GILROY—Gilroy coach Brian Boyd was at a loss for words following the team’s 39-0 shutout loss to Sobrato on Sept. 13.
A combination of the soaring temperatures, daytime game and having offensive coordinator Bobby Griffith step down earlier that week took its toll on the Mustangs, but they are out to prove the best is yet to come.
“We have our work cut out for us, but we’re a better team than the Gilroy team that showed up the last couple weeks,” Boyd said. “We had a big heart-to-heart yesterday and the boys came out to work. Practice actually ended at 7 p.m. and when I left here at 8:15 p.m., there were still boys out on the field working together trying to solve the problems.”
Gilroy only trailed Sobrato 13-0 at the half and saw stellar play on the defensive side of the ball. The Mustangs forced the Bulldogs to turn the ball over twice on fourth down, recovered a Sobrato fumble and saw Darius Alexander-Jones pick off Matthew Bolino’s pass, but were unable to capitalize on their opportunities.
Part of the reason was an onslaught of penalties. Gilroy was flagged 10 times in the game, accounting for 105 yards—it only had 75 yards of total offense in the game.
With Griffith’s departure, Boyd felt part of the blame should rest on the plays he called, but after reviewing the film said he’s confident in his decisions. The problems stemmed instead from the execution and Gilroy has since overhauled its offense to prevent history from repeating itself.
“We’re going to cut it down from 80-100 plays that we can run at any one time to a 30-play script and let the boys work on some stuff and get confident in that instead of having all this on their plate,” Boyd said. “We want them to feel confident in what they’re doing. We know what we want to attack each week, so we’re just going to narrow that menu down and play.”
The Mustangs will put their new offensive plan into action when they play their home opener against Half Moon Bay at 7:30 p.m. today. Boyd said the Cougars have a game plan similar to Sobrato’s—which was similar to Live Oak’s—and after back-to-back weeks of seeing that style of play, he feels confident in his team’s ability to combat it.
“They’ll try to run a Cover 4 on defense and offensively they try to run it down your throat and they don’t have too many plays that they switch to,” Boyd said. “I imagine they’ll try to do a lot of the same stuff to us if they see what Sobrato did to us. …They’re a beatable team. We think on film from what we can see, they’re a better team than Sobrato.”
Half Moon Bay is 1-1 heading into this contest and are coming off an emotionally charged 59-27 win over Santa Clara last week following its defensive line coach, Rocky Perry, suffering a heart attack before the season opener. Perry suffered another heart attack on Sept. 11 while in the hospital and passed away on Sept. 13.
The Cougars’ defense was stellar against Santa Clara, holding its opponent to 121 yards of total offense which includes just 16 yards rushing. Gilroy had a tough time getting anything done on the ground against Sobrato and only earned 45 yards. The Mustangs will also need their junior quarterback David Munoz to bounce back from his 6 for 27 showing in which he had 30 yards and two interceptions.
And of course, Gilroy (0-2) needs to keep those yellow flags from flying.
“I still feel like we can play with anybody,” Boyd said. “If we don’t make mental mistakes with penalties and turnovers, I think we’ll be right in any of these games that we play.”
