Bulldogs Finish Spring With Solid Effort

Fayetteville’s Rashad Brown, right, fends off Andrew Moore as he carries the ball through the defense during the annual spring Purple-White game Friday at Harmon Stadium.
Fayetteville’s Rashad Brown, right, fends off Andrew Moore as he carries the ball through the defense during the annual spring Purple-White game Friday at Harmon Stadium.

FAYETTEVILLE — Positives outweighed the negatives on both sides of the football as Fayetteville wrapped up spring drills with a Purple-White game on Friday at Harmon Stadium.

The Bulldogs will feature a much different look in the 2013 season from its back-to-back Class 7A state champion teams the previous two years, and showed off those new faces in full force Friday. With 17 total starters gone from last season, Fayetteville turns to a mostly new crop of inexperienced players to take over the reigns.

Mitch Marshall, a senior-to-be, will get first crack at the quarterback job and was ready right from the start Friday to show off his throwing abilities. On the second play of the scrimmage, Marshall hit Ramsey Jones down the sideline for a 52-yard touchdown pass for the White team, who played offense the entire night against the Purple defense.

While Marshall had some big completions, including another 28-yard play-action TD pass to Blake Power, there was also missed opportunities. Fayetteville receivers, playing without leading wide out Jordan Dennis — who was held out as a precaution with concussion symptons — dropped more than their fair share of pass attempts on Friday.

“The thing is we’ve been catching the ball real well all spring,” Bulldogs coach Daryl Patton said. “Mitch Marshall and C.J. O’Grady made some good throws at quarterback, but for whatever reason we had way too many drops.”

Marshall finished 11-of-21 passing for 182 yards and four touchdowns, going to Jase Rapert for four catches and 49 yards with the first-team offense, including two touchdowns.

Fayetteville split the Purple-White game into three rotating phases. First-team varsity offense played second-team defense in the first series, followed by first-team defense versus second-team offense. The sophomore offense and defense also faced off in several series, and several newcomers made quite an impression.

The Bulldogs were without tailback Brayden Cook on Friday, but sophomore running backs Rashad Brown and Javonte Smith had several big runs showed they might be able to help on Friday nights.

“We’re going to have plenty of running backs,” Patton said. “Terrell Tyson is our number one back, but he also plays defense. Then you’ve got Brayden Cook, who didn’t play tonight.

“But we also have some young guys like Rashad and Jevonte. So we’ll be in pretty good shape at running back.”

Like any spring scrimmage, there were miscues to go along with the solid production. Along with the dropped passes, the Fayetteville offense fumbled the ball away several times and also had one pass intercepted as Tres Tucker was able to pick off a pass from Blake Power.

From a defensive standpoint, forcing the mistakes was good to see.

“We’ve still got to do a better job of tackling,” defensive coordinator Keith Fimple said. “But we did a better job getting around the ball.”

Fayetteville returns to offseason workouts on June 3 and begins 7-on-7 at the Harrison Tournament on June 7.

“We played a lot of kids and I think we’ve had a good spring,” Patton said. “On offense a lot of kids haven’t played and on defense we’ve put in a new scheme. But overall they came out and executed and did some good things.

“We’re still a far ways away, but I was proud of the way they got after it and hopefully we can carry some of this momentum into the summer.”

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