Photos Courtesy of Charla Shults
The Pampa Harvesters (0-2) hit the road to play the Caprock Longhorns (0-2) on Friday night at WT Buffalo Stadium on the campus of West Texas A&M. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Pampa lost 28-27 to Iowa Park to start the season and lost last week to Plainview 49-41. Caprock lost 51-0 to Dumas and 48-0 to Palo Duro. As I do each week, I sat down with Head Coach Floyd White to discuss last week’s game as well as preview this week.
On the offensive line
“Well, you can't really say enough about that offensive line. I mean, those guys are getting out there every week, and they're doing a great job of just driving people out of the way. I mean, they're getting out there. They're getting on double teams, they're getting the backers, they're getting people moved. And, when we went into it, they were a big question mark, and now that we've gotten into it, they're starting to realize and they're starting to gel. Those five, they really play a lot of offensive line together. During the course of the day, during practice, they mostly work with nothing but the offensive line. We have a couple of them that work some other spots, but all-in-all those guys, they're always together,” White said. “We kind of talked about last week, when you're dealing with offensive lines, this was my big deal talking with Coach Langhenning, coming through the off-season. I said, ‘if I had my druthers, I'd have five guys that played nothing but offensive line, and you're starting to see the fruits of that labor. Yes, they do play a little bit of defensive line, but they're only out there for two or three plays at a time, but most of the time, they're on the offensive line, and they're out there and they're doing such a great job. They're doing a tremendous job. Starting with our junior center, Sebastian Granudo, he does a great job. Then you have a senior left guard, Gage Ayala. There is junior right guard Carter McLaughlin. Then, at right tackle you have junior Connor McKinley. He’s not the world’s biggest guy but he is what you need when you’re running the stuff we run. You need guys who can get to the second level and get on backers. He does a great job for us. Then, of course, at left tackle you have senior Kanan Reeves. It is a blessing to get to watch those guys and watch how they are starting to gel and really get after it.”
On Max Neff Running Back
Max Neff has recorded 553 yards rushing and seven touchdowns in two games.
“Whenever you're talking about Max, he’s done a fantastic job! I always laugh. I tell everybody, I'm going to take some of his runs and turn them into the NFL Network for the angry run session. Part of his success has come with those big boys up front, because they're creating some tremendous holes. You probably saw one of the better rushing performances in Pampa High School history last week, if you got a chance to watch that game. For a kid to have basically 300 yards rushing, it’s just tremendous. He added four touchdowns. On top of it, he had about 114 return yardage. There was a play called back where he ultimately could have ended the game with about 400 rushing yards. That is insane. A lot of high schools don’t even get 400 yards of offense total in a game,” White said.
Next, we discussed how injuries derailed his sophomore and junior campaigns. He rushed for over 2,000 yards as a freshman.
“I believe, is his first scrimmage, he dislocated his elbow. And, man, it kind of sidelined him for a while. Anybody who's ever played the game and had to deal with injuries knows that sometimes you can get a little gun shy. When we came in during the off-season of his sophomore year, we really worked to build those relationships. We really worked to build that confidence. We get going, and, man, we start playing and all of a sudden, we're running, and somebody jumps on the back of his legs and rolls his ankle, and then we are battling an ankle injury. Then, he gets healthy and the same thing happens in the Borger game. He's had a lot of mental battles to go through, but now he's finally there. It's his senior year. Yeah, you have a little couple bumps and bruises, but now he's starting to realize that, there's no getting away from all this stuff. He's a bell cow, and everybody's gonna lead him if he follows. And he is starting to really realize that. He's taken that thing by the horns. He's really starting to become the leader that we need him to become. He's starting to become the player that everybody in the Panhandle has been waiting to see,” White said. “It’s hard to rush for 550 yards on air in practice and he’s gone for that in two games with people bearing down on him, trying to tackle him. He’s got seven TDs. It’s been a lot of fun to watch. Like I said, most people don’t realize how hard what he did last week was. There are not very many kids in the state of Texas who can say they rushed for 300 yards in a game. It is almost unheard of. I am just blessed everyday that I get to go out there and watch him and some of the things he does. It is just natural for him. There's a lot of kids, they really have to work for it, but he's a natural at it and he really works hard.. That's where we're starting to make a huge difference with him. And because everybody sees him work hard, they're all starting to work hard too. It's just a blessing to be able to coach a player of Max's caliber.”
On Jarren Hill Quarterback
“Jaren Hill, he's been the unquestioned leader with that group. What he says goes, and the kids are all starting to listen to him, and they follow Him. When you have a young man who's been playing (starter last year). He was a captain last year. But now it's different when you're a senior, and you have more of the answers and you can do those things,” White said. “It's just a really refreshing deal to watch how all the kids are looking to him for all the answers that they have to have. And when he's good, we're all good. If he's ever off, we're going to be off. But, man, he's been way more on than he's ever been off this year.”
Defense
“Defensively, we are having a lot of small mental lapses. And because we're having those small mental lapses whenever we're supposed to be under on a block, we're trying to fight outside. We have a lot of guys right now who are not doing the things their coach asks them to do all the time. They do it 90-95% of the time but the other 5% of the time, they kind of do their own thing. When that happens, you see the result of it in back to back weeks. We have a guy who's supposed to be coming under, and he doesn't come under, and the ball winds right back in that hole, because they jumped outside. Then, all the sudden it's a 25-30 yard gain. When you do that, when you have guys who are quite doing what they need to do, we have to go back to the drawing board and be more basic. Either that, or we have to find some replacements,” White said. “For some, we are going to go ahead and find replacements. It is silly of us to run for 300 yards and put up 41 points and not be able to win the game because we keep giving kids chances. At some point you meet the point of diminishing returns and you’ve got to still give those kids a chance to get reps and get better. But, also we have to start looking at other avenues because for 5 weeks you have had time to get that fixed and haven’t fixed it.”
Special teams
“Coach Burklow does a great job with special teams. We got ourselves into a couple situations the other night where we were able to kick extra points, which was a definite, definite plus, but we had a lot of issues with our kicker putting the ball in place, in the ball where he wasn’t supposed to place the ball. We were supposed to be kicking stuff deep into the right or left and he is missing the ball down the middle. When you have your stuff set up to defend a certain part of the field, and someone kicks it the complete opposite, it hurts your return coverage,” White said. “The same thing happened on the onside kick. It wasn’t supposed to be onside. That ball was supposed to be chipped over the top everybody and let it roll around back there, because they only had one returner back there. But once again, we missed the ball, and the ball went over there, and it looked just an onside. That's the ebb and flow sometimes when you're dealing with high school kids, and we just have to work and get better. We also went out, and we are looking at other avenues for kickers and punters and things of that nature. We are just trying to find the best way we can to give ourselves the opportunity to be successful. And right now, we're sitting there, we're knocking on the door with these guys, and it's making a huge difference, because we are able to make some changes. We are starting to focus on what it is that we're doing, but we're still making too many of these silly mistakes that are giving us problems”
Wrap up comments on last week
“Every day I walk out there and say I'm blessed to get to get to coach these guys, because they go out there, they always have a great attitude. They're always willing to learn. They just have, they have a little bit of an it factor to them. Because they have that it factor, it really starts to show because they go out there every Friday night and they're gonna get out there and compete. You saw a lot of heart and a lot of hustle in week one, and then you turn around and you see a lot of heart and a lot of hustle in week two. We cleaned up some things but we were lacking in a couple others. Plainview put up 23 points on a Randall team that’s not giving up very many points, they are not a bad outfit,” White said. “Our kids are fighting their hearts out every week, and we saw a great growth from week one to week two, just like we saw a great growth from week one to week two last year. I'm just, I'm really excited to see what we are going to do going forward into this week. The effort is there. I can't always say that effort was there in previous years, but man, our efforts there, and as a result, you're starting to see the fruits of our labor. Now, we just have to go ahead and eliminate some of those mistakes, but continue that same great effort. And man, we're going to be right there in the middle of all of it again.”
Playing at WTAMU
“It's always cool to get to play somewhere that's fairly brand new. I believe the stadium is only six or seven years old. It's a really cool outfit and atmosphere. People don’t realize it but Kimbrough Stadium (Happy State Bank Field) was a Division 2 field, but anyways you get to go into somewhere new,” White said. “There's all kinds of bright, shiny new lights, and you got a nice new field. I don't think it's going to be one of those things that it's going to be just overly ‘ooh and ah.’ It's just going to be, we've got to go out there and we got to play Caprock. That's our mindset going into it. We got to play Caprock. We got to get this thing right, and we got to get ourselves back into a win. For us, we just want to end this week 1-0. That's really what we're working to do. We're not worried about where we're playing. If they told us, hey, you guys got to go play out in a cow pasture. We're going to go, we're going to go out and play in a cow pasture just that's just who our kids are. Now at this point, we're not worried about the glitz and glam. We're worried about bringing our lunch pails and going to work every day.”
Caprock
“Coach Freeman, I'm really, really impressed with what he does with those guys. Those guys, they come out, and it doesn't matter whether they're getting beat 48-0, or whether they're up 48-0, they go out there and they play hard, and those kids fly around and they get bodies on bodies, and they are going at you with everything they got. I've always walked off the field when we played really impressed with how hard they play. Because they really, really do. They play hard. That's who those guys are,” White said. “Most people don't realize it, but it's an old rivalry for us. For the entire time I was in high school, they were in a district with us, and we used to play them year in and year out. It's always going to be a slobber-knocker, because those kids are always ready to play. I don't worry about the records, because the records don't mean a whole lot, because when we go into that game, we're both 0-0, and we both have to play, and then at the end of it, somebody's going to be 1-2 and I want the Pampa Harvesters to play well enough to be 1-2 at the end of it. That’s what I can focus on. That's what we are going to focus on.”
Caprock Offense
“Caprock, they're pretty good out at receiver. They've got two pretty good ones. They both play in the slot, and they can move around, they squirrel around, and they get open. They're kind of unconventional some of the things that they do, but man, they do a great job of getting open. When you get that ball anywhere close to them, they can get hands on the balls. When you look at their quarterback, they rotate two quarterbacks, and it's hard to see their numbers on film. I believe one's #12, and the other one, maybe #15. It's kind of difficult for me to see, but those kids, they get out there and they get after it. They really get out there and they play, play really, really hard. They are actually fairly elusive. They are not the quarterback last week from Plainview, but they can move around just enough. If they can find an open area, man, they can really pop that ball in there. They have a running back, #20, that I liked. He runs the ball really hard,” White said. “They are I don't want to say power spread, but they run a lot of power darts, a lot of counters, inside zones, things like that. They are going to get physical because they've got some bigger bodies. All in all, if we just will line up and play and do the things that we need to do, I think we're going to be okay, but they're definitely going to provide a lot of issues for us if we get our eyes in the wrong places.”
Caprock Defense
“They're really, really good at the linebacker spot. Those linebackers, they will get downhill in a hurry. When they blitz, they blitz with purpose, and they will come down, and give you all kinds of issues. We really have worked a lot with our guys about having our eyes up, making sure that we can see what it is that those backers are doing, because those backers can create all kinds of problems up front. They're strong and they're solid. They get up the field. They create a lot of havoc, and that creates a lot of problems sometimes with some of the stuff that we do. But, if we'll just stick to our rules we'll be fine there. And then the secondary they're going to get up there, they're going to play a little bit of Cover 4,” White said. “It's going to be a tight Cover 4 and they're going to try to get up there and try to get those safeties in the box. That's what everybody's going to try to do now to us. When you rush for almost 800 yards in two games, you're going to get a lot of people starting to creep towards the line of scrimmage. When you start getting those safeties up there, now, you put those corners in one-on-one situations, and we have guys that can win those one–on-ones. We're going to make sure that we take our shots when we need to take our shots. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we're going to run the ball real hard, and they're going to come off the ball real hard, it's going to be a battle of the wheels. We just have to make sure that we do what we need to do in order to be successful.”
Keys to the game
Don’t turn the ball over: “Most people don’t realize this but one thing we have to make sure we do is don’t turn the ball over. We averaged two turnovers a game for the last two games and we lost the games by eight and one point. If we can eliminate the takeaways on the offensive side of the ball, that will be tremendous for us. If we do that then I feel it is just going to set the tone because our turnovers haven’t been later in the game. They have been on the first drive, and the first drive going in, that’s just ripped my heart out,” White said. “You’re driving down the field and eating up 8 to 10 yards a pop and then all of the sudden we turn over the ball. But, after that, then we have pretty much settled in and we start playing a pretty good, solid game. For me, that is the number one, big key is don’t turn the ball over.”
Get off the field on 3rd downs: “We've got to get off the field on third down. We are getting ourselves in a great position. We were in multiple third-and-eight situations, heck, we had a third-and-21 last week. At one point, they had a fourth-and-five. You have got to take advantage of those situations and not just try to throw someone down. You have to tackle with purpose and get those guys on the ground and do those things.” White said. “Our third-down defense is something we really focused on last week. We got ourselves into those positions and now we've got to make those changes. The same thing's got to happen this week, except now we've got to eliminate those third downs. We got to get in those third-and-long situations where we have a chance to get off the field, and we've got to actually get off the field on third down. Those are my two biggest keys to the game.
Final thoughts
“I look forward to a good showing by both teams. I know both teams are going to get out there and play hard. I will just tell you from the harvester standpoint, we've been out here working our butts off all week, and Friday we are going to be out there trying to make sure we put on a great show for our community and for our people that way they have something they can be proud of,” White said. “I can't ever guarantee a win, but I can guarantee you, we'll play hard enough that we'll give ourselves a chance to win the game in the end. Either we're going to be up, we're going to be getting close to being up, we're going to keep fighting, no matter what, to make sure we get ourselves there.”
You can find HSN on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@HarvesterSportsNetwork/.. You can also follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HarvesterSportsNetwork. Lastly, there is a Twitter/X page: www.x.com/PampaHSN. Kevin Hunt and Clay Jones will be calling the game. The game will also be broadcast locally on 101.3 Legends Classic Country. That station will be piped through the YouTube feed. Live stats can be found here: https://www.turbostatslive.com/football/webcast/08002511465744. Season stats can be found on the team page: https://www.turbostats.team/site/2/team/football/pampahighschool/pampa%20good%20file%202025. The pre-game show will begin on YouTube and 101.3 at 6:45 p.m. and kickoff is set for 7 p.m. A weekly radio show with Coach White called “Whiteboard Wisdom” with yours truly interviewing him will play at 6:20 p.m. each gameday before Kevin Hunt gets on with his pregame show!