High-school football regular seasons often offer a series of recurrent patterns, year after year.
Week one often is a chaotic mess of a scramble, just trying to establish routines and what works and doesn’t. Game two is more of the same in a way – while also trying to fix and iron out what went wrong the first week.
Week three would be the status quo sort of theme. Mostly using what had worked from the previous outings and no more experimenting with different players or rotations.
From that point, weeks four through eight pretty much would be the same as week three.
Then, depending on a team’s record, the final two weeks could have new themes again. If a team had, say, a record like 1-7, then the final two showdowns might be used to play some of the younger team members, getting those players valuable experience to be ready for the following year’s campaign.
For teams with winning marks that already had league championships and playoff berths clinched, the final week or two could be used to rest some of those top players a bit, or maybe try some new wrinkles, just to have them stashed and ready in the bag of tricks for postseason action.
Through eight games this season, the Flint Hill Huskies had not yet won. With nothing to lose, the Huskies tried some new looks on offense a little during an Oct. 23 home game. The team rotated quarterbacks. One was used for passing situations, and the other for various run-oriented wild-cat formations.
The Huskies lost the game, but the new-theme offense produced some momentum for the squad.
This coming weekend are final regular-season contests for most teams. Depending on their situations, and maybe wins and losses, look for some different themes to unfold in some of those games.