Giles sees football team in the top four
By John Earp
As the 2022 defending AA New Mexico State Football Champions, the 2023 Jal Panther Football Team certainly will have their work cut out for them. Coach Giles gave The Jal Record shared his thoughts on the team’s upcoming season with us earlier this week.
When asked how many seniors he has returning from last year’s state championship team, Giles chuckled and said, “I don’t know. Essentially what we’ve got coming back is the large majority of our offensive and defensive line. Our skill guys is kind of what we’re really going to have to replace. Numbers wise, I don’t know. I never have been one to add it up or know exactly the numbers. I just know where our strengths and our weaknesses are and where we’re going to have to rebuild the skilled positions—quarterback, defensive backs, running backs, receivers, anybody who touches the ball.”
Asked about two-a-days, which are to start next week, Giles says, “I think they’ll always call them ‘two-a-days,’ but we generally run one practice now. We typically just kind of make it a regular practice. We’ll start practice on the 31st, we get to get out and start getting each other on Wednesday the 23rd.” Wednesday and Thursday the team will practice in helmets and shoulder pads, with Friday of that week being full gear.
Practice will be a little different this year, according to Giles. He says, “We’re going to mix it up. Based upon schedules and things like that. We go Wednesday/Thursday and then Monday/Tuesday the next week and then of course the kids start on that Wednesday the following week. So we’ll go Monday and Tuesday in the evening and then Wednsday we’ll go for our normal time, the 4:15, as school is let out. Thursday we’ll do the same, and then Friday we’ll practice in the morning. Giles says the team will “absolutely not” have practice in the morning and then the afternoon on the same day. He says, “We don’t really do that. Our schedule is based upon the weather too. We do havfe some guidelines that we have to go by. Right now, we’re expecting that Wednesday and Thursday practice to be at about 4:00, but it may have to be later. We may have to do that under the lights, dependent upon the heat. The monsoons haven’t come in yet. So we’ll see how that goes. We’ll run one practice 2, 2-1/2 hours.”
Regarding the old-school conditioning that used to be commonplace with high school football teams, Giles says, “I’ve never run my kids for conditioning aspect, just because of the nature of football. I always see the benefit in basketball, you know, because they’re up and down the court, and things like that. Track, obviously. Football is one of those where you go really hard for ten seconds, and then you walk back to the huddle and you’ve got forty seconds to run another play. So, conditioning, I always kind of chuckle a little bit when you know it comes fourth quarter and teams are sitting around talking about somebody’s getting wore down. I don’t believe in all that. It’s just a four-quarter game, you know? Who can play the best for four quarters. Conditioning has not been a strong factor in football for as long as I’ve been alive.”
Giles says getting players involved in summer strength and conditioning is definitely what he has always aimed to do. He says he used to get hurt when players wouldn’t show up much for off-season summer strength and conditioning, but in his 21 years of coaching, he says he had realized some kids will show and some won’t, and that the final product, a winning team, is the main goal. He says that most of the years his teams have won the final game of the year, the summer participation of players hasn’t dictated that. To Giles, weightlifting should be a year-round thing. He says, “Lifting is one of those things where, you take a month off, you’ve lost it all. That’s why we’ve got the summer weightroom open. Some show, some don’t. It is what it is.”
Concerning the upcoming season, Giles says, “I think the biggest thing for us going in is really kind of figuring out what our identity is going to be this year. How we’re going to move the ball. What are we going to do? We know we’re going to run the ball. We’ve got a much different quarterback this year than what we’ve had the past couple of years. I think that’s a big deal. On top of that, I think we’ve got our idea of a base defense going in, but we know who we have to play, we know who we have to beat. So, what exactly are we going to do? A lot of two-a-days is going to be to figure that stuff is.”
Asked if he has in mind who he wants to have in key positions, he says that usually works out in the first few weeks of practice. He also says his approach is not so much to bench guys but to move them around to other positions. “Usually by week three, you’ve got a good idea of where everybody should be.”
Giles says the offense this year will continue to be primarily a running game. He says that statistically in the past, the passing game has been good, with 70% completions, with several big passing plays. He says the strength of the Panther running game has made it to where defensive teams start to adjust to the run and aren’t prepared for the pass, especially on big plays. He says he thinks a strong running game will definitely translate into great pass plays when necessary.
The Panther defensive line will be strong again this year, says Giles. The secondary will need work, he says, and will definitely be something the team will need to bring up to speed. He says against big passing teams like Eunice will require a strong defensive backfield as well as aggressive and smart pressure applied to the quarterback by the defensive line.
Giles thinks the Panthers Football Team this year will be “a top-four team. I think we’re going to be the hunter, not the hunted this year. You look at Texico, they’ve got everybody coming back. That leaves them to probably be the favorite going in with their strong showing in the state championship. You’ve got Eunice, who’s got speed everywhere. Anywhere you look, they’re going to be faster than anybody they play this year, so, that’s a big strength for them. Then you look at Santa Rosa, and they’re always Santa Rosa. You know, they may not be the beast from the ‘80s and the ‘90s or even early 2000s, but they’re still really solid. They put out a really good football team every year. So, you know, I see us running with those three. Where we fit in? That’s what the playoffs are for. There are some other teams out there, you know, that could show some things, with Tularosa and some guys like that. Who knows? But that’s kind of where I see it.”