The McLoud Redskins suffered their second loss of the young football season losing 33-0 to Harrah last week in their final non-district contest.
The Redskins go on the road Friday night for the third consecutive week to face Heritage Hall, ranked No. 2 in Class 3A, and favored to win the district, McLoud Coach Rusty Hall said. “They are really good,” he added.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Hall attributed the loss to a combination of “not having mental toughness and a few guys getting hurt in the course of the game.”
He said, “I looked over early in game, and sitting out with injuries were our big lineman Tryce Lewis, Zack Osborn our starting tight end and defensive end, running back Clint Campbell and Kaiden Cue, Campbell’s backup. That’s 65 to 70 percent of our offense sitting on the sidelines,” he noted.
Hall added, “Lewis suffered a concussion and is also out for this week’s game, Campbell is still nursing the arm he broke in pre-season, Cue was injured last Friday night suffering a hairline fracture of the pelvis and is out for 2-4 weeks and Osborn was also hurt.”
The coach said the Redskins committed six turnovers, fumbling at least four times.
“We had an onside kick we didn’t recover, then Harrah kicked off and we didn’t field the ball so they jumped on it.
“And we had a punt blocked they ran in for a touchdown. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” Hall believes.
Still, he thinks his team “played really well defensively. We gave up two offensive TD’s in the second half.
We played well enough defensively to win the game. We just got put in a hole offensively.
“Our defense forced them into four fumbles,” he said.
“We got hit in the mouth and we didn’t swing back,” Hall is convinced.
He stressed the Redskins are running with their third and fourth team running backs.
“We’re shooting for all of our injured players to be back by Oct. 8 and to be completely healthy,” said Hall, noting, “We haven’t had all our starters since the first game of the 2020 season.”
Hall pointed out, “Our goal this week is to play hard and stay healthy.”