In their final dress rehearsal prior to the Aug. 26 football season opener against the Abilene Wylie Bulldogs, the Brownwood Lions on Thursday will cross paths with a familiar foe in the Lampasas Badgers. Scrimmage action, which take place at Lampasas High School, is slated for 5 p.m. for the JV and freshmen teams, and 6:30 p.m. for the varsity squads.
Last week, the Lions put forth a solid performance in their scrimmage with Decatur, reaching the end zone twice while preventing the Eagles from crossing the goal line. Brownwood fifth-year head coach Sammy Burnett wants to see his team build on that performance as the season opener draws ever closer.
“Tomorrow is a big day for us,” Burnett said in a Wednesday interview. “We need to have a good scrimmage, get everyone on film and give us another opportunity to evaluate our kids and make sure we have the people where they need to be at the right time. We’ve still got guys battling for positions. I still don’t know for sure who we’re going to start. Hopefully it gets to a point where it doesn’t matter who we put on the field, we won’t miss a beat.”
An area the coaching staff will be watching closely is the offensive line, which went through a shake up earlier this week.
“Logan Knight, who moved in from California, was out with COVID for a couple of weeks so he’s a little behind,” Burnett said. “We moved Slayde Espinoza from left guard to left tackle and moved Roan Aguinaga to left guard. We’re also putting Logan at right guard some and playing Roan at center some. We’ve got the guys we want, we just want to get them in the right spots to where they work cohesive as a unit. It’ll take through this scrimmage and some more evaluation, but we should have a good idea of what we want and what we’re expecting before the 26th.”
The performance from the receivers, both in the run game and the pass attack, will be a point of interest as well.
“I want to see us blocking as receivers on the perimeter so if we are able to make it to the second level we can take a 10-yard gain and turn it into a 50-yard gain or a touchdown because we’re blocking down field,” Burnett said. “Also, when we have opportunities to score like we did against Decatur, we have to. About four or five times we had balls wide open for touchdowns and we didn’t execute the catch or throw, so I want to see that fixed. We need to start working together as a machine. I feel like if we execute and do what we’re supposed to, we have four of the finest receivers in the state, a good quarterback, running back, and offensive line. I want to see them continue to grow and gel together.”
The Lions are coming off a stellar defensive effort against Decatur, but Brownwood’s secondary will receive a much greater test through the air from Lampasas than a week ago.
“We did a great job of rally to the football last week and we were physical,” Burnett said. “On the back end I want to see them get to where they need to be to cover passes. We also didn’t do a good job getting off blocks on the outside and the perimeter when receivers were trying to block us. Lampasas told us they are going to throw the ball about 80 percent of the time, so it’s a great opportunity for our back end to get reps and a great opportunity for us to evaluate some of the kids at corner, safety and nickel that we’re still looking at.”
The varsity scrimmage format will feature two eight-play sets for the starting offenses of both teams, and a pair of six-play sets for the second-team offensive units of each squad. A 15-minute live quarter will then follow.
“At the end of that if we feel like we need more time we’ll do it, and if we feel like we’ve done enough that will be it,” Burnett said. “We’ll be simulating all our game stuff, including having headsets on the coaching staff for the first time.”