What to Make of the Football Season So Far?

Montague's Chris Carroll breaks up
a pass last week against Ravenna. Montague
might be back on track after a slow start.
(Photo by Andy Roberts)

We're already a third of the way done with most teams' football seasons, and tonight we'll be 44% finished. That's depressing, folks.

What to make of what we've gotten so far? Here's a team-by-team look at our area's 6 football teams' seasons through 3 games:

Hart — Poor Hart. They're just too small a school to be playing in the West Michigan Conference. There are only about 20 kids on the entire squad this year, so the Pirates don't even have the luxury of a JV team. The results have borne that out — Hart got blitzed in Week 1 by an Onekama team it destroyed last year, and has since taken lopsided defeats against two of the better teams in the WMC in Oakridge and North Muskegon. Hart's never even played in the state football playoffs, which go back to the 1970s. There's been rumblings of late that Hart wants to leave the WMC, but they haven't made that move yet, mostly because of teams like soccer, competitive cheer, and others that might be without a home if they pulled the trigger.

Hesperia — Hesperia's story is probably the most interesting one so far. The Panthers are 3-0 for the first time since 1992. They've been helped by a relatively soft early schedule, but still, Hesperia is halfway to the magical six-win mark that would get them into the playoffs (they haven't been since 2007), and still has six games to collect the three remaining wins. They face winless Holton tonight, a win that Hesperia should be able to get. From there the road map is clear for the Panthers: they would just have to defeat Central Montcalm again in the season finale, as they did last year, and would have to flip the result of one of the four remaining games, all of which were losses last year (Lakeview, Newaygo, Reed City and Chippewa Hills). A couple of those games were close a year ago, and this Panthers team appears, at least early, to be far better than it was in 2012, so there's hope. It should be interesting to see how that progresses.

Montague — Montague might have figured something out at halftime of last week's Ravenna game. The Wildcats went into the locker room that day trailing 20-14 and on the precipice of a loss that would've severely damaged their chances of locking in their 13th straight playoff berth. But Montague exploded for five unanswered touchdowns in the second half, went to 2-1, and if coach Pat Collins' assertion that the team is going to look like that the rest of the year comes true, they'll be right on track. Sophomore quarterback Jacob Buchberger appeared to grow up very quickly in that game, and he has plenty of weapons with which to work. This week's game against Shelby will say a lot about whether the Wildcats really are on the uptick or whether last Friday was just a case of a better team imposing their will on a lesser one when the game was on the line. Last season, the Cats won a classic in OT in that matchup. Another one would, with layups against Hart, Mason County Central and (probably) Whitehall still remaining on the schedule, pretty much lock in the team's playoff bid.

Reeths-Puffer — The Rockets are tough to read so far, mainly because I haven't seen them yet. The vagaries of the schedule have disallowed me from seeing them in action until their homecoming game in two weeks. But what I've gathered from the stats is if R-P is in the lead, you're in trouble. Julian Munday and Dereko Riley have proven to be an extremely potent one-two punch at running back. The trouble for the Rockets will come if they fall behind, because quarterback Garrett Blanshine is not built for comebacks. R-P is 2-1 this year, but has very tough contests left with Muskegon, Mona Shores and Zeeland East in league play, not to mention tonight's game with East Kentwood, a lopsided loss for the Rockets a year ago. The Rockets will need to win at least two of those games to get to the playoffs in all likelihood, a tall task for a still-growing team.

Shelby — The train just keeps rolling for the Tigers. I've been as impressed with the job Lorenzo Rodriguez does as Shelby coach as I am with any sports team in the area, and it's because his team just wins with what it's got. Last year, the Tigers got to the Division 6 state semifinals on line play, defense and guts despite not really having game-breaking talent at any skill position, with the possible exception of linebacker Ben Schroeder. They're doing it again this year, with Forrest Courtright now playing the role of Schroeder. Shelby's 3-0 heading into tonight's big game with Montague. It's especially big for the Tigers because probably no team in the WMC has a tougher remaining schedule than Shelby. Hart and Ravenna should provide W's, but there's no other sure win on the slate, with Oakridge and North Muskegon looking like the class of the league so far. (Those two face off tonight, which should be interesting.)

Whitehall — The only area football team with a new coach, the Vikings were always going to face an uphill climb this year after graduating a talented crop of seniors and installing a new veer-based attack under Tony Sigmon. I don't think anyone thought it would be this rough, though, as the Vikings have just flat-out not been able to move the football. The team still doesn't really know who its QB is — Connor Rake has the job right now by default over fellow sophomore Zarren Aylor because the latter was tossed out of last week's game and by rule will sit this week as well — and by staying on the field so long, its defense is being left out to dry. In the Vikings' defense, they've faced an extremely tough conference slate so far, and tonight's game offers a chance to get healthy against Mason County Central, whose team is just as small as Hart's. But if the Vikes can't get this one, it'll be tough to see a win anywhere on the schedule except for perhaps that Hart game.