Apaches look to limit Grulla’s spread offense in playoff opener

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GONZALES — It’s cliché, the Apaches know it, but they truly believe that now that they’re in the playoffs their record has been wiped cleaned and all that matters is winning games one week at a time.

This week’s targets are the La Grulla Gators out of Rio Grande City.

The Gators come into the playoffs as the third seed in District 16-4ADI, averaging 16.8 points per game.

Grulla will mostly run out of a spread-type of offense, with their favorite formations including either twins two back or sometimes trips.

“They want to spread the ball equally,” Apaches head coach Kodi Crane scouted, “…force you to defend the whole field.”

In previous weeks, the Apaches had to zero in on top players, for instance Robstown’s biggest threat in José Molina and Beeville’s two outside receivers. But having to play against a true spread team, the Apaches will need to stay disclipline in order to disrupt Grulla’s offense.

“What we’ve been concentrating on hard is run fits, pass fits,” Crane explained. “They run some really good pass routes, some combinations that we’ve got to understand where we fit in the secondary on those routes to get it covered. We’re a matchup zone type of secondary, once we see the route declared we play it in man, so we’ve been working really hard on that.”

Grulla’s best athlete looks to be their quarterback #4 Fabian Anzaldua.

“He does a good job with running the ball,” Crane said, “he’ll scramble it and get some really good years.”

Anzaldua is a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to his accuracy, Crane mentioned, but when he’s hot, he is very accurate with his passing.

“They have a clip that we put in our scouting report [where] they ran the fade, the kid was double covered and he put it in the only place possible and was caught.”

Defensively, the Gators will be running out of a four-man front with two linebackers and a single high safety.

“A lot of cover three, a lot of man free,” Crane said.

The Apaches will have to continue their success rushing the ball and getting those short passes in.

“We rushed for a lot of yards last week. Alyas [Ramirez] had 200, Josh [Calvin] had a handful, Tyler [Hendershot] had over 100 yards. We had a good rushing output, we want to build on that. We also felt like this was probably our best start to finish passing game that we’ve had all year. We hit some quick passes, we hit some vertical there and did some good things. So we’re looking to build on that as well.”

Some key players on that defense will be defensive tackle #51 DeWitt Jones and linebackers #2 Alex Solis and #5 Luis Cabello.

“They have some quickness with [Jones] and speed with those linebackers [Solis and Cabell],” Crane said. “They get to the ball awfully well.”

One of the keys to victory Friday night will have to be the Apaches offensive line that has shown signs of improvement throughout the season.

“Those kids have come a long way,” Crane said. “Those kids are some of the hardest working kids in the program. They don’t end up in the end zone with the football but they’re the reason why people end up in the end zone with the football.”

“There’s two sophomores on the offensive line that have been big time contributors to what we’re doing. #55 Trent Schaeur (senior) is a really good football player, he has an edge, has a mentality and gets after it really good. And then we have two juniors on there. So we got a pretty good dynamic diversity and they have improved as a unit and coach Ryan Arellano coaches them and takes a lot of pride in them and he coaches them hard and coaches them every play just like you want him to.”

If Gonzales wants to run past Grulla to advance to the next round, they will have to do it through their offensive line, as Crane indicated.

Tonight’s game will be played at Flour Bluff ISD’s Hornet Stadium at Corpus Christi, with kickoff scheduled at 7 p.m.

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