[WhyLie]

I don't understand why you can't look at a scrimmages and get a fell for how good you are going to be. I tend to disagree. You block and tackle, fundalmentals, you run your base stuff that you have worked on. Do coaches put plays they are not going to do during the season in for grids? If so seems a waste of time. If you can't run your base very well then I don't see running anything else very well. To me it is execution of plays, whether they are your fancy ones or your base ones.

I feel scrimmages are great indicators....maybe not the scores of scrimmages, because of most of the second half of JV teams. But you can see who is who.

Anyone else feel this way, or do we just make excuses for our lose.

[Real Badman]

Scrimmages are nothing but playing a better scout team.

[EKUAlum05]

Scrimmages have merit...but it simply is unfair to take them for anything more than what they are. The biggest issue with scrimmages is how different coaches approach them.

One Coach may view a scrimmage as an extra game... another coach views it nothing more as a chance to allow his players to practice and hit kids that are not their teammates.

You definitely can get a feel for talent level, timing, tackling ability, and areas that need improvement from a scrimmage, but at the same time you have to view it typically as a Coach who is purposely trying to see things in a live game setting.. thus using players he may normally not use, calling plays he may normally not call, and throwing a gameplan to the win on the side of seeing who is best equipped to help his 2 Deep.

What I do not agree with is the approach that a scrimmage has no bearing and can be completely tossed out. Take the Bell County Scrimmage for example against Clay County.

Does this mean Clay County is a better team than Bell and would beat them Week 1? No

Does this mean Clay County and Bell are 6 TD's different than last year when they met in the regular season? No

But.. you can infer that a typical Bell County team performs much better than a typical Clay County team if they scrimmage. In fact, a Bell County team scrimmaging a Clay County team last season would have probably seen a different result.

This stands to reason that Clay County is better than last season at this point and/or Bell County is not as far developed at this point as last season.

Judging by roster turnover I would venture to say it is a little of both as Bell is fostering in inexperienced players, whereas Clay has starters returning that are building on a foundation. Once again..this in no way represents what would result in a regular season game say in Week 5..but it does mean that Bell probably has a steeper curve to develop on compared to year's past.

[WhyLie]

I do see your point..but you give coaches way to much credit. Sometimes you have a ton of athletes that make a coach look good and some years you do not.

Talent level plays such a role in high school. (If you don't recruit, like some have).

I would not say Clay would beat us in regular season...but they can now.

If I play marbles, I want to win!!!

Just a fan enjoying the game.

[RoShamBo]

I seem to remember back in the 4 class system Southwestern would scrimmage Male most years and it was often very close and I even think SW won once or twice. Then at the end of the season SW would struggle to make it out of the first round of playoffs. Some coaches just approach scrimmages differently. Some like to use it as a real game warm up for their starters, while others like to use them to get some of their second and third guys some work. I tend to not put much stock into them, but they are good prep for the season however you decide to play them out.

[Iam4thecats]

My senior year we came home from a brutal 6 day camp and scrimmaged Evarts the very next day. All of our starters wore knee braces in the pre-season back then, backs and linemen, which were not fitted and made you slower.1991
We had no film on Evarts and no gameplan. Evarts was a 6 win class A team that year and we beat them 6-3 in the scrimmage. We were sloppy and slow and did not look very promising at all.

The rest of the year with no braces, films, gameplans and rest we averaged 32 points per game and won 11 games.

Scrimmages are scrimmages not real games.

[Football1]

Film is a big difference in games vs scrimmages. Nobody "game plans" scrimmages based on a deep review of film. Hudl and other tools have made film review a huge part of football today.

Still, our scrimmage against Harlan proved clearly that we have things we need to button down on both sides of the ball. No reducing that. KC takes pride in being a team who can run and stop the run. We came up short on that last night. The good news is it really does not matter in the long run. What matters is your district games.

Football is more about coaching than any other sport. One great player can dominate a basketball game. Same for a great pitcher in baseball. But football is about schemes, alignment, execution, discipline, and a culture that drives players to work hard for each other. Coaches have to deliver that. Scrimmages give them a few data points to work from. The best coaches will use those data points to get the most out of the scrimmage.