The Brownwood Lions concluded their first week of preseason football practice Saturday morning with an intrasquad scrimmage at Gordon Wood Stadium, and first-year head coach Jeryl Brixey saw some highs and lows during the performance.

“We’re in a good place right now for a first Saturday scrimmage, but we’ve got a million miles to go before we play that first game against Wylie,” Brixey said. “The great news is we gave ourselves plenty to work on. I don’t like saying things before I watch the video because there’s times I thought it was great and you watch the video and it’s awful, and there’s time you thought it was awful and you watch the video and it turned out a heck a lot better than you thought it was. Just walking off here this morning, I thought the kids played hard and had fun, which is what I want them to do. Football should be fun to coach and to play. The work everyday is not necessarily fun, but you have to learn how to enjoy that struggle.”

The scrimmage began with a heavy dosage of run plays, then pass plays, before breaking into traditional drives toward the end.

As for Brixey’s initial on the spot impressions, “What I told the kids was with penalties and turnovers this morning we wouldn’t have beat Stephenville Junior High. I preached from the day I got here you get beat with penalties and turnovers and we had false starts and two or three picks, and that’s the negative. The positive is I feel we ran to the football hard, the kids gave great effort at times, but we have to get where we give great effort all the time.”

Earlier in the week, Brixey stated he was eager to see how the Lions would fare in full pads, as Saturday would provide the new coaching staff its first opportunity to evaluation the team’s physicality.

“I didn’t see anybody running from contact,” Brixey said. “They ran through some tackles and I don’t like that, so we need to tackle better obviously. At times our offensive line got knocked backwards and we dang sure can’t do that. We have to have a better attitude about aggression up front.”

Among the standout plays in the scrimmage, Judson Coalson threw a touchdown pass to Carson Noe on an out route, in which Noe broke a couple of tackles and raced down the sideline for a 60-yard score.

Later, quarterback Riggs Gray hurled a jump ball that Sirr Beam pulled down around the 40 yard line and completed a 65-yard touchdown toss.

Trent Buffington added a 10-yard touchdown carry later in the scrimmage.

Defensively, Conner Cornelius intercepted a Gray pass and returned it 35 yards to complete a pick six.

The bulk of the Lions’ offensive plays came on the ground, as is the trademark of the offense Brixey and the coaching staff are installing, and Levi Pearson received a steady diet of carries.

“I’m encouraged and I told the kids I’ve never been a part of a great football team where we went out and the offense ran all over the defense,” Brixey said. “The great football teams I’ve been a part of, the offense had trouble making a yard against our defense. There were times I felt like we were playing great defense and there were times I felt like we had alignment issues that we were able to take advantage of offensively, and that’s a big part of what we do offensively is trying to create alignment issues for the defense.”

Brixey also stated that the opening week of practice, and Saturday’s intrasquad scrimmage, would go a long way in determining which players see more time exclusively on either offense or defense.

“We’ll go over the video with the kids Monday morning and start working on fixing things,” Brixey said. “They’re not going to fix it in one day, but we want to start to see a little bit of movement.”

The Lions will take part in their first scrimmage Thursday at Wichita Falls Legacy, then host Alvarado on Aug. 21 before opening the regular season Friday, Aug. 29 at Class 5A Division II Abilene Wylie.