THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Permian High School Athletics

An old football cliché holds that a team will make more improvement from its first game to its second than it will the rest of the season. The Permian Panthers put that theory to test at 7:30 tonight when they take on El Paso Franklin at Franklin Stadium. With Permian coming off a 38-28 loss to DeSoto in its season opener, interim coach Jeff Ellison said improvement is imperative. “We’ve got to do a better job of executing offensively and defensively,” Ellison said. “I thought defensively early on, we made too many busts, too many mistakes, too many mental mistakes. Offensively, it was the same thing. We had too many busts up front with the offensive line. “We had some penalties that were just mental mistakes that we cannot do against good football teams. That’s our message to the team this week. That’s what we’re getting better at and we’re continuing to practice hard, practice fast.” Slot receiver Justin Hammond, who accounted for 142 yards, and a touchdown rushing and receiving, said the Panthers have to maintain an aggressive attitude. “We’re just going to attack this week,” he said. “We made a few mistakes in the first week. The second week, we need to clean that up. I feel like we played a very good game on Friday, we just had a couple of minor mistakes. We’ve been picking that up and focusing on securing the ball, just mainly focusing on the things we didn’t do right last week.” Defensive back Rakeeb Adeyemi, who had a tackle and a pass breakup in the opener, said Permian must build on the lessons learned last week. “DeSoto is a really good team.” Adeyemi said. “We’re just trying to fix the little things that we got wrong and that we messed up on in that game and try to transition it into Game 2.” Linebacker Andy Notley, who had nine tackles with a tackle for loss against DeSoto, said the Panthers are more than capable of taking steps forward this week. “I think it’s going to be really good,” he said. “I think we learned a lot about ourselves. We’ve got a great coaching staff and a lot of great players, so I think it’ll be pretty easy to get those things fixed. Going to El Paso’s always tough, but I think we can handle it.” Ellison said one pitfall that the Panthers must avoid is the idea that, after playing DeSoto, Franklin will seem easier by comparison. The Cougars, like Permian, are coming off a loss, falling 35-21 at Rio Rancho (N.M.) Cleveland. “Franklin’s a good football team,” Ellison said. “Just like we told the team, if we go up with the mindset of anything different than us getting better or playing hard-nosed, physical football and winning this football game, then we’re going to be in trouble.” Notley said the Panthers must take the same approach no matter who the opponent is from week to week. “Really and truly, we’re trying to treat every opponent equally and just play everybody hard,” he said. “It factors in a lot, just trying to get ourselves to the best of our abilities. We want to improve every week and treat everybody the same and just try and win all the games we can.” Hammond said facing strong opponents will only help the Panthers in the long run. “I think it shows how tough we are,” he said. “Of course we want to beat all the better teams because we’re trying to win a state championship. We attack every game, it doesn’t matter who we’re playing. We’re going to attack it with the same mindset to play hard to the end and win.” Ellison said the goal is to have a ream that’s ready for district play on Oct. 12. “Being a mature high school football player, you’ve got to be able to look at the big picture,” he said. “We talked about this after the game, we played hard, but we lost by 10 points because of the mistakes that we made. (Desoto’s) a good football team, but we could have been battling it out there toward the end if we hadn’t made mistakes early on. “That’s why we’re on them in practice. That’s why we coach them hard. They need to understand that and we talked about that as a football team. Nobody wants to make a mistake. Nobody’s going out there to turn the ball over. But you have to be focused on that throughout the week so that will not happen during a game.”

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF
Permian High School Athletics

PERMIAN'S FOCUS ON FIXING MISTAKES AGAINST EP FRANKLIN

SAM WALLER

Odessa American | 9/6/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Ford