photo by Hannah Reel

Ferriday’s Bobby Madison gains yards before being tackled by Farmerville’s Carl Pearson during the game last Friday night. The Trojans host Welsh in the first round of the playoffs Friday night.

Ferriday defense needs to improve for playoffs

By Jeff Edwards (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Wednesday, November 11, 2009

FERRIDAY — The Ferriday Trojans offense finally started clicking against a good defense in their regular season finale last Friday against Farmerville.

Unfortunately, the defense, which had been the strength of the team, couldn’t follow suit and the result was a 44-24 loss to the Farmers.

Now that the playoffs are here, Ferriday coach Freddie Harrison is hoping that the offense and defense can step up and lead the Trojans through the postseason.

“We finally got our offense going last week,” Harrison said. “It’s always a good thing when they come around. We came together last week as a team on the offensive side and finally got it going. We’ve just got to get the defense back to the way they were playing earlier.”

Ferriday (7-3), a No. 12 seed in the 32-team playoffs, will host No. 21 seed Welsh in the first round at 7 p.m. Friday.

Welsh brings an 8-2 record into the game, but is coming off a 36-28 loss against Lake Arthur in its regular season finale last week.

Harrison said Welsh is a team that likes to run the football with its standout senior running back Will Guidry.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re able to stop the run,” Harrison said. “Welsh is a well-coached team. They’ve got a good running back and we’ve got to make sure we contain him.”

And stopping the running game was a big problem for the Trojans last week.

Ferriday’s defense gave up 362 rushing yards to Farmerville last week, with two different Farmers running backs gaining over 100 yards.

Harrison said the breakdowns on defense that allowed the rushing barrage can be fixed in practice this week.

“You can always fix one part but you can’t fix a whole bunch of parts,” Harrison said. “Last week, it was usually just one player breaking down in the defensive scheme on plays. I think we’ve got it corrected.”

Harrison said the key to playing solid defense this week is to just play assignments and not try to do too much.

“Last week we were overplaying,” Harrison said. “We were excited and got out of position. We’ve just got to not overplay and do what we have to do.”