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Jefferson County coach Spencer Riley is looking for a lot more physicality out of his team on Friday night when the Patriots host Sevier County.

Last Friday against Oak Ridge, Riley felt his offensive line wasn’t nearly tough enough early in the game. For Jefferson County to have a chance on Friday, Riley knows that has to change.

“We got to make some adjustments on what we were doing from last week to this week,” Riley said. “We just weren’t a very physical football team Friday night upfront on our offensive line. That definitely has to change and will be a big point of emphasis this week.”

In Friday night’s loss to Oak Ridge, Jefferson County had moments of success as they scored on their opening drive of the game. Skylar Thomas also scored on a 76-yard run late in the fourth quarter.

However, the Patriots ran for just 91 yards on 38 carries and completed just six passes for 58 yards. For Riley, he wants to see his team work on the little things and execute them at a high level.

“That’s a lot of it,” Riley said. “For me, what I was upset with was that we weren’t as physical as I know we can be. If we can play as physical as we can be and we get beat, ok. But we didn’t come close to playing to our abilities of the physical part of it as well as the execution part.”

Sevier County enters Friday’s contest after soundly beating Carter 43-20. The Smoky Bears debuted freshman quarterback Cooper Newman and had two running backs rush for over 100 yards.

“They’ve got a good, young freshman quarterback who is going to be a very talented kid,” Riley said. “He’s a type of guy that they have had over the years that have been good quarterbacks at Sevier County. We have to limit what he does and be able to stop the run. If we stop the run, we’re going to make him make plays. We’re going to put pressure on him and hopefully make the plays we need to defensively.”

Defensively, the Smoky Bears are a physical group that gets to the football extremely quick. Riley pointed back to his teams physicality and how important that will be against the strong Sevier County defense.

“Well I think that they run to the football really well,” Riley said. “That’s why we have to make sure we’re more physical at the point of attack and create those vertical seams.”

Sevier County and Jefferson County are familiar with each other as they have played for the past six seasons. The Smoky Bears have won the last three meetings, including a 7-6 win in the opener last year.

Kickoff for Friday night is set for 8 p.m. That kickoff time is an hour later than normal because of a dangerous heat index throughout the afternoon.

Because of that heat, Riley said his team is making sure they are hydrated and ready to go.

“We’ve been addressing hydration since the start of the year,” Riley said. “We addressed it last week because we knew it would be a big factor, and we’ll do it again this week. We’ll start helping them understand how to hydrate and how important it is.”