Despite doing mostly controlled hitting in preseason practices, El Dorado’s defense had a good tackling performance in the benefit game against North Little Rock.
Overall, defensive coordinator Wes Ables came away satisfied with the defense. The defensive line in particular, had the coach excited about the start of the season.
“I think the kids played hard, really hard. They flew around to the play. We didn’t have a lot of loafs of not hustling to the football. I thought they flew around, played really hard,” Ables said. “I thought our defensive line played great, didn’t allow hardly any yards at all between the tackles. Anytime you can do that you’re probably going to have some success overall as a defense.
“The (defensive) line did a good job getting pressure on the quarterback. That helps your secondary out a whole lot. We got a little pressure from our linebackers as well with some blitzes that we brought.”
North Little Rock’s passing game was sporadic with a, primarily, running quarterback. Ables felt the Wildcats’ young secondary stood up well.
“The secondary did a good job. One of our focuses was not giving up the deep ball, not have the ball thrown over our head. I thought they did a good job of that. We had one ball get over our head and the kid was there. He just couldn’t get the ball loose,” said Ables.
“I was pleased with our performance against a very athletic North Little Rock team. I think the quarterback at Camden is probably a little more accurate throwing the football to his receivers. But as far as athleticism, I don’t think there’s much of a comparison when you talk about an offense as a whole speed-wise as North Little Rock.”
The benefit game was August 19, giving El Dorado two weeks to iron out any wrinkles. Ables is confident the defense will be on top of its game against the Cardinals.
“You try to get better every day. Obviously with a benefit game like we had, even though I thought we played well, there’s still tons of things to get better at and fix,” he said.
“You make a call - 9 of the 11 people execute the call. Two people don’t. So, we’re trying to get everybody on the same page. We had a few missed calls the other night. We had a few misalignment issues, just a few things like that that we have to get better at.”