Cobras expand attack

A pass play that went for 20 yards was the first play from scrimmage in Sigourney-Keota’s game at Central Decatur last Friday and it was by Sigourney-Keota, the team that is second in Class 1A in rushing offense.

The Cobras do more than traverse the grass. They found a play that worked, some areas to exploit and ran a successful 2-minute offense to score. Colten Clarahan was 9-for-25 passing on the season but was 8-of-11 for 201 yards against the Cardinals of Central Decatur. He had thrown twice as many interceptions as touchdowns on the season, but reversed that ratio Friday with touchdown passes to Aidan Anderson and Evan Dawson.

“I think it was about experimenting with what we can do and it was successful,” said Clarahan, whose primary sport is baseball. He pitches. ”I have no problem against passing.“

Why throw it when Cade Molyneux has run for 1,480 yards?

“That’s what we need our passing to be,“ Sigourney head coach Jared Jensen said. ”A want-to and not a need to.“

It shows potential playoff foes when the Cobras are on, they can pass very well.

“Colten stood in there on the touchdown that was on our reverse pass,” Jensen said. “Colten got killed because it’s a slow developing play. Some coaches I have had that aren’t with us now watched it online and asked me, ‘Was that that one play we always practiced and never ran.’ I said, ‘yeah we finally pulled it out.’”

“I got the ball back after it was reversed, looked down field and Aiden is running free with 15 yards on everybody,” Clarahan said. “I saw the guy coming at me but I knew I had to step in to the throw to get rid of it. Evan Dawson was going to kick the field goal but after a timeout and I was able to gather myself.”

Clarahan leads Class 1A in made field goals, longest field goal and sixth in PAT (30-of-33).

“Colten has a live arm and he’s very accurate, but we have been just inches off on a lot of passes,“ said Jensen, who blamed himself as play caller. When there’s a couple incompletes he will ”run and get our 3 1/2 yards. We pulled out (the reverse pass) because at the time we needed a shell shocker. And that was definitely it.”

That made the score 16-3. The Cobras made it 24-3 before the half when a 2-minute offense was effective.

“It will give teams another thing to worry about,” said Levi Crawford, who leads the Cobras with nine receptions for 230 yards and three touchdowns. “Teams are worried about our run, but I think we’re going to try and pass a little bit more in the playoffs.”

Neither of the two interceptions that were thrown were a called pass, both were field goal attempts gone bad. “One was on me,” Clarahan said. “I should’ve just thrown it away. Maybe we got those (bad field goal attempts) out of our system.”

Systematic practicing during the week found the first play of the game. “It worked good and Coach (Aaron) Sellers and Jensen said ‘That’s our first play.’ Coach asked if I like that play and I said, ‘of course,” Clarahan said. “Obviously we trust the run more than the pass but we have trust in everybody.”