FeRRIDAY — Observing Ferriday High School’s football talent — both on film and in person — made Dwight Woods covet the vacant head coaching position.

After being named Ferriday’s new head coach Monday, Woods met with the talent in person, that first sparked his interest.

“If you look at the kids, it’s some of the best looking kids you’ll ever see,” said Woods, who spent the last two years at General Trass. “Playing against them last year, it amazed me. We were so undersized at General Trass, so looking at how big they were was something.”

Ferriday High Principal James Davis said Woods impressed in the interviews. What further impressed Davis were the improvements Woods made to General Trass in two years with limited resources available to him.

“He’s going to receive much greater talent here than he did in Lake Providence (General Trass),” Davis said. “I don’t think it will take him long to get something going here.”

Davis added that he believed the transition period would run smoothly, with General Trass and Ferriday both running spread offenses a year ago.

“He’ll have to just change the terminology and all of that, but that will be an easy fix for him,” Davis said.

At General Trass, Woods ran that spread offense en route to a 4-7 season in 2014. Woods, who admitted he’s a pass-first coach, said he would be tempted to run the ball with the Trojans in 2015 after getting a good look at the returning talented offensive linemen.

“I was talking to Coach Davis, and you know, now we might be able to line up and run at people a little more,” Woods said. “At General Trass, we knew we couldn’t run at people. We did a lot of misdirection with traps because we couldn’t blow people off the line. But now, I’m looking at it like, ‘Hey, I would love to do that.’ Like Bear Bryant said, ‘The game gets easy when you can just run downhill.’”

Woods has some power I-formation sets in his arsenal, but traditionally likes to force the defense to cover his offense both vertically and horizontally on the perimeter. Last season, Woods did that with mobile quarterback Allen Bruce, who threw for 1,971 yards, ran for 1,366 yards and scored 36 total touchdowns.

Defensively, Woods likes to run a 4-2-5 and a lot of Cover 3.

Judging by the size and talent of players like Alabama commit Dare Rosenthal and others made available to him, Woods is hopeful he’ll find a disrupter on the defensive line.

“My thing is if we can get a good 3-technique (defensive lineman lined up between the offensive guard and tackle) then we can stop some of the option games from people in the district,” Woods said. “I think we have a good 3-technique somewhere at this school.”

Before becoming head coach of General Trass in 2013, Woods served on Minden and Mansfield coaching staffs. In total, he has 16 years of coaching experience.

As Woods watched his new players work out Thursday morning, he couldn’t help but get excited about his new team.

“I know the possibilities that are here,” Woods said.