The Maricopa High School football team had backward momentum against a big Millennium squad Friday and suffered a blowout loss, 47-0, in front of a home crowd.
“You meet a team that physically is your equal or greater, the thing that separates you is how you play your technique,” MHS head coach Brandon Harris said. “If you don’t play with technique, you get beat, you get beat bad, and that’s what happened tonight.”
The home game evened the Rams’ record at 1-1. It was the Tigers’ first game of the season.
While Maricopa struggled to execute its game plan, Millennium was hitting four touchdown passes by junior quarterback Jalan Early. The Ram defense had its struggles, but the offense never got on its legs.
When the Rams felt overwhelmed, the coach said, they reverted to old habits and abandoned proper technique. The end result, he said, was something MHS deserved.
“They blitzed. We know what we’re supposed to do. We had checks for their blitzes the same as we did last year. We didn’t check to the plays we were supposed to go to. Simple as that,” Harris said. “They blitz the inside A gaps; we pitch the ball to the outside. We didn’t pitch the ball to the outside. You don’t stay with the play, you get sacked. If our quarterback drops his eyes and doesn’t look downfield, we don’t get the ball out to guys that are wide open.”
Millennium scored twice in each of the first three quarters. Next up for the Rams is a home game against Apollo (1-1), which suffered a similar shellacking at the hands of Casteel, 53-7.
“We’ve got to be prepared. We’ve got to be honest about where we are, who we are and what we did, and then go back and get better at it,” Harris said. “The nice thing about what happened tonight is that it’s all fixable. We just have to do what we’re supposed to do.”
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