Concord football focused on a new season

MANCHESTER – Eric Brown knows that the bull’s eye is centered on the Concord High School football team.

But the Crimson Tide coach also knows that a lot of those players who earned that mark aren’t suiting up for Concord this season.

“We’re missing a lot of guys,” Brown said. “We had a strong senior class, in numbers. We have key guys back, but we don’t have the depth that we have last year. We have to stay injury free.”

One of those key guys is quarterback Robert Law, who started every game of Concord’s undefeated season and didn’t throw an interception. He’s joined by running back Leo Sudieh and receiver Jacob Szulc, giving Concord a lot of top-end talent at its skill positions.

The real key for the Tide is getting everyone on the same page, something that didn’t happen during Concord’s scrimmage with Pinkerton last Friday at the Queen City Jamboree.

“We’re progressing, we’re doing some good things, we’re trying out some new things,” Brown said. “If we were keeping score in a real game, I’d be very disappointed, but I like the things we tried to work on.

“We made mistakes in the first scrimmage, we made mistakes in the second scrimmage and we made mistakes (last Friday). We’ll correct those mistakes and move forward and get ready.”

As for expectations, Brown feels his players have been handling the role of defending champions well in the preseason.

“From day one, we said last year was last year,” he said. “We have a goal to be a championship team each and every year, so last year means nothing. The kids have handled it really well. They work hard every day and try to get better. We take it one day at a time. We did that last year, we did that five years ago, we’ll do that now.”

Concord opens the season Friday by hosting Goffstown.