The football season couldn’t have started off much worse for the Newton Tigers on Saturday.
The Tigers opened the season with a two-quarter jamboree against West Lowndes at Louisville High School on Saturday, losing 14-0.
On their first series on defense, the Tigers lost their center to injury. That forced a freshman into action, causing several bad snaps and exchange issues.
“We had some unfortunate things happen,” second-year coach Zach Grady said. “We had to play a freshman at center and he struggled. We probably had about 10 bad snaps and you can’t tell anything when the quarterback can’t get the football. We just couldn’t get anything going. We would gain 15 yards and then lose 13 on a bad snap. But those are things that we can correct. Honestly, I think if you take away the bad snaps and we beat them by 20.”
Grady said aside from the bad snaps, he was pleased with what he saw.
“I thought the defense played well,” Grady said. “We gave them one score on a short field and then they scored one late. But I thought the plays that we did get off that we looked good at what we were trying to accomplish. We eventually went under center and that kind of limits what we can do. Honestly, I thought we were light years ahead of where we were last year.”
Grady said he like the way his defensive line played and thought the receivers and running backs played well.
“I thought we did a good job of catching the football and I thought the running backs ran the ball well,” Grady said. “Other than the bad snaps, we didn’t have a negative play. It was very frustrating because we have improved so much and didn’t really get to see that. And I thought the offensive line played really well.”
Grady said freshman quarterback Tyreke Snow had a good first half.
“We didn’t really keep stats but Snow probably threw for more than 100 yards in the half,” Grady said. “He executed the screen game when he got the ball. He’s going to be fine. He was good releasing the ball and getting it to receivers. He was good in the run game as well. All in all, I thought we got some good reps and got to see a lot of kids on the field.”
