Tiger country is excited about Greenfield-Northwestern football outlook in 2017

Aug 25, 2017 2:41 PM

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A coach provides a signal during a recent Greenfield-Northwestern practice. (Photo courtesy of Micheal Weaver)

GREENFIELD - For four seasons, Greenfield-Northwestern was out of the playoffs after the first game, but this year, Tiger country has reason to be excited more than usual with several key players returning. The thinking this is their year in the WIVC South, especially with most of the team's rebuilding.

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“We always talk about short-term and long-term goals. Our long-term goals every year is to aspire for the playoffs [and] get a week 10,” head coach Joe Pembrook said. “Unfortunately we’ve not been able to get over that hump the last handful of years when we’ve gotten to the playoffs. Right now that’s in the far distance. Whenever expectations come early in the season, it’s a way of showing respect to what we’ve done in years past, and that’s a detriment of what we’ve accomplished in the last handful of years. We’d rather have our hand in the mix and a target on our chest’s than to be an afterthought.”

There is, however, good news and bad news. First, the good news.

The Tigers return just about all of their starting skill position athletes, especially their backfield, who scored 35 of the team’s 40 touchdowns on offense a year ago.

“That’s one place we have a great deal of senior leadership,” Pembrook said. “That is our strength of our offense. We got some proven guys that get their pad level down, run downhill well, and hopefully, we can create some creases for them and be a problem for defenses this fall.”

What jumps out first is the fullback Jacob Foiles, a three-year starter. Foiles carried the ball 218 times and rushed for 1,520 yards and scored 26 touchdowns. It usually takes two tacklers to bring down the six-foot, one-inch 235-pounder and more when he gets into open space up the field.

“He sets an example through his work-ethic. He’s a big, strong physical kid and he’s prepared himself very well in the off-season. He knows that he’ll be the brunt of our offense, handle the workload, and being able to enjoy the contact. He’ll certainly be the focal point. We’ll try and build some things around him, but we need to be much more diversified than just one guy.

Blake Steckel and Cody Brown bring that diversity. Steckel had rushed for 590 yards and five touchdowns last year, while Brown racked up 290 yards with two touchdowns. He averaged 12.7 yards a carry. All in all, that’s exactly 2,400 rushing yards the Tigers have returning in the back field.

Greenfield has to replace Cole Arnett, who was a comendable quarterback for the last two seasons. His replacement is junior Zane Thomson who was the JV quarterback for the last seasons.

“He knows the system and [has] more on his plate now. He’s gotta be more of a leader and understand not only his position but everybody’s,” Pembrook said. “He has to be our coach, captain on the offensive side of the football. I’m very happy what Zane’s brought to the table thus far.”

With Brown, Foiles, and Steckel getting most of the touches, Thomson will air it out occasionally to Matthew Walker, Blake Meyer or the running backs.

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Now, here’s the bad news.

What the Tigers had in 2016 was vast numbers for a 1A school with 19 seniors. This year they don’t have huge depth, but then again most of the WIVC schools won’t have a whole lot anyway.

“We are short numbers this year so being able to create depth is going to be an issue for us. We gotta keep everybody healthy, and so far we’ve been able to do that,” Pembrook said. “I’m proud of our work ethic and like the attitude that the guys are bringing. We’ve had to shuffle some guys around, but they’re relishing the opportunity and accepting roles.”

However, with those seniors, they boasted senior laden offensive and defensive lines. All of their starters from a year ago graduated. It’s undeniably a predicament, especially for an offense that is designed to run the ball a vast majority of the time, but the coaching staff foresaw this and at the moment, are satisfied with the progress.

“I’m pleased with where we are right now,” Pembrook said. “We graduated a great senior class, and the majority of them were linemen type personnel. We knew we would have to rebuild our offensive and defensive lines. We’ve had to move some guys around, but they’ve accepted their roles. They have a great attitude and are learning every single day. I firmly believe we’re a better football team after the first few days of practice.”

Outside of the trenches on defense, Greenfield brings back quite a few starters. Robby Kerr led the team in tackles last season with 97 at linebacker. Walker, Meyer, Steckel, Brown, and Foiles are additional returning starters or players that routinely rotated in and out.

“We bring back a lot of our linebacking core that’s got a great deal of experience. They’re proven now; they got a good year under their belt,” Pembrook said. “Same way in our secondary. We got some guys that have gotten a lot of game experience, and we hope that they’ll be able to be the cornerstones and the leaders of our defense.”

The Tigers won’t get a pleasant and cushy home opener to start out the season. Instead, they’ll drive an hour and 50-minute drive up I-72 west to Unity High School in Mendon to face the reigning WIVC North champions. However, like the Tigers, the Mustangs graduated a huge amount of seniors that were almost instrumental for their undefeated regular season last year. Nonetheless, they run the spread offense, know how to win, and are athletic enough to torch the Greenfield secondary.

“They got the better of us last year, and they were extremely physical, skilled and a had a great group of kids,” Pembrook said. “We know they lost some things, but they return enough that are going to give us some fits plus we have to go on the road, we got a long bus trip ahead of us. We’ll find out about an awful lot of ourselves.”

There may be some learning curves along the way early on, but the Tigers are confident that they will live up to people’s expectations, more importantly, their own.

“As inexperienced as we are up front we’ve gotta have great gains every week of being a much more cohesive unit, especially on the offensive side of the football,” Pembrook said. “It’s going to take some time learning our new roles, but for week-to-week improvements, we want to be physically imposing. We’ve set good examples for our season. Our guys know every season they write they’re own chapter.”