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Farmington gets that Jackson football is great, but...
Farmington High School football coach Erik Kruppe deals with his young athletes in a brutally honest fashion.
With that in mind, he told the truth to his team last month after they lost their first football game of the season, a 56-14 shellacking, at Jackson.
“You’re not fooling anybody if you tell the kids that Jackson isn’t an extremely good football program,” Kruppe said.
But…
“Our kids understand (Jackson) is a good football program,” Kruppe continued. “But at the same time, you take a look at the film and you say ‘They are good but there were a lot of things that we did that helped Jackson.’”
The two teams will run back that earlier game when they meet tonight at The Pit (7 p.m.) for the MSHSAA Class 5 District 1 championship.
Both teams are defending District champions (the Black Knights won the C4D1 title a year ago) and Kruppe knows it will take a magnificent performance from his team to shock the state of Missouri and prevail.
“We did not help ourselves any,” Kruppe said of the earlier loss, “in a lot of things that we did. Our execution could have been much better.
“We talked about that you’ve already gone down there once. You’ve been there (and) done that. You have played in The Pit in 2020 so get (any nerves) out of your system and go play a football game.”
The Indians (10-0) are the defending C5D1 champions and own this series.
Jackson has won nine consecutive games against the Black Knights (9-2) and those victories have been by a margin of 33-plus points.
The last time the Black Knights beat Jackson (50-14 in 2011); the current 16 Indian seniors were in the third grade.
Kruppe explained from an offensive standpoint, there isn’t a better team in this state than Jackson.
“They execute at a level that is unmatched at the high school level,” Kruppe said. “Their execution is better than you are going to find anywhere else in the state.”
Jackson can score in a variety of ways, particularly with its very talented group of pass-catchers.
“Their receivers are definitely slippery,” Kruppe said. “They are shifty and do a good job of making people miss.
“They run route concepts where they find the void in the defense. That allows them, once they make the catch, be able to run with the football.”
A lot of Indian senior quarterback Cael Welker’s throws aren’t necessarily down the field, but Kruppe said Jackson CAN do that if it chooses to.
“When they do throw deep,” Kruppe explained, “what they do is they put pressure on the defense’s eyes. They put the defense in conflict.”
In 2017, Jackson allowed over 36 points per game and lost three games.
In the 36 games since, the Indians have only lost twice and their defense has given up just 11.8 points per game.
Kruppe said that side of the ball is where Jackson took the next step as a program.
“The game-changer for the program,” Kruppe said, “was in 2018 when their defense started to come on par with their offense.”
The Black Knights have won 19 games in the past two seasons. In its 35-14 loss to Jackson in 2019, the Black Knights held the Indians scoreless for the first half before Jackson rallied. That game should give Farmington some degree of belief that it IS possible to hang with Jackson.
“Our kids play very hard,” Kruppe said. “They take coaching. They fit where they are supposed to fit. They do what they are asked to do and that allows them to be successful.
“Our kids need to do what they are asked to do, and from their perspective, give Jackson some conflict.”