B

It was an up-and-down outing for the Morristown East football team as they traveled to Bristol to take on Tennessee High and Cherokee on Friday.

“We were good at times. I would say we were inconsistent at best,” said East head coach Dallas Kuykendall of his team’s performance. “We’ve just got to stay on track; ‘stay on schedule’ as people like to say.”

Scheduling proved to be an issue from the start.

The team bus was late in picking up Kuykendall and a large number of key pieces for the ‘Canes, and as a result players were shuffling to get into their pads on the sideline, and forced to take the field with no warm up.

The first group to take the field for the ‘Canes was their defense. Facing Tennessee High’s offense, the defense allowed a couple of early chunk plays to let the Vikings march their way down to the red zone.

With their backs against the wall, the defense started to stand pat. This was a theme throughout the day for the ‘Canes. “Bend don’t break”, so to speak. Kuykendall would prefer they didn’t bend at all, however.

“It’s definitely not a philosophy for my blood pressure,” Kuykendall said of the goal line stands. “But that’s a credit to our defense. I would like for us to play with that same tenacity in the middle of the field. We can play that between the 20’s, we’ve just got to figure that out. Maybe if we played everything like goal line we’d be alright.

“We did a lot of competition periods down there in the spring, and I think that’s starting to translate on the field, we’ve just got to stop them before they get to that point. If we can figure that out, we’ll shape up to be a pretty good defense.”

As a whole, the defense played tough and physical. They managed to force four turnovers on the day, including a pair of interceptions.

“I liked the physicality we played with at times; we caused some turnovers and pursued the ball a lot better than we did last week, and that’s something we talked a lot about this past week,” Kuykendall said. “We still have some things in the backend to clean up communication-wise, we had two or three busts that shouldn’t really have been busts if we’d just talk to each other. Still got to clear that up, still have to get that rotation up front figured out, and just continue to be physical and fly around to the football.”

As far as the offense, East struggled to move the ball for a majority of the day. Against both Tennessee High and Cherokee, the ‘Canes couldn’t seem to string drives together.

Running the football, East struggled to seal the edge early when running outside the tackles, but found a bit more success on inside runs.

In the passing game, receivers were finding ways to get open, but first year starter Caleb Billings had trouble getting the timing down with his guys. That’s to be expected for a player in his first real live look as a starter, however, and Kuykendall didn’t see anything that made him lose confidence in his guy.

“I think he took another step in the right direction,” Kuykendall said about Billings. “He’s continuing to learn and develop, he threw some really good balls, and then some that weren’t as good. He’s got to learn from that, tonight was the first night that he was kind of live. He got to get out and show off his legs tonight, I think that’s something that will be beneficial for us down the road. Going forward we’ve just got to call more plays that he’s comfortable with and help instill that confidence in him.”

Later in the scrimmage the ‘Canes started to open up their playbook, and started to find more success in their creativity.

“We’re just trying to get our kids in the best position to be successful, and however we need to do that, that’s what we’re going to do,” Kuykendall said. “We don’t try to reinvent the wheel, we’ve got athletes, we’ve just got to find a way to get them the ball and let them do what they do.”

And the ‘Canes began to do just that. They found ways to get their playmakers the ball in open space, and on their last offensive drive, they marched the ball down the field.

Running the football is where they found their success. They picked up a couple of chunk plays off of a direct snap, a quarterback scramble and an outside run before ultimately punching one in on the ground.

As the ‘Canes celebrated amongst each other, a scuffle broke out behind them that resulted in shoving matches, a couple of punches thrown and players and coaches coming from the sidelines.

It was a stain on an otherwise productive and exciting day of football. 

“We talk about being physical, but that’s between the whistles,” Kuykendall said. “We let things boil over there, and everybody has an excuse for what happened, but that’s unacceptable. That’s not what our program’s going to be about. Those guys will be dealt with, we have to learn from this and move on and correct that so that it doesn’t happen in the future.”

As far as punishment outside of the program is concerned, referees gathered after the scrimmage to discuss. Any possible suspension for the incident is yet to be doled out.

With the Citizen Tribune Kickoff Classic falling next Friday, the ‘Canes are hopeful that none of their players will be forced to sit out for the matchup with crosstown rival Morristown West. Kuykendall’s focus in preparation for the game is internal.

“We’ve got to focus on us,” Kuykendall said. “We’ve got to get better as a team, we’ve got to continue to come together and continue to focus on what we can control. Two weeks is not a lot of time, so we’ve really got to get back to work and get back to it.”