OLDS — The Bantam Bulldogs football team has a long layoff now until their next game.
The team has two back-to-back byes: one during the Thanksgiving weekend, and then another the following weekend.
Head coach Matthew Sutherland says the Bulldogs’ next game doesn’t occur until Oct. 21 when they host Carstairs Tigers, a new team in the league.
Sutherland says the Bulldogs know a bit about the Tigers, having played them in an exhibition game earlier.
“They did have some really good players, so we’ve just got to watch some of their guys that are fast. They have some good guys on defence too,” Sutherland said during an interview with the Albertan.
Sutherland says the Bulldogs will likely go into that game with no specific strategy except to play strong on offence, defence and special teams, as they have all season.
"We're going to go into that game the same as everyone, to make sure we we’re ready and don't take anything for granted, because that could come back to bite us pretty quick,” he said.
Sutherland said if they do have any strategy, it’s going through the air.
“Our passing game is our biggest strategy,” he said. “There are teams in our league that do pass, but not as much as we do.
“We have options on the run, but we lean on the passing game a lot so because we have the ability to do that.”
The Bulldogs’ balance was certainly demonstrated on the road Sept. 30 when they hammered the Lacombe Raiders 60-20, boosting their record this year to 3-0.
But it took a while for the Bulldogs to get going in that game.
“They scored on us right off the bat,” Sutherland said. They scored a touchdown on their first possession, so it took us (by) surprise a little bit.
“(That) brought us back to reality a bit and then we were able to just get into our game and get into our set, our standard, and play.
“Our defence was able to shut them down. They had one main running back that was trying to bust through the middle and we were able to stop them.
“We got better. We caught on to that and got better at stopping them and tiring them out.
“We were a little slow to start, but once we've once we started to figure stuff out, we were able to get on and did a lot of gang tackling.”
The Bulldogs’ offence started clicking as well.
“We connected on a lot of good passes and we had a good runs too,” Sutherland said.
“We had a couple of our running backs that really did well moving, getting the ball moving and getting down the field.”
Sutherland said his team benefits from some big guys on both offence and defence. They not only have size, but speed as well.
“A lot of our guys are quick. There's two or three guys on the ball carrier right away on defence, getting them down,” he said.
They also have a very effective kicking game.
“We've got a lot of fast guys and we were able to get down and recover. We actually recovered one of our own kickoffs again with our kickoff coverage,” Sutherland said.
Although his team has been clicking on all cylinders, Sutherland said there’s still lots of room for improvement and he intends to tackle that during their time off.
For example, he noted that the Raiders did a good job of putting pressure on the Bulldogs, especially during converts, so that’s one area he’ll be focusing on.
It’s Sutherland’s understanding that the playoffs start Oct. 28.
