Split into positional groups, the Panthers continued drills as the drizzle escalated into a downpour.<\/p>\n
Damp, head coach Dave Wagner beamed from the sideline as he overlooked his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s game week!\u201d he announced excitedly.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the Panthers will board a bus at 9 a.m. and make the six-plus hour trek to Aspen for the season opener.<\/p>\n
The Panthers have gone over film and prepared for the Skiers throughout the week. While Wagner believes the Panthers\u2019 offense will be able to exploit holes in the Skiers\u2019 defense, he becomes more animated when speaking about the Panthers\u2019 defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very excited about defense,\u201d he said. \u201cThe kids are just flying around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner expects the Aspen offense to operate mostly on the ground, running pitches and pitch-options out of an offset-I formation. His plan for slowing the Skiers\u2019 offense is to be the aggressor and disrupt the quarterback with pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuarterbacks that get hit and quarterbacks that are running for their lives don\u2019t want to throw, and they make bad handoffs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Defensive coordinator Keith Mikhail will be responsible for dialing up the pressure, and after installing the scheme over the summer, Wagner is confident in the game plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to be overconfident,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think we\u2019ll do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Aspen High School on Friday, Aug. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
into positional groups, the Panthers continued drills as the drizzle escalated into a downpour. Damp, head coach Dave Wagner beamed from the sideline as he overlooked his team. \u201cIt\u2019s game week!\u201d he announced excitedly. On Friday, the Panthers will board a bus at 9 a.m. and make the six-plus hour trek to Aspen for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[21,80],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-cortez","tag-dove-creek"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109946"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}