Examining the Knights at the football season’s halfway point

Inconsistent would be the best word to describe the West Holmes football team through the first five weeks of the season.

The Knights will look very good for stretches before making a costly mistake.

Their offense has been borderline elite. Their defense has shown flashes of its potential but struggled at times.

All of that adds up to a 3-2 overall mark and a 1-1 record in the Ohio Cardinal Conference at the midpoint of the season. When looking at the postseason picture, West Holmes is currently ranked 11th in Division IV, Region 14, which is loaded once again this season.

“I think we’re still chasing consistency,” Knights coach Zach Gardner said after his team’s win over Madison on Sept. 15. “We’re chasing doing everything the way that we expect it 100% of the time. We do a lot of really, really good things. It’ll be nine good plays and then one bad one.

“We just have to eliminate that one bad thing because it’s putting us in positions to not be the type of team that we want to be.”

Let’s take a deeper look at what’s gone right and wrong with the offense, defense and special teams so far.

Offense

Replacing quarterback Mason Wolfe, an Ohio Mr. Football finalist last season, was a major concern entering the season. Junior QB Morgan Smith has all but squashed those concerns with his play through the first five games.

Smith has completed 116 of 167 passes for 2,012 yards and 19 touchdowns while rushing for a team-high 269 yards and five scores on 71 carries. He threw for a school-record 553 yards in a week three loss at Licking Valley.

Smith’s ability to make plays with his legs from the QB position has given the offense something it hasn’t had in recent years. The only concern so far with Smith is he’s already thrown five interceptions — one more than Wolfe threw all last season. Three of those interceptions came against Mansfield Senior, though, so he’s been pretty good with protecting the ball for the most part.

Outside of Smith, the Knights haven’t rushed for a whole lot of yards. Running back Zach Shepler has rushed for 168 yards and two scores on 37 carries. No other player on the team has more than 37 yards on the ground.

It’s hard to nitpick the rushing attack, though, when it’s averaging north of 100 yards per game in a pass-heavy scheme.

“We take our kids and what they do well, and we build our offense around it,” Gardner said. “We’re averaging over 500 yards of offense per game, and 100 of that’s coming from the ground. When we need to run the ball, we feel confident that we’re able to do it.”

Wide receiver has been a position of strength. Three receivers have at least 450 yards receiving while another one is just under 300 yards.

Junior Logan Zollars has had a breakout season, catching 41 balls for 696 yards and three touchdowns. He finished with a school-record 269 yards receiving in the loss to Licking Valley.

Sophomore Lynn Cline has turned 25 catches into 479 yards and four scores, and senior standout Kyle Maltarich has snagged 24 balls for 450 yards and five TDs. Senior Nate Fair rounds out the talented quartet with 15 catches for 288 yards and five scores.

After struggling against Mansfield Senior’s pass rush in the first half, the offensive line — which began the year with three new starters — is starting to round into form, which serves the offense well moving forward.

“We feel really good about the receivers that we have,” Gardner said. “We feel really good about our quarterback. Our offensive line had a great week of practice and came out and protected our quarterback (against Madison), which is vital to the success of our offense. Kudos to our offensive line.”

Inopportune penalties on offense and defense have been an issue at times. Gardner wants to see his team clean up some of those unnecessary miscues.

“We did an analytical study looking into what’s going on,” he said. “If you look at our offense, we have more yards than we’ve had each of the last two years, average per game. We have more explosive plays. We have more first downs. But the penalty yards and the turnovers are up. The individual breakdowns that cause a negative play are up.

“We just have to keep grinding in practice and working and getting experience and just working through it.”

Defense

Opposing offenses are only averaging 290.8 yards per game this season, which is roughly 15 more yards than they averaged last season against the Knights. The main difference between this season and last is WH’s defense has allowed multiple big plays, something the unit was great at preventing last year.

West Holmes has plenty of talent on its defense. If the unit can start limiting the big plays and forcing offenses to drive the length of the field, the Knights are going to be a scary team to play against come late October when the playoffs begin.

Forcing turnovers has been one of the unit’s strengths. Six players have recovered a fumble, and three players have combined for four interceptions.

“(Defense) is probably the side of the football where we are playing the most inexperienced players,” Gardner said. “We’ve got guys moving around. We think we have guys in the right position now. We just have to get experience. We have to chase consistency. We have to not think. We have to just play. We’re doing too much thinking and not reading our keys and flying to the football and whatnot.

“I’ve liked our ability to cause turnovers. Whenever we have an opportunity when that ball is in the air, we make turnovers, but we need to limit big plays. We’ll play great 90% of the time, but then there’s that one out of every 10 plays (where we give up a lot of yards). When you’re playing defense, that’s a big deal when that turns into a touchdown. We’re just chasing consistency.”

Senior Gus Warner leads the defense with 58 tackles. Junior Elijah Williams-Dixon has recorded 40 tackles, including 10 for loss and 4 ½ sacks. Senior Grant Miller has collected 36 tackles while Zollars has a team-high three interceptions.

Special teams

The Knights have allowed a kickoff return for a touchdown in consecutive games and have struggled at times with their kickoff return team.

Some of it has been bad luck. Some of it has been technique breakdowns. Either way, it’s something Gardner knows must be fixed.

“Our special teams need to be cleaned up,” Gardner said. “We probably practice special teams more than anyone around here in the area, so that’s a little disheartening some of the plays that we have had negatively in that phase of the game because that’s an important phase of the game.

“We’ve had a lot of bounces not go our way this year. The bounces don’t go your way, but we have to keep fighting. Our kids keep fighting. No one is quitting. No one’s packing it in. We’re going to continue to work to get this thing to click because when it clicks, we think it can be very beautiful.”