THE TRENCHES: TFA football’s linemen set tone for 2024

As cliche as it sounds, the game of football is won in the trenches. If you can protect the quarterback and establish the run with your offensive line, points will be scored. If you can hit the opposition’s quarterback and stop them from running the football effectively, points will not be scored on your team. 

If you can do that on both sides of the ball, you can win championships. That’s the plan at The First Academy this football season.

In the Royals’ Kickoff Classic game against Leto High at Warden Stadium, everything went according to plan.

“Every good football team understands being able to run the football and stopping the run is important,” TFA coach Jeff Conaway said. “We say, ‘In football, we throw the football to score and run the football to win.’ The same is true on defense. If you cannot stop the run, it’s going to be a challenge. So, I really believe the way our offense and defensive line have practiced. I think they’re ahead of schedule, as far as their conditioning right now. I really think that gives us an advantage, and it makes us really dangerous moving forward.”

Led by its massive offensive line and tenacious defensive line, TFA beat Leto by a whopping 77-19 score. 

“When it comes to setting the tone it starts with us on the offensive line, we have to set the tone,” TFA offensive lineman Chancellor Barclay said. “When it comes to the snap, when it comes to doing our assignments, everything, because at the end of the day, when we make those blocks, we are giving the time to the quarterback, we’re giving that time to our running backs. … We have to set the tone from the first play because that’s going to set up the whole game for use. When we do that, you saw it on that field, we set the tone.”

IRON SHARPENS IRON

The Royals set the tone early and often in the Kickoff Classic — taking a 27-0 lead in the first quarter and a 63-12 lead by the end of the first half. If you ask the Royals why they got off to such a quick and massive lead, the linemen will tell you they were raring to go. 

“We’ve been going against (one another) for way too long this offseason, so if you ask anybody on either line, we all would tell you we just needed someone else to hit,” Barclay said. “We needed someone else to go up against and this was our opportunity. So, now that we got that opportunity, we can grow from it for the regular season.”

Barclay and the other linemen — Noah Devine, Sean Kentish, Reed Ramsier and Jarvis Williams — spent the offseason going toe-to-toe with their defensive counterparts — led by Alex Willis, Blaze Jones, DJ Whiley and Jeau-Pierre Furtado — and, although they were ready to compete against someone else on Friday night, those battles in the spring and summer shaped what the 2024 season will look like. 

“Those guys have sharpened each other,” Conaway said. “We’ve gotten better on both the offensive line and defensive lines because of what we do with one-on-ones during practice. And so we say iron sharpens iron, those guys definitely have been doing that.”

INSIDE OUT

Conaway’s offensive identity is no secret. He wants to bury teams with screens and lateral runs over and over again until the opposition is so focused on moving left and right that holes start to form vertically. 

“We want to be a team that does stretch the football field horizontally and vertically,” Conaway said. “One of the things that we take a lot of practice time in doing is pushing the football down the field.”

To be able to push the ball down the field in this manner, the offensive line must be able to do two things. First, it must be able to pass protect well enough to allow the quarterback enough time to make those throws. Second, the line needs to be athletic enough to get out in space and block to make their screen and run game work as planned. 

That opportunity to do that second part is what makes the linemen’s eyes light up.

“It’s the best thing,” Barclay said. “We ran so many screen passes today, and the main thing everybody on the line was excited about was getting out in space and getting to hit somebody. We all just want to get out there and hit somebody and drive them all the way down the field. That’s what opens up the offense for us. Because we have linemen who are athletic and can not only block but also finish their blocks in a pancake to make sure they’re clearing the way for the ball carrier it makes the receiver’s job easier. It makes the running back’s job easier, and it opens up our offense.”

REAPING THE REWARDS

That concept of the offense being built on what the linemen do is just as true on the defensive side of the ball as well — if the defensive line can attack the opposition and disrupt its timing, it opens up the rest of the defense to be used in myriad ways to make it impossible to score enough points to be competitive. 

The Royals’ defensive front did just that against Leto, recording 12 tackles for a loss, two sacks and forcing a fumble. That sort of disruption led directly to TFA forcing three turnovers and stifling the Falcons’ attack. 

And although there are not many stats to quantify what the offensive linemen’s play produced, the main player the group is tasked with protecting knows to give the big uglies up front their proper due.

“I enjoy playing behind such a good offensive line because they open up everything for me,” Royals quarterback Salomon Georges Jr. said. “I don’t have to worry about any pressure getting near me. They communicate on the line really well and they make my job easier by being able to pick up blocks that they need to do and execute their job.”

TFA’s offense scored eight touchdowns overall and six rushing and gained a total of 377 yards in its preseason game — and a lot of the credit for those scores goes to the guys in the trenches.

The Royals will get their first big test this Thursday, when they travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to face Lipscomb Academy.