Rogers High’s Brandon Workman rushed for 181 yards and five touchdowns Friday in a 42-21 win against Van Buren, earning this week’s NWA Media 7A/6A-West Conference Player of the Week honors.
Workman capped Rogers’ opening three possessions with touchdowns on runs of 5, 32 and 4 yards, all in the first quarter.
“Good things happened when he had the ball in his hands,” Rogers coach Shawn Flannigan said.
Workman added a 37-yard touchdown run in the second quarter and a 33-yard scoring run in the fourth quarter.
His most important run of the game, though, may have been a 16-yard run on the opening drive of the game for the Mountaineers. Rogers faced a third-and-5 situation just three plays into the game, and his run earned the Mountaineers a first down. Rogers went on to score on the drive and the two after that for a 21-0 first-quarter lead.
Workman, a slotback in Rogers’ triple-option offense, is averaging a whopping 10.4 yards per carry this season, rushing for 425 yards on 41 carries.
“Earlier in the year, the other slot, Sage White, had most of the touches and had the multiple-touchdown carry games,” Flannigan said. “Brandon wasn’t getting the ball a whole lot. It just depends on how they play us from week to week that determines who gets it. This week, it was Brandon getting most of the carries.”
In the triple-option, the quarterback and fullback usually get most of the carries since they are the first two options while the slotbacks may not even get an opportunity.
“In our system, they are usually the last option,” Flannigan said. “When you run the option, there are a lot of things that have to fall into place in order for them to get the ball. The quarterback has to get the pull read and has to be able to pitch off the next guy. We ran a lot of plays where we just pitched it to Brandon on Friday with no option. We just turned and tossed it to him.”
SKY HIGH
The sky kick has become a common strategy on kickoffs.
Rogers showed exactly why Friday when the Mountaineers recovered three of Ryan Nolan’s perfectly placed kicks and converted two of them into touchdowns.
“We almost had a fourth one,” Flannigan said. “We just kicked them up there. One of them bounced off the return man. He just dropped it. The other two hit the ground first and took some favorable bounces in our direction, and we were able to get on them. It was surprising.”
Much like an onside kick, the hope behind the sky kick is a short returner will fumble the ball or the kicking team can cover the ball before the receiving team does. The ball does have to hit the ground before the kicking team has a right to possession, however. The kicking team cannot just simply catch the sky kick in the air. The receiving team also has a right to fair catch the kickoff just like a punt.
“You kick it up there hoping that they don’t do something right,” Flannigan said. “You might get lucky once a game, but not very often do you get lucky three times like that.”
If the kicking team does fair catch the kick or even get a decent return, the field position is only a little better than after the receiving team returns a deep kickoff.
“It’s getting increasingly difficult to have a really solid kickoff coverage team,” Flannigan said. “If you don’t have a kicker that can put it into the end zone for a touchback, you take a chance kicking it to the 5 and the guy getting into his return game and returning to about the same spot anyway. We find that, on average, the difference is only about 5 or 6 yards of difference on field position between if we kick it deep and they return it as opposed to after the sky kick. It’s something we like and a good weapon to have.”
Teams also have different versions of the sky kick that forces every player on the return team to know what to do.
“It keeps the return team on their toes,” Flannigan said. “We mix it up as to where the ball is going. We have two different type sky kicks: one that we try to drive a little deeper and another where we go a little shorter. The shorter one was the one that was working on Friday. We also will try to kick it about the 20 where we can limit the return to 10 yards and keep them around the 30. The other we kick about the 35, and we hit that void area on Van Buren’s return team.”
MATHEW THE GUY
Sain Mathew is the reigning 7A/6A-Central champion in both the 200- and 400-meter dashes, but he’s not just a track guy.
“In our opinion, he’s always been a football guy,” Har-Ber coach Chris Wood said. “He’s always been in our program. He had an opportunity in track as a sophomore.”
Mathew played some at receiver as a sophomore and was valuable to the team last year on special teams before getting his chance to shine Friday nights for the Wildcats this season.
“He was an outstanding special teams player for us last year,” Wood said. “He rolled in his senior year as the starting job at tailback, and he’s really embraced that role.”
Friday, Mathew ran for a school-record 303 yards on 26 carries with two touchdowns in Har-Ber’s 42-21 win against Rogers Heritage.
“He did a great job for us,” Wood said. “Heritage gave us a lot of fits in our run game. Sain broke off some big runs for us, some really dynamic plays.”
Friday, Mathew reeled off touchdown runs of 64 and 36 yards.
“The first one was on our counter play,” Wood said. “He broke up in there and cut back to the right, then
outran the pursuit. The other one was a stretch play to our sideline into the boundary. A guy came in to cut him low, and he jumped over him, cut back and broke a tackle and raced in on that one.”
On both runs, his track speed proved valuable.
“It wasn’t that he was just in the clear; he had to make people miss,” Wood said. “It was an outstanding performance for him.”
For the season, Mathew has rushed for 707 yards and four touchdowns but in limited action.
“Against Webb City, he only played the first half due to dehydration,” Wood said. “Against Rock Bridge, he only played the first half because he hurt his shoulder and sat out the Southside game. That damage, he’s done in only 12 quarters of football.”
WILDCATS BALANCED
Har-Ber’s offense recorded its second 600-yard outing of the season in Friday’s win against Heritage, and it was the Wildcats’ balance that was lethal.
“We balanced our play calling and were real efficient there,” Wood said. “We came back off that and were able to move the ball both ways. That’s important. Any time, you have balance, it’s a good thing.”
Har-Ber had 45 rushing attempts for 376 yards and Mathew’s two long touchdown runs. The Wildcats completed 20 of 34 passes for 270 yards and four touchdowns, all by Kyle Pianalto.
For the season, Har-Ber has attempted 174 passes for 1,179 yards with 226 rushing attempts for 1,364 yards on the ground.
Har-Ber is averaging a conference-leading 508.6 yards per game.
BENTON COUNTY
RIVALRY
Friday night, Bentonville hosts Rogers for the 116th edition of the Battle of Benton County.
The Tigers have won six straight against the Mountaineers, which is Bentonville’s longest win streak in the series.
Rogers still holds a 70-38-6 edge in the series.
The rivalry began exactly 100 years ago, with the two teams playing three times in 1913.
Shutouts have been common in the series with the winning team holding the other team scoreless in 50 of them.