Odessa High’s best start since 2018 is nice, but the team’s focus is elsewhere this week.
The Bronchos host crosstown rival Permian at 7 p.m. Friday at Ratliff Stadium.
“This is our biggest game that we have right now,” coach Dusty Ortiz said. “It’s not that it’s just the crosstown rival but it’s our first district game.”
‘The first district game’ is the key line Ortiz said, because the Bronchos are winless in district openers since 2014.
The Bronchos will have their hands full as they will have to contain the Panthers’ high-octane offense led by quarterback Rodney Hall, who has thrown for 781 yards and 10ouchdowns this season.
“(Permian’s) offense requires discipline,” Ortiz said. “That’s one thing that we’ve really worked on this past week is making sure that everybody takes care of their assignments.
“Everybody’s running to the ball, getting off blocks, making sure that we tackle the guy that is part of our responsibility.”
Defensive backs coach Clayton Roberts knows that his secondary has to contain the Panthers’ offense.
“We have watched a lot of film and I have told the guys that they have to understand what to expect before the play happens.” Roberts said. “As coaches, we have to put them in the right position to make plays.”
Junior safety Jayven Gonzales concurred.
“We have to keep outside containment – do not let any big plays happen,” Gonzales said. “Just focus on a down, and if something wrong happens, just forget about it and move onto the next play.”
Roberts said the players have to believe in each other with Permian’s multitude of misdirection plays on offense.
“If everybody on defense does their job and trusts each other, then we’ll be fine,” Roberts said. “Especially when Permian runs some of their triple-option stuff, the players have to trust their gut and their teammates to do their job.
“If so, we will be able to make enough plays to pull off the upset.”
>>RUN, RUN, RUN: The Bronchos are 3-1 this season when the team collectively carries the ball for at least 25 times. This success results in the passing game opening up for more explosive plays.
“Running the ball 25 times is part of our game plan, as we have to get our run game going,” Ortiz said. “We have to give the running backs the ball.
“We have three great ones with three different abilities, and we are definitely going to feed them the ball and try to get into second-and-5 situations instead of second-and-10 situations.”
>> NO INJURIES: The bye week between the 35-14 nondistrict win over Schertz Clemens two weeks ago and this week’s much-anticipated match against Permian has allowed the team to heal and be fully healthy, according to Ortiz.
“We’ve taken advantage of the extra days to get our legs back onto us,” Ortiz said. “It was just the time to recover and kind of get a soft game plan. And so for Permian, we took advantage of the extra time.”
As for the injury front, the team is healthy heading into Friday.
“We had some bumps and bruises but nothing serious,” Ortiz said. “Everybody’s gonna be full go this week.”
>> LOWER LEVEL: The Odessa High junior varsity and freshmen teams had the week off as well last week.
This week, the teams play on Thursday at Ratliff Stadium.
The freshmen start their game at 5 p.m. at Ratliff South, just outside the stadium.
The JV squads plays their games at 6:30 p.m. inside Ratliff Stadium.
>> Follow Sameer Malla on Twitter at @OA_SameerMalla
