The “Red Zone” might as well have been a black hole for the Craig County Rockets as they dropped to 0-5 in football last Friday night. The Rockets fell to Galax, 13-0, in New Castle.
Craig reached the Red Zone, which is the area inside the opponents’ 20 yard line, four times last Friday but failed to score a single point. One drive resulted in a missed field goal and the other three times the offense just came up short.
“We can’t afford to come away without any points when you get in that red zone,” said Craig coach Mark McPherson. “We just made too many mistakes. We had the opportunities but we couldn’t take advantage of them.”
Craig had 224 yards of offense, a pretty good number for a team that was shut out. James Jones had 43 yards rushing and Justin Martin had 40. Josh Oulette completed 10 passes for 120 yards, including five to Danny Alley for 57 yards. Matt Oulette had two catches for 45 yards and Jacob Rickett, Martin, and Jones had one reception each.
The story of the game, however, were the ones that weren’t caught. Oulette had 19 incompletions and many of the balls should have been caught.
“We had some easy plays and we just didn’t catch the ball,” said McPherson. “We just didn’t execute.”
The defense played well enough to win. Galax scored on two long plays, a 58 yard pass and a 31 yard run, but the Maroon Tide didn’t have a sustained drive the entire game. Josh Oulette, Jones, and Martin led in tackles and Jared Deel had three sacks for the Rockets.
“Take away the two big plays and they had under 200 yards of offense for the game,” said McPherson. “We usually give up a couple big plays but we can’t manage to get those big plays on the other side of the ball. This was another team we could have beaten. We could easily have two or three wins this year.”
The Rockets will now take a week off before returning for their Homecoming game against Parry McCluer on October 9.
That will also be the district opener, and the Blues have had an equally frustrating season at 0-5. They’ve scored just 40 points in five games.
“At one time they were among the best teams in the state every year,” said McPherson. “They have their own school system and you’d think they’d be in a good situation to put a winning team on the field, but I have enough to worry about right here that I don’t need to worry about them.”
