Being in a familiar situation is not always a good thing. But knowing how your next move in that situation can affect you going forward is quite beneficial.
After losing the season opener, albeit in odd fashion, Habersham Central High School’s football team finds itself in a spot it knows well.
The Raiders (0-1) have dropped their season openers in the last three seasons as well. As good as it is to start the season with a win, it’s bigger not to start the season with a pair of losses. That makes Friday’s contest on the road against Flowery Branch High School (0-1) an important one.
“It’s huge,” HCHS Head Coach Benji Harrison said. “We don’t need to start out 0-2. We did that last year, and we were able to bounce back, but we don’t need to do that.”
In looking at the numbers from last Friday’s rain out in Toccoa, the game appears to have been an even contest.
The Raiders had 12 first downs, the Indians had 13. Both teams rushed for six first downs, while Stephens County threw for one more first down. The Raiders were 11-of-15 passing, the Indians were 9-of-13 through the air.
The two biggest differences in numbers on the night: Total yards had Stephens County at 331 and HCHS at 227. But the one that truly matters are the numbers on the scoreboard, which showed 28-10 when the game was called off.
“What do you get from that,” Harrison asked. “We didn’t score when we were in the red zone. That shows you stats don’t mean a lot. The most important stat is that score column.”
The coaching staff and players met on Sunday to watch film of the game and go over a few things.
“We met with them on Sunday afternoon and watched the film from the Stephens game and made the corrections we felt like we needed to make and put that game to bed,” Harrison said. “I think they see that game was a game of a lot of missed opportunities. A lot of times where we didn’t play as hard as we needed to play. We challenged them on that.”
Harrison said when Monday came around, the players were focused on their upcoming opponent.
This week has been a week of challenging the team in different facets and making a few changes on the approach from the coaching side.
The coaches went back to the drawing board, not necessarily to simplify things, but to cut back on the playbook a bit. The idea being to get the team reps running the same plays over and over to get comfortable with what they’re doing when it comes time to execute in the game.
On the player side, the coaches challenged the offensive line “big time.”
“We got after them pretty good. We challenged the offensive line to take pride and be physical in what they’re doing up front,” Harrison said. “We may be young and inexperienced, but we’ve got decent size up there and we’ve got to be more physical.”
Harrison said they also challenged the quarterbacks to take more control of the offense from a leadership standpoint. On all fronts, quarterbacks, offensive line and beyond, the head coach feels like his team was receptive and put themselves to work to correct things.
That said, Monday, in Harrison’s opinion, wasn’t a great practice. So they had a “Let’s get things right” meeting. Then Tuesday and Wednesday “were probably as good of days as we’ve had since we put the pads on,” Harrison said.
On to the Falcons
Flowery Branch opened its season against Jackson County High School and was on the losing end of a 31-2 affair.
After watching tape of that game, Harrison said the score is “a little false,” as Falcons came out and did a few things different than what Jackson County was expecting from watching Flowery Branch’s scrimmage tape.
The Falcons were expected to bring back wide receiver Jeremiah Ware from a year ago. In his 2023 campaign, Ware caught 50 passes for 1,132 yards and 14 touchdowns. He was the only player expected to return to the Flowery Branch roster with a touchdown scored from last year.
Then, in the offseason, he transferred to Gainesville.
The only recognizable name from a year ago is quarterback Josh Oliver, who completed over 56 percent of his passes for 2,442 yards and 24 touchdowns.
Flowery Branch is essentially a complete unknown as to who and what they bring to the line of scrimmage
Harrison said he thinks his receivers matchup well with the defensive secondary of Flowery Branch.
“I feel like we have some experienced guys that can be a playmaker and they’ve just got to go be a playmaker. That’s as simple as I can make it,” Harrison said.
The defensive line is also an area where the HCHS head coach sees potential of an advantage over the Falcons. Still, what he’s seen on tape won’t matter much once the ball is kicked off Friday night.
“I don’t care what the score of the Jackson County (versus Flowery Branch) game was, it has no bearing on this one,” Harrison said. “We’ve got to go out and play like Flowery Branch, if we don’t play well, can beat us…because they can.
“Let’s go play and get off to a really good start and sustain it,” he continued. “We got off to a good start against Stephens, but then it’s like we relaxed a second, which is the craziest thing in the world. Let’s go get on (Flowery Branch) from the jump and don’t relax.”
Now, all that remains between the Raiders and getting back on track is the result after four quarters in Hall County.
“”We need to go out and know this is a non-region game, but this is a big game. We need to go get back and prove to ourselves that we can be the kind of football team we think we are. You can say that all you want to, but that proof is in the scoreboard at the end,” Harrison said. “I think our kids know it, I know our coaches know it – this is a big game and we need to get back on the right side of things this week.”
The Raiders and Falcons will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Flowery Branch Friday.
