Justin Kline weighs in on the Sept. 22 Game of the Week and other area football action.
Durant sure didn’t look rusty on the football field Friday night, even after two Friday nights off.
The Cougars played about as well as anyone in the home stands could have hoped for last week, what with that 35-2 win over Strawberry Crest. Other than the safety, there really weren’t many miscues on their end.
Durant looked bigger, faster and stronger than Crest on the field, which isn’t surprising given how young the Chargers are. The Cougars forced mismatches all over the field and, mainly in the first half, had little trouble guiding the ball wherever the offense wanted it to go. Sure, they didn’t put up any points in the second half, but that’s not something Cougar fans should be concerned about.
If you like football enough to go watch teams other than your own play, I recommend checking out a Durant game this season to watch Cameron Myers work out there. That guy’s getting a reputation for being one of the smoothest running backs in Hillsborough County and can pull off the big plays. I’d say Myers is the most fun Plant City-area football player to watch since Markese Hargrove was tearing it up for the Plant City Raiders a couple of years ago.
I don’t want to come down hard on Crest here because this was always going to be a tough matchup for the Chargers. No team in this stage of a rebuild could handle a group as good as Durant’s, at least not without an astounding amount of luck, so I’d say this was a good learning tool for the younger guys to see where they went wrong and how to improve in the long run. I know for a fact that one of the long-term goals out in Dover is to achieve program stability and on-field consistency at a level around where Durant is and has been.
You know who else had a good Sept. 22 game? The Plant City Raiders, who picked up their first win of the 2017 regular season over East Bay, 27-7, at home. Those guys deserve some props.
Plant City’s defense shut down the Indians’ run game, its offensive strength, holding the team to 94 yards on 31 carries. Plant City’s offense was sparked by the passing game, specifically quarterback Braxton Plunk’s three-touchdown, 182-yard performance. That’s the kind of play James Booth has been looking for from his signal-callers, as well as a perfectly-timed confidence booster.
With games against Strawberry Crest and Lennard following the East Bay win, the Raiders have had and will have plenty of time to help the offense develop a steady rhythm before an Oct. 6 showdown with Armwood that will put Plant City’s skills to the test and an Oct. 13 game with Durant for the Redman Cup, which I know the Raiders want to win back.
