Abbeville sets sights on stopping physical North Vermilion team

The Abbeville Wildcats played the kind of game they wanted to play against a talented Central Catholic football squad this past Thursday, and it all started up front for the Wildcats.
“I thought we were much more aggressive on the offensive line this week than we were in week 1,” AHS head coach Roderick Moy said. “This week I thought was more indicative of who we want to be, and I thought the guys up front really went out and did a good job.
“That’s the brand of ball that we want to play, and until somebody makes us do something different, that’s what it’s going to be.”
Abbeville played well defensively, he said, in a game that was cut short because of lightning. The Wildcats earned the 20-14 win in three quarters.
“To hold a team with those kind of weapons to under 100 yards, albeit it in three quarters, the game wasn’t changing. If anything, we were starting to wear them down a little bit, I thought, with our having a few more numbers (of players) than them. I thought the fourth quarter was going to be good to us if that weather hadn’t hit.”
Abbeville plays host to North Vermilion on Friday.
Moy was impressed with North Vermilion holding a strong Erath offense to one touchdown in regulation.
“That’s a scary football team,” Moy said. “Very aggressive on defense. Hopefully we can do some things and put some things together to use that aggression against them.
“But I think we’re going to have to be more multiple and not allow them to stack the box.”
Because the North Vermilion coaches are familiar with what the Wildcats like to do on offense, Moy said Abbeville will have to open things up on offense.
“We’ve got to be able to make them cover the entire field, both north and south, east and west,” Moy said. “We only had two pass attempts last week, and I think to keep them from just teeing off on us, we’re going to have to throw the ball a little better and threaten them down the field, and make them cover more area.”
Moy said Abbeville is confident in its receivers and in quarterbacks Tahj Judge and Da’Zavian Maze.
“We just haven’t been faced with having to do that yet,” Moy said. “We thought we had an advantage in the box the first two weeks playing those guys that we had a size advantage over. We expect a packed box this week and we want to be able to go out and showcase what we were able to work on over the summertime.”
On defense, he’d like to see the defense make the same strides from last week to this week that it made from week 1 to week 2. Freshman Zaylun Hopkins earned a share of Gulf Coast Bank Defensive Player of the Week honors this past week after he had eight tackles, including four tackles for loss, with two sacks and forced a fumble this past week.
“We’ve got some young guys playing out there,” Moy said. “Any time you’ve got young guys out there, they have to get better each week, and not just say, ‘oh, we played well in week.’ We’ve got to continue to make strides, continue to learn, and continue to get better week to week if we’re going to be the football team we want to be.
“With the number of freshmen and sophomores we have on the fied, we have to continue to keep getting better if we’re going to improve to 2-1.”