Bulldogs trying to avoid slow start

MILAN – Jeff Morris has been the head coach of the Milan High football team for 20 seasons and about to begin No. 21.

Math confirms the 200-win mark he surpassed last year means the Bulldogs have averaged 10 victories per year since he took over in 1996.

“It’s not about me,” Morris said looking back on the past two decades. “You don’t win many games without good players, and you don’t make long playoff runs and compete for and win championships without some special players.

“We’ve had a bunch of really good and really special players come through here that I’m proud to say I coached.”

The Bulldogs finished second in Region 7-3A last season en route to a run to the Class 3A quarterfinals.

Considering the slow start the Bulldogs had to the season with a 1-3 start, one might be able to argue 2015 was Morris’ best overall coaching job of his career.

“I don’t know about that, because you could also say some of the best teams we played were at the beginning of the year,” Morris said. “But there was a time there where we had to take a look at ourselves as a program and a team and figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the year and how we were going to go about business.”

That happened after the loss to Huntingdon. It’s not often either the Mustangs or Bulldogs have the clock running on each other because of the 35-point mercy rule. But Huntingdon accomplished that at Milan’s Johnnie Hale Stadium.

“That was the low point, but that was also the time we turned things around and started to become the team I thought we would become,” Morris said.

The plan for this year is to avoid that slow start. The tough opponents at the beginning of the season are still there. But the Bulldogs had a small senior class last year, and they have one of the largest senior groups in the area this year.

The line appears to be back to a normal Milan-sized line (big) with a powerful group of backs running the ball behind them with guys like junior Anthony Ballard and senior J.P. Porter returning to carry the ball.

“We’re not making any kind of big predictions or anything, but we feel good about what we have coming back,” Morris said. “Does it mean we think we’ll go to Cookeville or win the region or anything like that? That’s our goal, but there are things we’ve got to accomplish before we can even think about that.

“Our region is good this year, and we can’t look too far ahead. We plan to keep our sites on each week and let the big picture take care of itself, but we know how we want that big picture to look.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751

Milan Bulldogs

Last year’s record/finish: 9-4 and Class 3A quarterfinals/Region 7-3A runner-up

3 key returners: Jacob Rimmer (OL); Anthony Ballard (RB); Blake Chandler (QB)

3 key games: Aug. 19 vs. Peabody; Sept. 2 at Liberty; Sept. 30 at Dyersburg