Dylan Williamson

Senior linebacker Davion Eldridge flexing after making a play in football’s first round 32-15 win over Ardrey Kell.

As a sportswriter who considers himself a particularly strong football mind, this one hurts a little bit to have to write but I feel it’s necessary. As the football team’s season concludes, I think they deserve credit where credit is due, as not many people saw this level of success coming. Last April, the sports staff here at The Zephyr gave our record predictions for this football season, and while nobody predicted the level of success that we’ve seen, my prediction was particularly bad.
Taking many factors into consideration, those being personnel changes in the lineups, a completely new coaching staff and some areas I considered to be weaknesses, I decided that the best this team could do was 4-6. Boy, was I wrong. The new coaching staff has wasted zero time establishing a brand new culture within the program and that’s very apparent, even to those not on the team.
The job the coaches did this season was no small feat, there’s nothing more difficult than walking into a brand new program that’s coming off a couple mediocre seasons and completely turning it around in the first year. Be that as it may, that’s exactly what Coach Wallace and the staff did and the players bought in.
One area we saw significant improvement was on the defense. Despite losing seniors at every position last offseason, new faces have stepped up across the board and turned what was a liability of the team into a unit that was responsible for a few of our big wins this season. The secondary, anchored by Marcus Wilson at corner and Daviare Eldridge at safety, became a serious source of turnovers this year and took a major step forward in their coverage abilities as well. On the interior, Caleb David and Davion Eldridge were tackling machines, limiting opponents to very few chunk plays by not even allowing the ball carriers to reach the second level of the defense on a consistent basis. While the points per game allowed was very similar to last season, this defensive unit came up big for the Titans in some of the biggest wins this season.
Then there’s the offense. When I made my bold and errant prediction, this was the handicap my mind placed on the team. Rather than weigh the team down, all they did was go from scoring 25 points a game last year to 37.7 a game this season, a seemingly remarkable jump. How did they do it? Look no further than senior running back Caman Chaplin. Last year he broke the school record for yards in a season by a running back, and this year all he did was completely shatter his own record, even while missing a game. On multiple occasions this year he accounted for over 300 total yards in a game, something very few running backs in the country can say, and there really wasn’t a defense that stopped him all year.
The tremendous success from the offense comes from more than just one man; however, quarterback Bert Rice and his receivers have produced big plays all throughout the year, providing a steady compliment to Chaplin’s dominance on the ground. A major credit to the whole unit, making a jump from 25 points a game to 37 is a near impossible task in the conference they play in but in Wallace’s first season there’s a whole lot to be optimistic about for the future of this program.
Despite the blowout loss to end the season, this team proveda whole lot of people, myself included, very wrong. In the field of sportswriting, you have to be willing to make bold predictions and understand that you’ll be wrong often, as sports can be extremely unpredictable. The job of a good sportswriter is to accept being wrong and to give credit where credit is due and that’s exactly what I’m going to do here. Congratulations West Forsyth football, you proved me very wrong.