Jones pleased with progress of Wildcats

With school in session, El Dorado's football team can finally lock into a routine. Tuesday's practice is usually the most physical day of the week. Going into Friday's benefit game against North Little Rock at Memorial Stadium, Coach Steven Jones believes his team is on the right track.

“Yesterday was probably our best practice since we started fall camp,” Jones said on Wednesday. “We were pretty physical (Tuesday) and had some team periods where we were going ones against ones. Our scout team guys have done a good job of giving us a look for what we think North Little Rock is going to do. Everybody was really involved in what we had going on. I thought (Tuesday) was our best practice so we've had a really good week, so far.”

Jones singled out junior offensive lineman Devin Walter and senior defensive lineman Hayden Owen as players who have made a surge on the field for the Wildcats.

“Those guys have really emerged as key players on both sides of the ball,” he said. “They're going to be key players up front for us.”

The Wildcats are coming off their PurpleWhite scrimmage on Friday. Jones had a different take on the scrimmage after reviewing the film.

“It's hard to coach an intersquad scrimmage because you don't have the offense coming off the field to get ready for the next drive. You have the second offense going right back in there so there really wasn't a lot of adjustments made during that game and it kind of flew by,” Jones said. “At the end, I wasn't very happy with how we played. But when I looked at the tape, we did some really good stuff. It was kind of a whirlwind with both sides of the ball being out there the entire time. I mean, that's how it always is in an intersquad scrimmage. But when you get time to go back and evaluate it, you can see the good in what's going on.

“I think we did some really good things. There wasn't anything glaring out there that was bad. I think up front we played well. At times we were able to run the football. Defense did a good job of adjusting to that and stopping the run.

“We were pretty well back and forth, which, at this point in the year, it's a good thing to be evenly matched since we've gone against each other so much.

“Overall, pleased, but it took sitting down watching the tape to come to that assumption.”