Sallisaw football coach pleased with his team’s scrimmage performance

Sallisaw Black Diamonds football coach Brandon Tyler was fairly pleased with how his team performed in its one and only preseason scrimmage against the Checotah Wildcats and Grove Ridgerunners last Friday night at Perry F. Lattimore Stadium.

In the varsity portion of the three-way scrimmage, quarterback Jackson Harris connected with Cooper Cox on about a 20-yard pass play and Kenyan Hill rambled 24 yards on the final offensive play for the Black Diamonds against the ’Cats, while Hill broke up a potential Checotah touchdown pass in the end zone when Sallisaw was on defense. Harris did throw an interception against Checotah.

However, the Ridgerunners did strike for a 40-yard TD run against the Sallisaw varsity defense as well as hit on a 50yard pass play.

“I thought we did a lot of good things, especially early” Tyler said. “Checotah’s offense was definitely hard to prepare for. When you throw Grove in there and what they do, I thought our defense played supurb. We did give up that one long one there. Checotah broke that (long) one right off the bat, but after that we held them (from scoring) on nine consecutive plays inside the (Sallisaw) 40 (yard line). I thought our defense rose to the occasion there, played very hard and flew to the football. We did a lot of great things (defensively). Offensively, we kept it pretty vanilla. I just wanted to see a few things we were doing. I was pleased with them. We had some balls hit us in the hands, but it’s early. I thought we threw the ball well, and we ran the ball. Varsity wise, we moved the ball, but again, when you’re limited to (the number of) plays and have just a few plays, obviously you’re going to run out of downs. I was pleased with our effort. I was proud of our guys. It was back to work (on Saturday). We’re just looking forward to get going with Game 1 (vs. the Pryor Tigers) next week.”

The one offensive touchdown on the night came on a quarterback sneak by Kase Adams after he was stopped just inches from hitting paydirt on the previous play during the Sallisaw junior varsity’s session against Grove.

Although Adams and Chase Stephens just missed connecting on a TD pass, Adams did hit Caden Blount on a 35-yard pass play on the final snap of the session.

In the Sallisaw JV’s session against Checotah, Adams and Easton Wolfe just missed on two separate pass plays that likely would have been touchdowns.

Tyler said there were some other things the three-way scrimmage showed him and the coaching staff where the Black Diamonds will need to improve upon.

“We need to sustain our blocks,” he said. “We did a good job of picking up the blitz. You usually in a first scrimmage don’t blitz like that, but Grove was bringing five to six guys every play. I thought our guys did a great job of (picking up the blitzes). I didn’t look pretty because we didn’t score (a varsity TD), but we accomplished what we wanted to — get everybody on film, seeing what our mistakes were, watch film and go from there.”

The first series of plays were for the freshmen squads for the three teams. Thus, all 88 Sallisaw players suited up hit the field.

“That’s what a scrimmage is for, to get everyone on film,” Tyler said. “We’ll correct our mistakes and get better. We can go forward from here. Getting everyone on film and getting a lot of plays in was big. We just have to go back, make a few adjustments and keep on going. It’s still going to be a good year for the Black Diamonds.”

The Black Diamonds will begin the 2024 season against Pryor at 7 p.m. this Friday at Perry F. Lattimore Stadium.