FOOTBALL TAB: CBA's Brooks confident, key elements return from 2015

By Justin Hayes
Published in Sports on August 19, 2016 1:48 PM

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By JUSTIN HAYES

jhayes@newsargus.com

PIKEVILLE -- The field house at Charles B. Aycock is a purist-bent coaching lair, trimmed in powder blue and humming with the lingering ode of workout gear and 419 bermuda.

Two white boards hang on opposite walls, each ripe with position-specific assignments, route angles and dry-erase memos that posture like dot-matrix constellations.

Drawn are bunch formations. Hitches. Come backs and slants.

There are also an assortment of digs, trips, curls and hooks. Deep in the DNA of this spiraled chain, late-hurry-614 lives.

To the casual observer, it's a mess. An endless, no-net freefall through the codified language of authentic football gibberish.

Gobbledygook.

But for Aycock head coach Steve Brooks, it is the Queen's English -- and the method by which his program will shred the air this fall at Hardy-Talton Stadium.

"Our goal is to win a state championship," he says. "If you don't have that mentality, you won't ever get there."

The Spurrier influence is undeniable.

It spills from Brooks in technical bursts, just like it did with the old ball coach, and registers the air an octave or so between a chopped-up blues lick and third-and-one.

Even the visor is a spot-on match.

"My Dad was an O-line coach," Brooks said. "And I hung out with the quarterbacks all the time... he used to say, why are you over there with the quarterbacks?"

Here's the skinny, Pops -- late-hurry-614 trumps Driving Miss Daisy.

Six days a week and twice on Sunday, Brooks' version of mach-speed pitch-and-catch is anything but a dive, or a veer, or God forbid, three slow-rolling yards and a cloud of Wing-T.

"I liked the fast pace," Brooks said of his immediate love affair with the spread. "(And) I also felt it got more people involved and put other teams in a bind."

If anything, this year's regime is exactly that -- an aggregation of letter-winning, playmaking riches.

Brooks returns nine key offensive elements in his helter-skelter playbook, and is apt to position each in matchup riddles all over the field, no matter the down and distance.

Need pop and sizzle out of the backfield?

Observe Jake Flowers and Caleb Gough, both two-year starters.

Desirous of a presence over the middle, or a high-point specialist in the red zone?

See N.C. State commit Damien Darden.

Require letter-form precision outside the numbers?

Please note Chandler Matthews.

"I think the biggest key is most of them have played on the varsity level together for three years," Brooks said. "I don't think there's any pieces that don't fit."

He's right.

Consider the group's statistical testimony.

Last fall, the quartet combined to produce over 3,200 yards of total offense and 31 touchdowns. Trying to stop late-hurry 614 -- or any one of its drill-down, check-with-me variations -- renders all the haunt of a whisper trying to lasso a funnel cloud.

All things considered, not bad for a baseball school.

"They say you can't win at Aycock," Brooks said with a laugh. "Only in baseball... (and) the day we take that chip off our shoulder is the day I probably need to leave."

For now, Brooks is content to see just how far his boys can throw it.