Preview Superserien, Tyresö - Carlstad
3/5, 15.00 Bollmoravallen

Från Carstad

Preview from Head Coach Tracey Gere

Time once again for the Crusaders to reload and brush-off a bitter loss in the finals (and they don't get any more bitter than 2007). The Crusaders have also faced adversity in the off-season with organization changes and losses of some key players. And just when we thought things were settling down, our American import/coordinator gets injured and sent home. The replacements, Max Warner (offensive coordinator) and Cedric Townsend (quarterback), only arrived a few days ago. However, they have already had a tremendous impact on practice. Max appears to be just what we needed at offensive coordinator. He brings tremendous energy and enthusiasm to the offense, provides constant feedback to the players, and clearly knows his stuff inside and out. Cedric has immediately shown that he has complete command of the offense. 

The Crusaders will open the season with 6 new starters on defense and 4 new starters on offense. We will be an extremely thin team, with at least 2 players (Fredrik Vikberg and Joakim Holm) playing substantial minutes on both offense and defense. Many young players will be asked to fill key roles - as starters, key back-ups and on special teams. The keys for us this year will be injuries (avoiding them) and the development of the younger players.

On offense, we will feature a spread-gun attack that is similar to what we have done the past 2 seasons. An added element this year will be the no huddle, which is something that Max and Cedric bring with them from NC Wesylan. Our offensive philosophy will be simple - spread the defense out, make it defend the whole field and take what it gives us. We believe that the presence of Marcus Seger in the backfield and the speed of Cedric Townsend at QB will help make us very difficult to defend. The loss of Johan Stål as a goto receiver will clearly create a challenge for us in running the spread, but we believe we can make-up for some of that loss with the return of Joakim Holm to full-time offense and an increased role for some of our other veterans (such as Kalle Flognman and Christian Forsman). 

Due to the last minute changes in our offense, we have not had a lot of time to prepare for Tyresö's defense. We also don't know too much about this year's team since Tyresö (like us) has not played any games yet. In general, we want to force them to bring their perimeter players into the box to defend the run. We also want to make them pay for their blitzes, particularly the zone blitzes. Here we feel Cedric is an asset because he has already shown a tremendous ability to read defenses. Finally, we like the blocking match-ups we can get with Joakim Holm at TE, given that we expect Tyresö to use dime personnel (6 DB's).

On defense, we will feature the 3-3-5, just as we did last season. We will try to present a lot of movement from our 8 LB's and DB's in an effort to keep the offense off balance. Again, we can't be to certain what Tyresö will look like on offense. But we expect the spread as their basic look, with lots of motion. We will be paying special attention to the quick screen game, as well as fakes off of this, since this is something that hurt us in both match-ups last season. 

Expected starters:

Offense:
QB - Cedric Townsend
RB - Marcus Seger
WR - Kalle Flognman
WR - Christian Forsman
WR - Joakim Holm
WR - Ted Olandersson
OL - Thomas Falkelind
OL - Shoresh Palanjafi
OL - Mattias Olesen
OL - Fredrik Vikberg
OL - Carl Romlin

Defense:
DL - Joakim Holm
DL - Fredrik Vikberg
DL - Alexander Thelander
LB - Daniel Juhlin
LB - Cristen Monclair
LB - Johan Björn
DB - Olof Bjurstrom
DB - Kalle Gronquist
DB - Victor Jonsson
DB - Peter Carlsson
DB - Tracey Gere

Injuries: Carl Carlsson (out), Jörgen Gustafsson (probable)

/Tracey Gere 2008-05-01