PEABODY — Preseason football is just days away, and Peabody head coach Mark Bettencourt already knows where most of his attention will be when the Tanners hit the field: the offensive line.
“Like any public high school football coach, it’s kind of the same every year,” Bettencourt said. “What do you need? What did you lose? Who’s coming back? You have to plot out, going into the preseason, what you need to focus on. Some years, it’s easy and you get a lot of returners. For us, this year, the glaring hole is our offensive line.”
Peabody graduated 10 offensive linemen from last year’s roster, leaving Matthew Dresser as the only returner in the trenches.
“That’s a pretty big piece of the pie that needs to be filled,” Bettencourt said. “What was unique was a lot of our backup linemen last year were seniors. Now, we hope the younger guys put the time and work in, and that they’re going to come in and compete for a job.”
Bettencourt said the summer brought plenty of chances for players to get ready, from conditioning camps to their own workout routines.
“I was happy with the effort a lot of kids put in this summer,” he said. “The No. 1 thing when you’re coming into preseason is you want to create competition.”
While the line is a question mark, Bettencourt is confident under center with senior quarterback and captain Luke Maglione.
“He appeared as a sophomore, started as a junior, and now, this being his senior year, you hope you don’t have to do a ton of motivation on him,” Bettencourt said. “He should be able to go out in a strong fashion and have a great senior year.”
The backfield is another point of evaluation.
“We want to make sure we have two or three guys who can handle the load of our running game,” Bettencourt said. “With our offense being a spread offense, they have more responsibility than when we used to be a Power I formation. Now, they have to pass protect, run between the tackles, and be able to catch the ball off a flare route or screen route.”
Defensively, the Tanners are replacing multiple players in the secondary.
Let the player competitions begin.
“With three or four defensive backs in at a time, we want eight or nine guys fighting for that job,” Bettencourt said.
Above all, Bettencourt wants to see who’s ready for the grind of varsity football.
“We want to see who’s physically ready because you don’t want anyone to get hurt, but you also have to evaluate if they understand what we’re trying to do — the schemes, the combinations, the technique.”
And they’ll need to learn quickly. After two late-August scrimmages, the Tanners kick off Friday, Sept. 5 in Melrose at 7 p.m.
“We play some pretty good teams that have some good size on the defensive line,” Bettencourt said. “I’m thinking of Masco (Masconomet), Winchester, Lynn English — they’ve got some big boys up front. We’ve got to be ready for that.”
