Physicality paying off for unbeaten Stratford

From the time Paul Carroll took over the Stratford football program last year, one thing topped his list of priorities and goals.

“They’re just not physically ready — weight room-wise and stuff like that,” he said during that first preseason in 2024, noting a freshman class of about 20 players.

The same went for the older players.

“They have been working, since I got hired, in the weight room,” he continued. “They’ve gotten stronger, but a lot of them haven’t developed yet. You got to go from weight room muscles to football muscles.”

Throughout that first season, it remained an issue, with steps — not big ones but steps nonetheless — of progress. And it remained the priority through his first offseason with the Eagles.

“The physicality of all of it, that’s what I worry about,” Carroll said in July. “Like I said before, all the freakin’ time, we got to get a whole lot tougher. It’s more mental toughness than anything.”

The old-school former linebacker at Georgia Southern is like every coach around: not ready to declare any goal having been achieved.

But Carroll came pretty close last Friday night, admitting that his squad was the more physical team in Stratford’s 41-14 thumping of higher-ranked Brookstone to improve to 5-0 as the lone undefeated team in Bibb County.

“I thought we were,” he said, needing no cajoling. “I really did.”

A further embracing of what Carroll and his staff have preached was displayed a week earlier when Tyler Stephens went for 219 rushing yards in the Eagles’ 28-13 win over Frederica.

“What we’re trying to do — we’re trying to get physical up front,” Stephens said after that game. “First half, they came out physical upfront, defensive-wise. We had to make a lot of adjustments, getting in the ‘I’ formation, and we got physical backs.”

Carroll’s summary of the Brookstone game was fairly similar.

“We got back in our ‘I’ formation there for a while,” Carroll said. “Just really ran it right at ‘em.”

Now, Carroll admits that the Eagles might have progressed more than he realized.

“I think we showed the other night what we were,” he said. “We’re still not where we need to be.

“Our coaching staff and myself, I’m never going to probably be satisfied until we win that last game of the season.”

This year, there’s a legitimate chance of that satisfaction being realized.

The progress in Carroll’s priority area, physicality, has the Eagles at 5-0 for the second straight year, a number that matches Stratford’s win total for all of 2023.

This is the first time since 1999-2000 under Rodney Collins that the Eagles have gotten off to consecutive 5-0 starts. The 1999 Eagles won that region and dumped Tattnall 24-6 in the GISA Class 3A state championship to end a perfect season. Stratford did it again a year later, topping the Trojans 14-7 in the final to finish 12-2.

The good start last year — with a slightly different schedule, as Game 2 against Calvary Christian last year is at the end of the season this time around — was stopped by Brookstone in overtime en route to a 2-3 finish followed by a 33-28 loss to Brookstone in the first round of the playoffs.

Against the same five opponents, Stratford is scoring 39.6 points a game compared to 29.4 last year — and giving up less than a point more. The margin of victory against those five is 23 points this year, 10 more than a year ago.

Carroll is pretty much getting what he’d hoped for from the Eagles across the board, with weekly improvements from a group loaded with two-way players.

“On the offensive line wise, I didn’t think we were going to be able to move a lot of people off the football, and we’ve done that,” he said. “The biggest thing is we’ve enjoyed it. They have gotten to that mentality a little bit, you know, of ‘Hey, Coach, let’s go to ‘I,’ let’s go to let’s run the ball right at them.’”

That’s music to his ears.

“It becomes just like anything else,” Carroll said. “You get a little momentum going and you get a little confidence in yourself. I think that’s the main thing with this group was getting some of those kids to get some confidence in their self.”

Tucker Johnston has settled in and progressed at quarterback after starting the preseason in a battle with Morris Butler, who also plays defense. Offensive lineman and linebacker Maddox Whitehead, as well as guard/H-back/linebacker Ja’Lon Smith, have handled two-way duties and remained physical.

Freshman defensive back Aaron Jefferson, also Stephens’ understudy at tailback, leads with 8.4 tackles a game, just ahead of Whitehead’s 7.7. Seven defenders get at least five tackles a game.

And some of them help the offense run for 276 yards each week.

As happy as Carroll was with last week’s game-day focus, he’s still trying to figure out this year’s group. The Friday night Eagles tend to be a little different than the Eagles on the other four nights of the week on the practice field — like before the Frederica win.

“We didn’t have any good practices,” Carroll said. “But (the week before), we had good practices and then we showed up not ready to play on Friday night.”

And then against Frederica: “Biggest improvement, we lined up and got a little toughness about us. Lined up and then we ran a play over and over and over again and we just decided we were going to not be denied.”

It was better leading up to Brookstone — but not necessarily a clinic each day of sharpness consistently in practice. But Carroll does see a more consistent tone and attitude.

“I think we took a big step the other night playing in a big game, a crucial game for us,” he said. “Our kids focused a lot more before the game.

“I hadn’t seen that this year.”

He hopes it’s contagious week to week and knows it needs to be. This week, Stratford heads to 4-1 John Milledge and then hosts FPD, who appeared in the last two GIAA Class 4A championship games and won it all in 2023.

But the Eagles enter that stretch closer to being on point in the areas that have concerned Carroll from the start.

“I think we’ve played with confidence amongst the team, trusting each other,” he said. “We are getting better each and every week as far as the physicality and changing the minds of these kids to play like they’re six-four, 300 pounds.”