The Bulldogs haven’t played as well as coach Ryan Adams knows they can the past few weeks.
Adams’ focus recently has been keeping his team focused on each individual game leading up to the vaunted matchup with Nelsonville-York. To help keep his players in the moment, he's challenged them to outperform their recent lackluster performances.
“We’re running out of opportunities to really play our best football and put it all together,” Adams said. “I think certainly defensively we’ve got something to prove after giving up so many points the last two weeks.”
One thing the Athens defense will get a chance to prove this week is how much it learned from last week’s mistakes.
Defensive end and quarterback Brendan Sano said Meigs’ misdirection plays gave the front seven fits, and Wellston’s Wing-T offense will put the Bulldog defense in similar positions.
There will be a lot of action happening in the backfield to distract the defense from the actual goal of the play.
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Offensively, Athens (5-2, 3-0 Tri-Valley Conference Ohio) will be facing a Wellston defense that gave up over 400 rushing yards last week against Nelsonville-York.
Wellston (3-4, 1-2 TVC Ohio) will undoubtedly be motivated to put up more of a fight after getting annihilated on the ground last week, but Athens is averaging 193.5 rushing yards per game.
Adams said his offense still has room to grow to reach its full potential, which is a terrifying thought for Wellston, considering those comments came off a 62-point, 600 total-yard performance.
The main orchestrator of that offensive burst, Sano, will be playing both sides of the ball for the second-straight week. Two of his favorite targets on offense, wide receivers Treyce Albin and Robert Dickleman, will be joining him.
Both Albin and Dickelman made their first defensive starts of the season last week — Albin because of a coach’s decision, Dickleman because of an injury to safety Logan Maxfield. Wellston’s physical style of play could take a toll on the newcomers, but Adams is confident the tandem will be able to hold up after the experience of playing both ways last week.
“I think that a player feels a lot more confidence knowing the next time he goes out there and has to do the same thing he did before in terms of having to haul that load,” Adams said.
Athens hasn’t been itself lately, but the Bulldogs still control their own destiny. They return home this week, where they have not lost a game yet, and are facing a playing style they matchup favorably with.
The road to a return to normalcy is not complicated, but the two games before this posed similarly dull threats. Execution has been the problem recently, not talent.
