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Broncos looking to better 2016

Ray DiMonda
Posted 6/1/17

MIDDLEBURG - Middleburg High football coach Karl Smeltzer came into Friday night’s matchup against the visiting Westside Hihgh Wolverines with a tall order to fill. Coming off last year’s season …

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Broncos looking to better 2016


Posted

MIDDLEBURG - Middleburg High football coach Karl Smeltzer came into Friday night’s matchup against the visiting Westside Hihgh Wolverines with a tall order to fill. Coming off last year’s season with the first appearance in Bronco post-season play in 13 years, Smeltzer is looking to repeat and take it even further. While the performance at Friday night’s game showed opportunities for improvement, he was pleased with his team scoring three touchdowns and successful point-after attempts. Final score Friday night: 28-21 with plenty to capitalize on.

“I just want to see what we got, I want to be disciplined, that’s really it,” said Smeltzer. “We’re not a real technical team. I want to fly around. I want to see who’ll fly around and give me 110 percent. That’s really what I’m looking for.”

On the Westside opening drive, Middleburg showed their weakness out of the box as the Wolverines ran at will inside on the Broncos.

In the opening drive, the Wolverines attempted one pass which fell. They stuck to the run game and Coach Smeltzer found his number one priority to correct before the fall opener.

“That was a disappointing thing to me. I thought our defensive front was going to be better than what it was,” said Smeltzer. “Now, we have three of them that have never played at this level. So I think they were a little timid at first and I will say this, you cannot simulate that speed in practice. He (Westside Quarterback Jalil Jackson) could put that foot in the ground and he could cut it back and we over-pursued, our angles were off and that was the disappointing thing. I thought we’d be better there.”

The Middleburg defensive backfield will also need work as they were beat deep several times. Middleburg showed speed tracking down passes that went for long yards, but they’ll need to work on not letting receivers get behind them.

On offense, Smeltzer got the discipline he was looking for. During warm-ups, his line continually jumped early. Once the game began, not one false start. The Broncos took advantage of Westside’s discipline issue. At least 10 times, the Broncos went on the second go, and earned a free five yards from Wolverine offside call. The game was very physical and several personal fouls were called for post play altercations.

On his offense, Smeltzer said “Alot of positive things, especially offensively. We started five new offensive linemen. Our running game with our fullback and our tailbacks are really good. We have to get a little better at receiver, but our offensive line were really good.”

Middleburg showed real good speed in Andrew Thomas as he broke out several times and gained great yardage as he avoided tacklers. Middleburg’s Kodi Carrington proved to be the short yardage specialist as well as a great lead blocker. Quarterback Garrett Blanchett showed great footwork scrambling around when he needed. Middleburg suffered a few dropped exchanges to running backs that will need to get worked on. Blanchett showed a great arm in warmups, and will need to develop that in game situations as his passes fell short and the Broncos were never much of a pass threat. That was, until late in the game when they brought in Joe Justino in the second half. Out of the box, he went deep and found Brandon Gary several times.

Smeltzer wrapped up his team’s performance as well as his thoughts of what he can get done over the summer. “I think over the summer you can get allot of experience by playing 7 on 7. That’s where my DB’s are going to work. This will go a long way watching the film Tuesday and let the kids see what we have to (work on) what we need to do.”