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Football: New spring, same drill(s) for Marcus
By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com
Marcus' football team put the finishing touches on a grueling month this week with its final spring practices.
And while the Marauders will take on a drastically different look on the field next season from the 2011 team that lost just one game in District 8-5A and reached the second round of the playoffs, practice in May yet again had a familiar feel.
"It's pretty much the same every spring for us," said Bryan Erwin, Marcus head football coach. "We have to re-establish ourselves with our physicality. We want to be able to run the ball and improve in our passing game. Defensively, we need to have 11 guys that are flying around and making plays."
"We got the ones versus twos and twos versus the ones," he said, "and a lot of times threes versus threes and fours versus fours. We do a lot of scrimmaging. It's the way we practice and we like to get a lot of repetitions and game-type experience."
Another similarity to last season is within the roster. Much like last year, the Marauders have holes to fill in multiple areas, including on the offensive line and in the backfield.
"We lost four of our top five linemen and obviously we have to retool there," Erwin said. "And we lost a couple of great tailbacks. But we have a young bunch of offensive linemen and they really worked hard during the spring to establish their identity."
Last year, Marcus entered the spring with four new starters on the line and a pair of new halfbacks to replace the losses of Rufus Mason and Dagan Newsome. That wasn't evident on the field, as backs Harvey Giddens and Jeff Smiley ran rampant behind Marcus' new offensive line, finishing second in the area in rushing yards per game. Erwin is hopeful Marcus will be able to make a smooth transition yet again in 2012.
"Our guys are young," he said, "but they have a lot of ability and I feel like they're going to get the job done."
Erwin and the Marauders are also hopeful an improvement in the passing game will help supplement the losses on the line and in the backfield.
"We really improved in our passing game in the offseason and this spring," he said. "We're throwing the ball better than we've thrown it in the past. We've got some guys that can really make some plays and I think that will make us a more balanced and better football team."
Second-year starter Cole Erwin and the rest of the Marcus quarterbacks have also displayed the ability to pick up yardage on their own during practice.
"We're working on the read-zone stuff and some option game stuff," coach Erwin said. "We're running just about every option you can run. We're not going to be running the quarterback a ton. But we'll pick and choose to find the most effective ways to be able to run with the quarterback."
And while there were certain other individuals who caught the eyes of the coaches, the staff was more focused on improving as a unit.
"We're looking more at things as a whole and trying to be a solid across the board as we can," Erwin said. "It's all about finding depth and creating as much depth as we can within each unit."
With practice concluding last Friday, Marcus shifts it attention to its summer conditioning program.
"Getting bigger, stronger and faster will make everyone better players," Erwin said. "We came out of spring pretty healthy, too. We had some bang ups, but we practice very physical and that can be expected.
"Overall, we had a good spring. We got a lot of reps and gained a lot of experience. We got a lot of guys some good looks and feel better about where we are now than when we started."
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