Bobcats looking for consistency vs. Ingram

Comfort football coach Jay Rieken said he saw a mix of good and bad things from his team during last week’s season opener in Johnson City.

Rieken hopes they can continue the good things and improve on the bad when the Bobcats visit Ingram Friday night for a 7 p.m. game.

Ingram is coming off a 14-13 win over Stockdale, while Comfort starts 0-1 after falling to Johnson City, 58-20.

One of the good things for Comfort in last week’s game is that they tallied 20 first-half points, but the Cats were shutout in the second half.

Rieken said they seem to wear down over the final two quarters.

“They wore us down pretty good,” he said. “We moved the ball but they had one or two goal line stands on us, so we didn’t execute in the red zone.”

Another positive is that Comfort’s offense ran for 338 yards and actually outgained Johnson City (331) on the ground by 7 yards.

The Cats had four players at about 90 rushing yards after Gio Lopez tallied 89 rushing yards, Micah Nye had 88 and Topper Sterling finished with 84, while Mason West added 79 yards. Sterling, West and Nye all scored rushing TDs for their three scores.

Rieken said one thing they need to improve on is how they started. They had a penalty on their first play, a fumble on their second play and then gave up a safety on a bad snap soon thereafter.

“We didn’t start fast, it was a worst case scenario. If it could happen, it happened,” he said. “We need to learn from our mistakes, execute better and trust in what we’re doing. We can’t afford to turn the ball over and depth wise we need to buckle down.

“We’re short on depth and we need to be more mentally tough and play through that,” Rieken added. “We got a little tired in that second half and they hit us with some big plays.”

Rieken said he and the team consider Ingram a rival since they’re both 3A schools and are only about 30 miles apart.

“It’s a good rivalry and always a tough place to play,” he said. “We all know each other and it’s a good atmosphere when we play there, their student body gets involved.”