this is a podcast here being produced at the bella bot media center and the opinions and views expressed odd said podcast did not express those views of the belmont media center or its staff and if you have any questions about in media center channels eight nine zero twenty eight and twenty nine i am todd one ers alongside belmont high school head football coach young human and don't forget you can be involved this is an interactive program if you have any questions for coach tag and if you have any you know if you have any football related questions we've got a football coach here he can break down plays you can diagram him whatever you want to get your he just talk about belmont football players i mean a lot i want to thank all of the people who've been following us throughout this football season i mean we see the numbers on the audio version and i know people are probably watching on t v as well so thanks to all of you don't forget of course in the world of twitter you can follow coach and q underscore coach along with belmont football that's  and i had all this time to prepare too because we're running a little later than we normally do tonight but coach it is good to see you and thank you very much for being here it's great to be back and thanks for having me as as always well let's get this thing started ok  this is going to be my cue for q and that is this is a direct quote from last week's show with regards to the the belmont in their other playoff position from coach cube self where a decent  factors that contributed to us not getting the power ranking that would have put us in the eight seed we missed the eight seed by point one four in the power rating wow a very very close the three factors that played into that one as i started out in talking with the team about it is the fact that we didn't win against a woman reading or lexington a win against either all any of those three teams would have put us in the playoffs and probably would have brought us to a five seed or maybe even a four seed so that's number one we had those opportunities and we we didn't capitalize on them  number two is is how the opponent points kind of works out we need you get points within your power rating structure for the wins of both the teams that you beat more points there and points for the wins by the teams that beat you so now just for the record you can explain this very effectively last week out but it still gave me a popsicle awesome i mean it's like a college football b c s algorithm you know and then all of the stuff is getting kind of plugged in and it turns out a number at the end and that's the number that they use you know for the rating so essentially the second part of it was that needed wayland to beat weston because medford had beaten weston and west and beat wayland and also we really needed conquered carlisle who was the seventh seed to lose that would have put us in regardless of what happened and they didn't they won in dramatic fashion against the team that we're playing this week which is draycott and then the last part of it is that if either stoneham or arlington had gotten a win over their last three weeks which they didn't that would have put us in also so there's kind of two sides to this thing one side is we didn't take the opportunity that we had against were and to be a team that was divisional e up that would have given us the points that we needed and the other half is that the opponent point values didn't play out the way that we needed them to for us to be n and you know the result is and it's a really tough result for me and for our guys is that a team with an identical record three and four that we beat thirty four to six is now in the playoffs and what would have been our inspired so that's absolutely frustrating and where work and to recover from that and get back to work and get folk don drake right well you know coach to eat like you you summed it up really nicely there but like you said i mean everything you know had kind of gone your way and you know you were you were talking about this from last week you said you know bedford somerville we're going to watch that game go somewhere and they win fifty two to thirty eight get you know that's exactly the result you want yeah you guys go to lexington and we're will get to the game in a second i mean but it was a competitive game for you know close to half and you know you guys play them tough and you end the end you only lose by to me and i think that the real there are a couple of really big issues here and you know i hope that people at the m i a are taking this into consideration i'm sure that you know my athletic director and some of the other people out there are bringing this to their attention is that you know the state has tried very hard obviously there was a big revamp in the playoff structure a couple a couple years ago three years ago going t divisional lead based playoff system which i think is a good system because it pits schools of similar enrollment sizes against schools of similar enrollment sizes and it unified state champion so that you don't get you know the twenty seven super bowl champions that we used to have prior to this new system the problem is that they tried to retain conferences in doing that because massachusetts has these historic conferences and a lot of people want to see those conferences remain and they don't want to abandon them the problem that exists there is that your conference schedule determines your opponent's schedule in the weeks leading up to the playoffs so for us in the middlesex large we have five league games every year and only two of those games are against opponents that are divisional equal the remaining three are against opponents that are divisional the up and we don't get any points for playing those guys who are divisional the up in less we beat them if we lose to them we don't get the benefit of having to play a team that's divisional e up medford only has to schedule i believe they only have so they only had to play medford everett and some of all that then allows them four weeks to choose their schedule essentially and they played us which again we won pretty handily and then they played three other teams that in my opinion would probably have been beaten by the two teams that we beat in addition to medford in arlington and winchester because they're middlesex large teams and and it's just a different level of competition from league to leak so really the thing that got us is our own performance against were and i want to be absolutely completely totally clear about that we're not sitting here whining about how we got hosed because of numbers or anything like that that's not our nature is a team you know we had an opportunity to get in the playoffs with our own win and we did but the attempt to try and retain both conferences and divisional scheduling creates for lack of a better word something of an unfair playing field that definitely hurts teams like us who are struggling to develop within large and established conferences with big schools against really quality opponents and i wouldn't want to be anywhere else i just want a little bit of i just want to build a little bit of love for having to play reading and arlington are sunni reading in lexington both of whom are ranked in the top twenty five you know medford had to play one ranked team and that was everett they were handled easily because ever it is everett you know and so we don't really get any benefit for having to play up and that's definitely as a coach a little bit frustrating and hopefully you know where as we as we go forward with the divisional playoff structure we take looks at it and continue to to to adjust the system and make it work a little bit better for all teams yeah even in like the college structure i mean usually if you're playing in a more power conference you get more credit for that it's harder to be like if you're in one of those smaller conferences with you know against you know not you know you're not playing the same code there's just no strength of schedule rating unless you win and then again that's kind of the big issue is that ok like what's the incentive to the incentive is to schedule up against teams that are historically not strong teams in higher divisions and you know medford got a great win against the divisional i became against revere early in the season you know so you know again there's nothing that really benefits strength of schedule in any way shape or form so that's kind of what what goddess i feel a little bit yeah i mean i guess you know ultimately like you said the from from a fan's perspective or followers perspective the frustration is you know you beat this you know you would never have equal records you beat them head to head you beat them soundly your you know top team that's like in the top twenty right now in the state you know you only lose by two touchdowns and we're going to get to this game in a second while they was playing a top twenty team got totally throttled you know forty nine nothing so yeah it just it's i mean if you look at all those things that it should somehow add up to you know where that you know it's razor thin trying to determine who should go when you know who should you know who should not but you know it just feels like you know in the end you guys did a little bit more and you had the you know if you had a better conference you know yeah i mean you know if it again and i don't i'm not trying to knock now as and i'm really excited for them and they deserve it they've been grinding you know you know i really got a lot of love for those guys and i'm really excited that they get that opportunity to do that you know again for us it's it's definitely it's definitely a little bit frustrating and it's definitely something that you know we're going to have to work really hard to work really hard to overcome i mean it was an absolutely razor thin margin and then you again you add to the fact that we're dealing with identical records and then you look at the head to  head and you know you look at like it's just frustrating i mean you look at like the boston herald rankings the boston herald still has rank seventh and division two north you know because their rankings are power rating rankings that's just danny who knows football and is watching football r right behind us in the eight and so you know two teams that i think are probably you know the seven in the eight in our division are out of the playoffs because of scheduling and numbers and that is absolutely frustrating and i would i would urge the m i a to take a look at it now again i want to reiterate and i'm going to say a million times the other side of that is that we had an opportunity to win one of three league games one of them was a ten to seven loss in a game that we feel we could've won probably should have won and we didn't and that's on us it's on me as a coach it's on my my players it's on my staff it's on all of us as a family that we didn't take that opportunity when we had it provided to us we wouldn't be having this conversation if we had and so the first onus is one hundred percent on us we still have yet to lock into that sort of big game execution mentality that the great teams have and that's something that we're working to build so medford ultimately they get the eight seed and they will be traveling to tewksbury saturday to play middlesex from one little sexily town to another will congratulate lex yes and their complement especially given the fact i mean this was a team that last year went three in eight and this year you know now they're seven zero so far you know let's just let's talk about the game and you know again you guys you played them as you've been doing all year coach we keep saying this over and over again i mean you guys have played you know you've been playing everybody competitively each week and here we go again you know you're in the you're in the second quarter and you guys are you know right in the game and you're tied at fourteen then they run off twenty seven straight points and and tell and show you why they're an undefeated team and currently ranked sixteenth in the state but just you know talk about your team's effort on saturday yeah i mean you know we got off the schneid pretty slow there and you know gave  a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage and then we three and out in the pond and they scored again and we were able to get on the board and come back in and tie the game with with two answering possessions and make it fourteen fourteen so you know we were really happy there and definitely demonstrated the ability to be a little bit resilient we've demonstrated the ability to be resilient before so you know i think for for our guys and for our coaches you know we're not lamenting a fourteen deficit we know that we can come back from that you know so that was a positive thing to see but you know we really didn't execute well on on both sides of the ball and this is a that's not the team  execute well against you know so yeah we were able to put some drives together and we were able to make some things work but we definitely didn't play our best football and you know for me it really hammers down to two things you know one is just execution up front on the off chance of line they didn't have their best day out all and we really it was a slot fest out there it was absolute downpour it's a grass field over there was a complete mess and we needed to run the ball and we need our offensive line to execute in order to do that and they didn't have their best day and that makes our life kind of tough and then defensively you know we had been stressing you know fundamental tackling against this team because the kid at quarterback is phenomenal and the kid at running backs not so bad either and you know ankle biting and diving it guys legs isn't going to work this week we've got to keep our feet we've got to bring our feet to the party shoot our heads shoot our hands you know get good fits in and make good tackles and we didn't do that we didn't take good flow paths to the football we didn't play good downhill football from the linebacker and defensive secondary positions and we didn't tackle well and so the result of that was a lot of big plays we also caught some tough calls we got some tough calls easily one of the toughest games from an officiating perspective for me as the head coach i was i was frustrated all right i'm going to ask you about the calls then first i was going to mention yes i mean i could see that you know defensively you guys did struggle especially against the run couple receiving touchdowns again i guess if there's any consolation i will say this coach you're the first team this year that's held under one hundred yards passing he was six for six a fourteen for only seventy yards but again you know when they run for you know the two guys run for a combined three eleven i think i was probably a combination of us playing decent against the pass at times and the fact that you know the weather i mean the weather was the best defender against the passing of both teams i mean both teams had a little bit of trouble for on the ball  you know sal is a tremendously talented quarterback and he's also a really good kid if you ever have the opportunity i got the chance to chat him up a little bit before the game and you know and i mentioned it to coach peterson after the game and  he said yeah he's just such a great kid you know so yeah we were i mean we were able to shut down the past a little bit here and there but i mean we got some really tough calls we had on the third down in and they put one down towards the end zone and kevin martin was in great coverage and he turned and saw the ball and jumped and knocked it out and they called a passer ference said that he was grabbing jersey hwat going back and watching it on film it's not there you know and then my biggest issue was just consistency of call in the pas game you know so they call that but then you know we had a third down through a deep stop or a come back to pollock and again we have it on film a cornerback grab an arm and literally pulling it back in side judges right there and no call gets made and you can't you can't live in that stuff i mean good calls happen bad calls happen and in the context of the game you want to you want to just keep trucking and keep going and and not get caught up in in that or arguing with the refs or anything like that it doesn't get you anywhere so we try to avoid that but you know we feel that there needs to be a level of consistency in how you're call in the game and i'm sure that that level of consistency didn't exist and that's absolutely frustrating and i'm sure it's frustrating for georgia for lexington too because i mean there were a couple of calls that didn't get made on their side of the ball that definitely should have been should have been calls including a couple of personal fouls that should have been should have been flags on us that they didn't they didn't pull out the flag and throw it so you know i think the most important thing  is just looking for consistency from officiating and we definitely feel that's not something that we've got well what we see even we see it on every level of football that's played i mean pass interference is such a subjective call and you just never know sometimes what these refs are seeing or what angle they're seeing it from and they're you know maybe they're seeing something before it's actually happening or they're here to subpoena what's happening but it just you're right it just it leads to a lot of these question i mean it's easy like you know it's easy it's easy to sit it's easy for us to sit here you know and and look back on the game and say well that was a bad call or whatever and it's a lot harder to do it in the context of the game i mean somebody asked me a couple weeks ago would you ever be an official when you were done with coaching and i said absolutely not there's absolutely no way i would do that job it's really difficult job and be it's totally thankless i mean you're you're never nobody ever loves you i mean you're always kind of getting barked that by somebody somebody always feels that they're that they're getting wrong you know but there were just there were just a number  of issues there and the bottom line of all of that is that has nothing to do with why we want to win or lose a football game we didn't lose because we got hosed on bad calls we lost because we gave up two hundred yards on the ground to quint we gave up probably a hundred yards plus on the ground frail if not more and we couldn't tackle either of them then we played bad defense and we didn't execute our office to its potential that's why we lost it definitely was not helped by the fact that we copped a couple of bad calls throughout the course of the get right well i mean again you know it's been doing this to everybody in the league this year i mean now looking at his numbers including from last week you know he has almost twenty two hundred yards of off fence by himself with thirty fo for a little perspective your senior tailback and captain ben jones has had an incredible year it would take to ben jones is almost to equal the office of output of south and i guess you know john has had a great year and a guinea a you had a pretty good game i know you mentioned some struggle we don i mean you know ben spends a workhorse man he's going to find yards even when yards aren't there and he's been doing that for us all year you know i thought he had a pretty good day and that cal had a decent day control in the office and trying to get it up and down the field and what was a really conditions wise was a really tough tough game it was a tough day to play for both teams you know what i want to ask you about you i'm looking here as i read through the of the recap of the game you score your first touchdown in a flea flicker so again we're talking about those adverse weather conditions but it seemed to work you were able to pull off a sixty eight yard jared edwards so just talk about you know what went into planning that i mean was it were you going in thinking we might have to use a little trick or ration to kind of stay in this just to keep up with lexington is often sir what how did it all come together when chester ran a flea flicker against us the week before and beat us pretty good on it so we kind of looked at that and said that looks like a good play let's run that and drew it up out of some of our sets because we're in a different set than they are drew it up out of our set look at a couple different permutations of it before we brought it out on the field on tuesday and you know we thought it was a nice little play guys guys are key and pretty hard on ben and rightfully so and that gives us the opportunity to kind of suck the offensive backs up and cal did a great job throwing that ball because he didn't have a ton of time as is off the case with fully flickers in the jarrad was standing there completely wide open in the corner and bit hard on on the sweep and he just put it over the top and jarred scamper thought i was going to get caught from behind for a second but he managed to stay on its feet and get in the end zone so you know we looked at it after the first series or they put fourteen on the board and said we need something to give us a little bit of juice let's try it this play out and see if it hits and it did and it gave us a little bit of momentum we were able to stop on the next series coming back down the field and then we were able to take about a fifteen play drive a belmont tony in type of drive just run in the ball and chew it up clock because one of our goals this week was to try  have long possessions and keep sal off the field not something we were able to do consistently so it was a good play it was fun kids like well you know so yeah i mean you know you were in that game for a while unfortunately you know  redirect ours so my hats off to them and lots of respect really quick that one question if you can do this and like about thirty seconds maybe or sixty seconds there you know they were three and eight last year they're seven zero this year what what's changed sal's a year older is that it's just simple as that like he did that extra year maturity really has made it to mean i'm not trying to i'm not trying to take away from the rest of the team i mean but one of the reasons that quint was able to break for four touchdowns on us is that everything that we were doing was geared toward self really and i think that's probably true for a lot of teams that's not to take away from from quinn is a great runner man i mean he opened up some really nice long runs had some nice moves some good power runs i mean they're a good football team but you know you're looking at this kid and you're looking at this and they're a good football team and they're well coached football team with weapons they're very different football team without this particular athlete driving them watching him run i said i said one thing on the at some point he broke off just absolutely nifty run in the slot made by like three guys miss and i clipped over to coach p and said man if we weren't good enough to stop this kid it would be fun to watch and he clipped back with a line from i think the longest yard which was kind of one of the running themes of the new one of our of our game and he said he's so fast he makes fast people look not fast and so he's a great kid and again the credit goes to coach he coach peterson  he uses him well man it's a good off and man it's a good office for that kid it's a good office for what they've got he uses him well and he put a lot of our guys in flux how to make tough decisions and it's a recipe for a good day for sal and he's a tremendous athlete he's obviously already committed to boston cause he's only junior right so yeah it's going to ease got another year any he's going to b c to play baseball but he's already committed there he'll still have a his full still got two more baseball seasons it looks it's and i still does i mean lex is a good baseball program too it's always a good game lexington versus belmont you know we talked a little bit talk a little bit with him about baseball for the game too and i got nothing but good things to say about him you know and i don't mean to knock the rest of the lexington team in any way shape or  form you know this they've got a stud and they use him well and the rest of the team kind of rallies around him a little bit or a lot and it works for them i wish them all the best of luck as they go into the playoffs they got a tough and over team in the first round two i would hope to were definitely home for for turkey so you know we've got four games left i would imagine at least two of them should be home maybe three if we're lucky so yeah  you know we got a we got to get on a bus ride and drive an hour up we haven't really had to do that i mean one of the benefits of being a middlesex league team is you never really have to go very far to go play your games which is nice you know now we got to get on the school bus and go in our up and if not more in traffic so that's going to be a new experience for us we're going to have to be prepared for that they're in a similar situation to us they just missed the playoffs not as close as we were but close enough and so i think that the selection committee and pairing teams up did a great job they found two teams that are tough physical football teams that you know could have easily been playoff teams in their own right and they threw together in a great match up and you know one of the things that nobody talks about in the consolation brag everybody has so much bad stuff to say about this playoff system and i think we're moving in the right direction i want to be clear i think we're we're moving toward something that's really functional and works i think a lot some people are going to have to let go of their attachment to conferences in order for us to get over the hump of where where we should be but one of the pl sides of the consolation and the playoff bracket in general is just you get to see teams that you wouldn't normally see and teams that don't make the playoffs get to see teams that they wouldn't normally see so that was always true for playoff teams but it was rarely true for anybody else and that's kind of cool i like the shot to get up there and go up to just just south of new hampshire and play a game in a new environment in a new kind of crowd in a new school a new identity where you know we're not really going to see drake in a lot unless we see him in some other playoff existence down the line which we well could they're similar to us in their program rebuild their coach is in his third year he had an old for his first year one a few a second year you know now they're kind of in the bubble like we are so i'm really excited to go up there and play and play this miti squad you know i'm pretty fired up and it doesn't matter to me that it's not a playoff game i mean yes but todd two of our are still on the table i mean we could have a winning record we went out we're seven and four that's a heck of a season and then our last goal courses to be the watertown on turkey day so two of our three program goals for the year are still on the table and i said to the kids we failed that one but we were close enough that the failure doesn't feel like it doesn't feel to me like a total loss you know we were right there one game away from doing what we to to bring in those to you tube and so you come in oh you're going to see some good football this this marauder team is not one to we're not one to roll over and die i mean we've been through i just really want to say this to my guys if they're watching and listen than anybody else we 've been through darker times than this you know miss in the playoffs five point one four the fact that were lamenting the fact that we missed the playoffs by point one four is progress for us as a program we were right there and in years past we have been about as far from that as you can possibly believe will come down to harrison serious at home it will be worth it and absolutely i know that they are probably watching or listening because we are getting the numbers there and i bet a lot of more players on the team come on you must have some