Ooltewah Gets Another Crack at Defending Rhea County’s Old School Wing-T Offense
Ooltewah-(WDEF) You want to talk old school football. Rhea County runs the Wing-T offense, which has been around since the 1950’s. But the Eagles should call it the Winning-T because they’ve racked up a lot of wins and points using the Wing-T. Tonight, Ooltewah will try to stop it in a battle of top ten teams.
Rhea County rolls into Ooltewah averaging 50-points a game. So what makes their Wing-T so dangerous? Well it’s hard to stop what you can’t see.
Said Owls defensive coordinator Doug Greene-"You can’t follow the ball. You try to watch the ball like you’re a fan, you’ll lose it. So you’ve got to read your keys."
Said Owls head coach Mac Bryan-"What they do is different from playing against the spread or a three-wide zone team and things like that. You’re eyes have to see different things. It’s very hard in a week to get your eyes trained up to it."
Owls got caught up in the misdirection last year, losing to Rhea County 47-14 in the playoffs.
Said linebacker Jeremiah Jackson-"What they do is hard to read, but you have to be disciplined. We let our eyes get away from us a little bit last year, and it hurt us a lot."
The Eagles Wing T forces a defense to be honest.
Greene-"You have to play your assignments. For a team like us, it slows us down. We’d much rather be out there running."
Jackson-"There’s a lot of movement. Sometimes you catch yourself trying to freestyle and drift away from what your coach says is your key in practice. When you get in the game, you want to do your own thing, and that’s what will get us beat."
Bryan-"Got good runners. They have real discipline in what they do. They’re well coached. Add those things up, and they’re hard to stop."
Tonight’s game should be a good test for an Owls defense that hasn’t allowed an opponent to reach double digits this season.
Bryan-"We’ve held people to very small yardage totals. Not given up points very much at all. Some of that has carried over to our special teams. We’ve made a lot of plays there."
Greene-"We’re a lot better up-front this year than we were a year ago. A lot stronger."
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