Bearcat Dad

Don’t ya know? People who have no clue what they are talking about, thinks it’s impossible for VHS to do ANYTHING good outside of baseball 🤣 All joking aside, the Bearcats at their best CAN compete with Graham. Will we see them at their best? Time will tell.

I would love for VHS to play Union. Not because I think we would win, but I would like for my kid to get a chance to experience some good old SWVA postseason magic at The Park lol

I like this question. Maybe it could be split up into two categories. Speed/shiftiness and power. When comparing the all-time great RBs, how does one compare, say, Barry Sanders and Earl Campbell. Two completely different styles, but both very effective!

Will offenses in football continue to gravitate towards the wide open, spread look that has become so popular in today’s game? Will we ever see things go back to “3 yards and a cloud of dust”?

Adkins definitely has the speed and shiftiness edge. Rose is a power back. I believe one ends up a HB at the next level, and the other a FB, if he’s not on the defensive side. I do know that Rose is being recruited mostly for defense, but one school has mentioned power back in a RB by committee.

I’m gonna try what other posters did, earlier in the thread........this I have been told this very thing by 3 prominent coaches in our region!

Great point!! Agreed on all points. To me, saying Emmitt Smith is the greatest RB in history because of his yardage total, is kinda the same argument. Smith is an all time great, but also played behind an all time great o-line, and played with multiple HOF players on the offensive side of the ball. To me, Barry Sanders is the GOAT. He did almost as much as Smith, statistically, but on mostly shitty teams. Fiser is an awesome athlete. He’s productive in multiple sports. I believe he’s ONE of the best in SWVA, along with the others that you mention. I may be biased, being a VHS guy, but I’d love to see what our RB duo could do with a line as big as Union’s or as experienced as Ridgeview’s. Or even a sliver of help from the passing game, to keep defenses honest. All teams do against us now defensively, is keep 8 or 9 in the box, and we still run for almost 200 yds per game. Rose is still averaging over 8 ypc this year, and Thomas has gotten over the “Freshman Hurdle” and is getting better every week. I’m definitely not saying we’re the best by any stretch, but we are behind the 8-ball, compared to the other teams mentioned in other areas of our offense, and our 2 backs (especially Rose) have made the most of their opportunities in a pass happy offense. Rose does this on top of having a dominant year on the defensive side of the ball and being in line for a 2nd straight All-State year at LB

I agree that we have the athleticism to play with anybody in our region. Our defense is getting better just about every week. That unit played their best game of the season, so far, last night against a tough offense. We held Abingdon to 165 total yards and only 56 total yards after halftime. Abingdon’s scores were assisted by us fumbling on a punt return inside our own 35 and on their other scoring drive, we kept their drive alive with a pass interference on 3rd and 14, and they proceeded to make us pay. With that said, we are 6 games into the season and have yet to play well offensively in 4 straight quarters. Hell, we usually don’t even string together 2 efficient quarters in a single game. In six games/12 halves, we’ve been held to 7 or fewer points in 7 of those 12 halves of football. Even really good defenses can’t combat that week, after week, after week. I have been a big supporter of this coaching staff and team, I still am. I’m also a realist, and until they can get whatever is causing the disconnect on offense figured out, it will be more of the same.

On a special edition of Thursday Night Football, the G-Men travel to Bristol to take on the Bearcats. Early in the season, this was considered to be a marquee matchup to have major implications in the race for the SWD title. Unfortunately for the Bearcats, this is now just a stepping stone for Graham to set up a district deciding game against Richlands in the near future. Graham is just simply taking care of business and steamrolling thru their schedule against everyone not named Bluefield, while the Bearcats are just stumbling around, while being the biggest disappointment in region D this season. The question is not “Will Graham win this game?” It will be “How many points do they want to win by?” The G-Men have a cast of players contributing, while the Bearcats have two or three players who are consistently playing well, while the rest are still trying to find their way. Regardless, I still stand behind my Bearcats, but if they don’t turn things around and start living up to their potential, this one will get ugly in a hurry. Graham - 45 VHS - 20

Everyone should now be past the halfway point in games played. It’s hard to believe, but things are starting to shape up for the postseason. Even if you disagree with something about our Top 10, vote and try to make a change! 1. Bluefield 2. Ridgeview 3. Pulaski 4. Chilhowie 5. Mount View 6. Union 7. Graham 8. Galax 9. Radford 10. Abingdon

Prayers

Congrats to the Falcons tonight. They made a couple of more plays than we did. Unfortunately, it was the same old story for the Bearcats. The offense struggled, even with all of the extra chances the defense provided tonight. Time to move on to the next one! Good luck the rest of the way

Crist is in year 6. That puts him near the top of the list at VHS lol

Glad to see a new voter! Unfortunately, the cutoff each week to have your vote count is 5:00 pm every Wednesday, so we can post the results on CoalfieldSports.com, and so Ryan and Brady can discuss the list on the SWVA podcasts on Thursday mornings. Hopefully you will come back and vote after this week’s games. Our number of voters has been lower than we had hoped. There are too many people that call the list a “joke” or fuss because they don’t believe certain teams should be on there, but yet they don’t vote lol. Kinda like the idiots who constantly complain about any sitting POTUS and they have the chance to do something about it and vote, but they don’t! 🤣🤣(on a much smaller scale, of course😁)

Dang, I’ve had an embarrassing year, to date lol. Time to make up some ground!

I hadn’t thought about that matchup. That is a very interesting matchup to ponder!

Thank you to the few consistent voters, that take time out of their busy schedules to vote. Here are the results.... 1. Bluefield 2. Ridgeview 3. Pulaski (tie) 3. Chilhowie (tie) 5. Union 6. Graham 7. Mt. View 8. Richlands 9. Patrick Henry 10. Abingdon OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES Radford Galax Grundy J. I. Burton Virginia High

Good point about Phoebus. I guess I was a little off in my years. Lol

I agree. They were the total package, for around here. That game we played against them has one of my son’s favorite sports memories, for himself. As a sophomore, he scored our only TD of the game, which actually came in the 2nd quarter, against the Appomattox 1s. He appreciated getting to compete against that level of greatness. Greeneville’s level of greatness is an entirely different level. They are a team that is ranked in their state, up with any of the top teams from Memphis or any other metropolitan area in Tennessee, regardless of level of classification. Again, no disrespect to the 2016 Appomattox group, but even that team was not going to travel east and whip the likes of Oscar Smith, Phoebus, or Westfield.

The 72 Vikings manhandled all local teams. Elizabethton was the closest to being competitive with the Vikings in the regular season. THS went on to absolutely massacre teams in the playoffs, from areas like Knoxville and Chattanooga, and won what was considered a National Title back then. This Greeneville team is that level of special.

Agreed on all points. If we’re going to compare this Greeneville team against all-time teams, on this board, we’re all gonna have to dig deeper. I’m talking ‘72 Tn. High and the like. I’m a SWVA guy thru and thru, but being a lifelong Bristolian, I’ve been fortunate enough to actually see so many great players and teams over the decades on BOTH sides of the state line and not just hear about them. In my lifetime, there has never been a team in SWVA, west of Roanoke, that could beat Greeneville this year. People who haven’t seen Greeneville, just do not understand. I watched my son play against the 2016 Appomattox team, in the playoffs. They were definitely one of the top 2A teams of SWVA, of all time. I was super impressed with that team. Greeneville would have wiped the field with, and had a running clock in the 2nd half against that group. No disrespect to the Raiders! I appreciate the love that hardcore SWVA fans have for their respective schools. Some understand, but others refuse to even try to be unbiased. This Greeneville team is a once in a lifetime type of special, for the SWVA and NETN area. I highly recommend that, if possible, every high school football fan in SWVA and NETN try to get to a Greeneville game this season.

Ryan: Best single band performance you’ve seen at a high school football game. Brady: The best individual play you’ve ever seen in a high school game. Both: What is the over/under on the number of touchdowns my Irish beat your Hokies by on Saturday? 🤣🤣

You are spot on! No better way to describe VHS. If I could like your post twice, I would! I have no ill feelings toward the baseball program. I played in it, and my son is getting ready to enter his 4th year as a starter in the program. Like you though, I foolishly hope/hoped that it would become a total sports school. It’s just not in the cards, I guess.

I don’t believe him leaving has been a factor at all. We are running the exact same offense, with the same type of play calling as last season, with the same results, so far. He is a really nice guy, but our offense stunk against solid teams last year as well. We were competitive against teams last year because of our defense. Which was only ranked second in the region, behind Union. This year, our defense has not been nearly as good. Our base offense is 4 wide, single back spread, with RPO. Our entire offense completely revolves around our QB. We were shutout in the second half against Tazewell, scored 7 in the first half against Battle, scored 7 in the second half against Tn. High, and were shutout for 3 and a half quarters against Chilhowie. Our passing game is connecting for WELL under 50% completion percentage. People see what the newspaper reports, and believe our passing game was the only way we could move the ball, because yardage is the only thing usually reported. Go to Hudl and search the recap film against Chilhowie. Look how Hudl breaks down our big plays on offense. Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, run, pass, pass, pass, pass, run. Now, take a look at the film, and of the 10 passing plays, count how many passes traveled more than 5 yards in the air. Only two did. Those two were deep balls thrown up for jump balls. Now, this all looks good, and it is. Except, the final stat line of our passing game was 12-27 for those 204 yards. Of the 15 incompletions, 2 were intermediate routes that were dropped, and 8 balls went more than 25 yards in the air, most of which were batted down, WAY off the mark, and one that was intercepted in the end zone. We had 5 trips into the red zone that resulted in exactly one TD, which was scored when the game was already out of reach, on a 10 yard RUN by our backup QB. Our pass to run ratio in those 5 drives AFTER reaching the red zone, was over 3:1. My point in all of this is, this has been our offensive approach for 16 consecutive games, since the beginning of Amburgey. We have a record of 10-6 in those games. We have 3 “Quality” wins out of those 10. They all came last year against Abingdon, Chilhowie, and the regular season game against Marion. In the 6 losses, they were all against “Quality” opponents(Tn. High x2, 2017 Marion in the playoffs, 2017 Graham, 2017 Richlands, and 2018 Chilhowie) In 3 “Quality” wins our passing game produced 5 total TDs(out of 11 total for the team) with 5 turnovers(all by the passing game) In 6 losses to “quality” teams, our passing game is responsible for 4 total TDs(out of 9 total scored by the entire offense) with 14 turnovers(all by the passing game) We refuse to change anything, play calls or personnel, so the results will not change. To tackle the other part of your comment, after your prediction, you are correct. The Pioneers may very well make the game closer than it should be. It has happened to us all year long. When you keep touching the hot stove eye, you will continue to get burned every time. It’s been the story of our offense since the beginning of the 2017 season.