQuiet staff would rather try to stall the game by standing over the ball or run fake plays. Or and what is probably the most laughable tactic used last night- complaining that the Jackets pants were above their knees. As if that would give any advantage whatsoever! Anyone who would complain about that during a game has no clue as to what he is doing or knows that he has absolutely no chance of winning at all.

Momentum killers. The Jackets offense was rolling in a few situations last night only to have the momentum killed by either holding penalties or audibles from the sideline taking too long to get relayed. The holding has already been addressed and there's no sense in beating a dead horse. I believe that it has been well established that McQuiet is not a good team, and when you have a bad team on their heels you keep attacking- you don't give them a chance to catch their breath. They weren't doing anything with their defensive alignment so their isn't a need to change, like the saying goes if it ain't broke don't fix it. Not saying to run the same play over and over (although it was working) but identify what they are giving and go with it. NRC probably won't be much different than what we saw last night but after that teams will be getting much better and we will need to be able to take advantage of anything and everything we have, especially in the playoffs and if we can gain momentum we definitely need to do what we can to keep things rolling.

Next game is at the Mecca in Kingfisher for Senior Night versus North Rock Creek. Stay tuned for news and updates brought to you like only the SofaKing can.