Sports
Brandon High Football Hits the Ground in Contest With New District Opponents
Head coach John Lima of Brandon High School talks football three games into the young season.
A lot of things have changed about the Brandon High School Eagles this year.
They move up to class 7A and into a completely new district (which features competition from other Greater Brandon area teams, including Newsome, Durant and Riverview) and 22 seniors graduated from last year's team.
Yet, one thing remains constant:
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Running the football.
"We're a run first, throw second type of team," said head coach John Lima. "We ran a two-back scheme at Port Charlotte and I just like it."
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Two-back meaning full back, tail back/running back or sometimes two running backs. Basically, they are throwing a blocker from the backfield at you every play — every run play — and almost every play for Brandon is a run play. They have less than 20 pass attempts in their first three games.
"We're not executing the passing game the way we need to, right now," said Lima.
Still, they are doing what they do best, and that is to run the football.
In the September 16 game against Freedom, coach Lima broke the school record for rushing attempts in a game with 56; 40 of those carries came on the back of senior Tyrell Garner, who amassed 340 yards on the ground.
As a team, they rushed for 390 yards and only attempted three passes; they won, 29-22.
In the September 23 game against Durant, the recipe was similar but the result was different. Garner still carried the ball 24 times but he put together only 118 yards in a 36-24 loss. Even in the 54-6 drubbing by Armwood, the call was still to Garner. Garner gained only 40 yards but did return a kickoff for a touchdown.
"We tried the spread offense for a couple years and we had losing records,” Lima said.
They were back in the two-back system last year, went 11-2 and made the playoffs.
At 1-2 (0-1) this year, the Eagles are looking like a middle-of-the-pack team and that's if they they can take it to East Bay 2-3 (0-1) and Riverview 2-2 (0-1). As it stands right now they are behind both of those teams in the standings with Newsome, Durant, and Plant City all 1-0 in district play.
It's a long season and there's no telling how all these district games will shake out.
"If we play our game we can beat anybody in the district,” Lima said.
One thing that should make life a little easier is the new district breakdowns: In 7A District 8 are Brandon, Plant City, , Durant, , East Bay, all much closer in proximity than the old 5A District 7, which paired Brandon with Tampa Bay Tech, and Freedom.
"It's awesome that now we've got competition from all around the area," Lima said.
The new district probably has a familiar feel to it.
