Dixon getting heavy dose of pass in first two games

Usually when you think about the Big Northern Conference, images of big fullbacks and smash-mouth football games come to mind.

For the Dixon Dukes, their first two weeks of the season feature far more defending of the pass than the run.

In a Week 1 win over Oregon, the Dukes faced 37 pass plays from the Hawks. They likely saw more in Week 2 against North Boone.

After struggling to stop Oregon in the early going, the Dukes made some adjustments and ended up pulling away for a 34-6 victory.

“We were expecting to play more against the pass last week, even though we didn’t really know what Oregon was going to do,” defensive back Chance Perales said. “We thought they were going to run more than they did, but it all worked out in the end.

“We just had to regroup and just think about what happened, talk it out [after Oregon’s touchdown]. We made some adjustments and they didn’t score after that.”

But players and coaches alike agreed that it was good to see aerial assaults early in the season when you have more time to prepare for it. It also could come in handy down the road, as the Dukes are eyeing their eighth straight trip to the playoffs.

“I think it’s really good for us to see these two spread teams the first two weeks, because that gets us ready for when we see that later in the season and prepares us for the playoffs, too, because we’ll see different teams in the playoffs that we’ve never seen before,” defensive back Aiden Wiseman said. “Seeing the spread offense the first two weeks, I think it will really get us going for the season.”

While Dixon knew it would be seeing a lot of passes from North Boone in Week 2, it was sort of a mystery what it would get from Oregon in the opener. But with new Hawks head coach Broc Kundert installing a more wide-open scheme than in years past, the Dukes got a good dose of the pass in the opener.

Coach Jared Shaner saw that as a good thing to help prepare his team for North Boone.

“I guess the blessing was that Oregon came out in some spread sets and threw it a little bit more than maybe what we see in several other weeks, so we got a little taste of what this week is going to be about,” Shaner said. “Obviously North Boone has been doing it for awhile and does it at a high level, so that’ll be, defensively, our focus for the week, for sure.”

As for the performance in Week 1, Wiseman said that it went about like the Dukes expected, and credited in-game adjustments from the coaches and players with finding some success against an offense they knew almost nothing about prior to last Friday night.

“Oregon had their new offense, and we weren’t really used to playing them with that. I think by the second quarter, we adjusted to what their routes are and covered the flats and the deep ball better,” Wiseman said. “They scored that first touchdown pretty easily, so we talked again on the sideline, and said, ‘Here’s where we shut them down,’ and we just did our jobs and kept them from scoring again. I think we just came back out and did our jobs better, and we were able to cover things better.”

As for Shaner, he was happy to see is secondary get a little more action through the air than usual to start the season, because he hopes it will help them gain confidence as a unit before they hit the ground-and-pound portion of the schedule and are forced into more of a run-support role.

“It really is nice to get these guys some experience right off the bat,” Shaner said. “Lutheran and Christian will occasionally spread you out, but you know what you’re going to get, for the most part, with the rest of the teams on our schedule. With Stillman, ‘Bago, G-K, Byron, you’re going to get a lot of downhill, straight-at-you type run stuff.

“So we get these first couple weeks where the DBs can get their feet wet defending the pass, then the next couple weeks they come in a lot tighter to the formation and have to tackle a lot more.”