Jeff Craddock: We're excited for this opportunity Subject:* A friend wanted you to see this item from High School OT: https://wr.al/1KVB9 Tarboro football coach Jeff Craddock spoke with HighSchoolOT about his team's opportunity for a second state championship in three years against a familiar foe in East Surry. Show Transcript Hello everybody, Welcome to high school. O. T. I'm Kyle morton. I'm joined by Jeff Craddick, the head football coach of the Tarboro Vikings coach. Craddick is preparing for game three of the best of three series and the football state championship game against the East Surrey Cardinals coach. How's your week going so far? It's going great, great opportunity for us. Boys have had a great season obviously and um, it's been a fantastic two days and uh, said been on the film study, uh, most all day, just about for about four days or whatever. But last two days of practice has been a little hot, but it's been a lot of fun. And uh, like I said, we're gonna word hitting a little lifting a little weights right now and then we'll do another film study and hopefully have a great Wednesday practice. Uh, the story for the third time in a row, like I alluded to you, you got them in 2018, they got you guys in 2019, they're moving up to two way next year. Are you excited to kind of be able to, to break this tie this week? I'm excited for the opportunity. That doesn't necessarily mean, you know, I guess it's gonna be broken by one team. Um but yeah, it's it's, you know, there for the longest time, you know, we were always playing somebody else and which was kind of fun. You always get a new opponent and get to meet coaches, but obviously Coach Loman as, as kind of matched our success on the other side and you know, you said this is around three, so we kind of familiar with each other. You, you kind of go back and look at the film and what was good and what wasn't so good at the previous games and so it's it's exciting. You know, it's nice to have a rivalry with a well coached team, a team that we have much respect for. It's been a lot of fun. Matter of fact my son Clay at N. C. State is actually roommates with Dylan Mosley who plays for Easter and so I've met his parents they're great people and so I've kind of become quite familiar with some East Surrey people. Got to meet the boa jefferson boaz. I met him at the brick house up there going out to eat so I got to talk with him. So just a great program with great kids well coached and we're excited to play the game. That's what it's all about. Let's talk about your team for a bit. Uh You know every year is different. You guys are a very consistent program in terms of where you where you end up, it's usually in the state championship game. Um What is this group in the spring of 2021? What kind of separates them from your 2019 and 2018 groups in your mind? That, that makes them unique? Well, they're, each team is different in its own right, but it usually comes back. Our senior classes have been so strong. The last three years have really provided some great leadership. Obviously this year has been different for everybody and having to deal with the covid restrictions and what you can and can't do. And, and, but I will say this, you know, obviously they're, they're very persistent and uh, you know, once we could get lifted again, they were all on board and uh, we had to play catch up there for a while. And then obviously we were excited once we could start to season. So it's just about consistent leadership. You know, we're just thankful to have a season, we're thankful for the opportunity to play, you know, this great game one more week, so just great leadership out of them, you know, nobody has arrested well since we lost that last football game back in 2019, seems like a long, long time ago. So, you know, they've been very focused, very purpose driven on, you know, a lot of people, the goal is to get to the state championship game and I think there's a difference, our goal is to win the state championship period and we all know, didn't end well and they've been, you know, they've had a little chip on their shoulder and, and I just know they've worked extremely hard and they're studying extremely hard and uh, you know, that's I think what separates this group a little bit, maybe a little bit more of a mental edge coming into this game than what we had last year. Obviously, you know, a lot of people know about your offense, you've got your own variation on the wing t. Call the Tarboro t. You've got four primary ball carriers this year and Jalen razor, Travis, johnson, Tobias, joiner and Jordan Williams, they're all averaging over 10 yards a carry. Uh they all have at least eight touchdowns, razor has 16. How nice is it to have four guys who you can put the ball in their hands and trust that they're gonna make a big play pretty much. Well, it's good. Yeah, I mean obviously it starts with the offensive line, so we are very very strong physically up front. Those guys do a great job of obviously blocking, you know, Coach Burnett's been with me now for quite a long time and he does a great job getting those boys ready then, you know, coach basma offensive coordinator and you know, he does a fantastic job of distributing that ball, keeping anybody, you know, off balance when they break him down. You know, we try not to have just one back that carries us, we really try to have three or four, sometimes five or six guys that we can rotate in and so yeah, we we feel very comfortable with all, all of our backs in our system. You know, like I said, you know, we try to, you know, we're more misdirection and we tried to distribute the ball and all of those guys are great ball carriers and you know, you'll see them play well this saturday Any, any TV people or media members who shoot video, they always get a lesson the first time they shoot you guys, because it's it's hard. They always say make sure you have wide angles don't go exactly quite view because the person you're zooming in on may not have the football. Exactly. I learned that lesson myself. Your defense has done pretty well this year, only 82 points against in eight games. That's just over 10 a game. Uh, some quick math there. What have you seen from them as a unit? Well, we've played really, really good in spurts. So this defense actually has been frustrating because what we've had a habit of one series will look great. Second series, great. Third series, great. And all of a sudden we'll give up an 80 yard touchdown run. Um, you know, we've, we've been given up when teams have scored against us. It's always been a big play. Um, that's frustrating. You know, we played Eadington, uh, I think they had an 80 yard touchdown run on a missed assignment and to miss tackles, and they came back with like a 60 yard run on a cutback, missed assignments. And you know, I keep telling these guys, listen, those big players get, you beaten big games and thankfully we've been able to score enough offensively to combat that. But you know, I just like us to play more consistently, you know, East Surrey, you know, their offense, obviously you can score on any given play with how they do it. So the emphasis is always guys, you know, can't give up those big plays and you know, hopefully we won't and that gives us the best chance to win. Uh you play it one day, so it's a lot of heavy run offenses. Uh Easter, he throws the ball a lot, and that was kind of how they beat you in 2019. They do it a little differently I think this year, but they're still throwing a lot. How nice was it to get Lewisburg in the regional final? Another team that throws a lot to kind of get some game experience with uh, with your secondary in passing situations more before the eastern. Yeah, I helped out tremendously. You know, um we do play riverside in our conference. Obviously that's the spread team. Uh but yeah, to get them, what we were able to do is is um, toy with a few things personnel wise defensively a few things differently. Obviously they presented different issues than what east series going to present, but it still was a spread team that I thought the quarterback was really, really good a weapon, both running and passing and they had some good receivers too. So it's like said it allowed us to to toy with some things under the game situation and then we got back together as a staff and seeing what worked, what didn't work and then re told it to get ready for e sorry third time you're playing them third year in a row. So there's not really much in the way of secrets. You kind of know what they're gonna do. They kind of know what you're gonna do uh in diving into the film this week. Is there anything maybe more minor you've seen that they've been doing differently that you want to make sure you're prepared for? Um And now I'll tell you what is this typical easter is of course they got some great football players over there and Co Sloman runs a great system. Uh you know, lots of slip screens. I think they're probably the best screen team I've ever played or studied. I mean they bubble screen. Yeah, they'll slip screen, you they'll middle screen. Yeah, they get their athletes open space. Got a nice offensive line. Uh you know, they're running the buck sweep a little bit more. Uh I don't know if it's, you know, just by design, if it's their personnel, but seem to run the ball a little bit more this year, which they can obviously so defensively, you know, their stout the very good defense um maybe a little bit better than last year's. But uh it's just a really, it's just a well rand program and like I said, the boys are going to play there, they're gonna play hard, they're gonna play physical, they're not going to get themselves out of positions. And yeah, the game is gonna come down to basic football. You know, last time we played we put the ball on the ground four times, gave them 28 quick points and that gets you beat. If we do that again, that will get a speed again. But you can't you can't do those type of things, so it's gonna come down to blocking and tackling and executing on both sides of the ball.