Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By JASON JUNO
Hurley — Old and new mixed together as Hurley kicked off its summer football workouts Monday evening.
The Northstars got together for the first of four weekly sessions to get ready for their first season as an 8-player team. With it comes an old Hurley offense, the option that coach Scott Erickson employed in his early years with the program.
There’s a lot to learn before the first official practice on Aug. 13 and the first game on Aug. 29, at home against old foe Lake Linden-Hubbell.
“We’re excited, new adventure,” Erickson said.
He wants Hurley to get a head start and 16 players joined the coaching staff Monday to get one.
“We have to, if we’re going to hit the ground running on this thing,” he said. “We have a good opportunity in front of us and we want to take advantage of that. We want to make sure we take care of all the little things before we get to practice.”
The Northstars ended their time as an 11-player football program last year with their 26th straight playoff appearance. They return plenty of talent to keep that postseason run going in 8-player; they just have a lot to learn with the new style of football.
There’s no pads or helmets in the summer. They worked on those little things like snapping the football — “You can’t run anything without a good center snap,” Erickson said — along with formations, terminology, even how to hand off the ball and take the handoffs — or act like it — in this offense. They threw a few passes, too.
Hurley won a lot of games with the run-heavy T offense it’s employed for some time now. Teams struggled seeing it for the first time in the playoffs. Those that were used to it still had trouble figuring out who had the football on dark fall nights as the backfield fakes were a key part of the offense. They also had some really good backs running behind some really good offensive lines over the years.
They still have some really good players. But the numbers don’t work as well for that offense in 8-player.
Generally, teams give up two tackles and a running back going to 8-player football, meaning Hurley wouldn’t have three running backs to line up behind the QB like it did in the T. On Monday, Hurley typically lined up only one running back near the quarterback. Erickson said that gives them more blocking numbers than they would have with another one of their eight lined up in the backfield.
It’s not all new for the coaching staff. Hurley ran the option for 15 years early in Erickson’s career. They were under center then and now they aren’t; and they had the three more players to use then.
“I know a ton about option, just got to refresh ourselves,” he said. “The trap game is essentially out of there, but we did a ton of zone blocking offensive-line wise in our (T) schemes.”
That’s a good thing because they’ll look to zone block now — and run to daylight — he said.
When Hurley ran the option, they were set if they had a quarterback with speed who could handle the football. Just being able to handle it made things tough — they needed that running threat, Erickson said.
Jack Rowe, who took some snaps at quarterback last year, took many of the few snaps they tried Monday.
“I think he’s a nice combo, Jack is, I think he can run and throw. I think that’s a good spot to start,” Erickson said. “We’re going to have multiple quarterbacks, we’ll have a bunch that can do it. (Devin Soltis), might play some Q too. It’s all going to be a part of the experiment. It’s going to be small amount of plays, lot amount of formations and a lot of getting it to your best players.”
The lightning fast Soltis, a running back last year, is certainly one of them. He’ll be a huge part of the offense in 8-player football where speed is often king.
Perhaps Hurley will throw it a bit more than the handful of times per game they’ve been accustomed to. Perhaps not.
“Look at the teams that win, they run the football,” Erickson said. “If you want to go back to Forest Parks, your North Centrals, they just run the football. Get your fastest guy in some space, beat a one-on-one tackle and you’re off to the races. I think we’ve got guys that can do that.”
He’s been watching a lot of good 8-player teams. But what they have planned at this point, still a month before the start of practice, will probably look different — in ways large or small is the question — by Week 1.
“This is all going to be experimental,” he said. “I’ve seen what the good teams do. I’ve watched a lot of film of what the good teams do. So we’ll pick and choose some of those things. We have an idea of how we want to go about it.”
Schedule
Thursday, Aug. 29, LAKE LINDEN-HUBBELL
Friday, Sept. 6, at Prentice
Friday, Sept. 13, FLAMBEAU
Friday, Sept. 20, at Athens
Friday, Sept. 27, WASHBURN
Friday, Oct. 4, CHEQUAMEGON
Friday, Oct. 11, at Phillips
Friday, Oct. 18, RIB LAKE
