Katy continued its dominance of 19-6A this season in a 35-0 win over the Falcons. Tompkins came into this game on a hot streak offensively and showed some of their capabilities against the Tigers. However, zero points on the scoreboard at 0:00 in the fourth quarter when the dust settled. Self-explanatory.
Defense is this team’s identity
Once again, the Tiger defense was able to take away an opponents’ bread and butter and force them to try and use everything in the arsenal to move the football. For Tompkins, their great discovery in district had been the running game with the sophomore #6 Ethan Meadows. He’s been a catalyst for them and will be a very good player there the next couple of years. Katy did a very good job in limiting his explosive plays. The Falcons QB, Thierheimer, played a very good game in my opinion and made a handful of difficult passes against good defense by Katy that extended some Falcon drives. He was fortunate Katy didn’t intercept him another couple of times.
Tompkins’ offense gave Katy a good look at some different things formation and play design wise that will serve as useful film study. They really tried to throw the kitchen sink at this Tiger defense to get points on the board.
Katy had to stand tough a couple of times in the red area. Tompkins missed a short field goal after Katy stood strong, and most notably on a fourth down when Tompkins had gotten down to Katy’s one yard line. I could be mistaken, but I counted 2 or 3 scoring opportunities for Tompkins. One of those was set up by a turnover (fumbled pitch by Katy RB) and a second was due to a long return.
Watching the game, I felt like Katy’s defense firmly controlled the proceedings and Tompkins couldn’t consistently threaten them.
Offense shows a spark
On offense, it was nice to see Katy hit an explosive TD pass to McCall on the post. This is something the Katy offense absolutely needs to do in order to be successful given how power run-centered Katy is. Similar to option teams of old, we need to do damage whenever we go to the air and also move the chains consistently on the short to intermediate passes. You can’t afford to waste any of these plays when you’re averaging around 15 attempts per game.
Running wise, the concern continues to be a lack of consistent explosiveness in addition to not having the kind of running back in the team who is going to run over people and pick up three yards from nothing. It was good to see Hill back in the lineup after having to sit out Paetow. The impressive youngster Manual was able to generate an explosive run when he came in. The fumbles are unfortunate for running backs because they generally lead to a benching especially given the rate we’ve seen them happen this season. Katy really has had to earn everything at the position this year with the injuries and not having the 30-carry-a-game hammer. It’s a shared load type of situation this season. The fullback runs by Joshua Smith looked really good in this one, and I liked the play of Nathaniel Gayhart (#43) when he was in also.
Tompkins and Katy only had one possession apiece in the third quarter which was a big reason why it took as long to put it fully to bed with the two fourth quarter touchdowns. It was awesome seeing the second team offense score the last touchdown on a nice drive and great TD run by Tim Ogumbanjo (#37).
What we still need
The turnovers (obviously) and the three-and-out empty possessions are what Katy needs to find a way to fix by the playoffs. In the playoffs, the margin for error is too small to overcome these kinds of things even with dominant defense when you are playing the likes of a North Shore or Atascocita. Katy has already seen what missed opportunities look like against Cita.
To close the regular season, Katy has a stronger than expected Mayde Creek Rams team to play. I watched Mayde Creek, on purpose, for the first time in a long time and was impressed by what I saw of them this season. They have a defense that’s going to test Katy to a similar level as we’ve seen the past three weeks versus Jordan, Paetow and Tompkins. They are athletically closer to Jordan and Paetow. The Rams offense has some speed in the backfield and the QB throws rainmaker deep balls that can be tough to defend. Good on the Rams for putting together a good season again, and I look forward to seeing Katy try and seal a district championship against the crick.
