Braden River linebackers ready to improve on missed tackling in Venice rematch

The film didn’t lie.

The evasive nature of Venice running back Matt Laroche, coupled with Braden River defenders coming up empty-handed, produced a glaring issue.

There were too many missed tackles.

So Pirates assistant coach Frank Post, who coaches the linebackers, reverted to the basics with his team following that 42-35 loss at Venice last month, where Laroche ran for 325 yards and five touchdowns.

“It basically came down to technique. We just had to go back to the drawing board,” said Post, whose team gets a rematch with the Indians in Friday’s Class 7A-Region 3 semifinal.

The drawing board meant honing on a tackling drill already implemented in each Braden River football practice this fall.

Borrowing the hawk tackle technique from the Seattle Seahawks, the Pirates refocused their efforts in avoiding any future missed tackle opportunities in games with performing the drill in practice even more.

The drill also doubles as a safe way to avoid concussions by taking a player’s head out of the tackle.

“It’s cleaned up the tackling quite a bit,” Post said.

Linebackers such as Noah Arce, Matthew Haftke, Gavyn Purdy and Hunter Barnes alongside Chase Knopf, Davontay Seabrooks and others that can fill those spots on the field have benefited.

Since allowing Laroche to run wild, Braden River’s defense clamped down.

The Pirates gave up just 51 rushing yards at Naples Gulf Coast last week in their playoff opener, and the first-team defense has only allowed seven points all season outside of the October showdown with Venice.

“We just saw a bunch of mistakes that we knew we had to fix in practice,” said Haftke, who has 41 tackles this season.

Haftke tallied his first career interception last Friday, and Arce had a pick that paved the way for Braden River to pull within one score of the Indians last month.

Haftke recovered the onside kick at the end of the game, too, despite Braden River not tying it up in the closing seconds.

Both players, who are best friends off the field, have excellent hands, Bradley said.

“Those are guys that you just know you can trust that will do things the right way,” Bradley said. “They’ll always be in the right spot.”

Arce and Haftke have roamed Braden River’s defense as linebackers for the last three years.

The off-field chemistry works on the field, too, and their familiarity with each other has helped fuel a linebacking corps. doesn’t give much to opponents.

“We don’t even have to say something,” said Arce, who leads the team with 80 tackles this year. “As long as we both point at something, we both see it at the same time.”

Last year’s group, which featured Chase Balliette (now at Augustana University) and Ronnie McClellan alongside Haftke and Arce, was an integral piece to a defense that racked up 28 interceptions and several fumble recoveries.

Now the duo are paramount to the Pirates’ success on Friday as they try to figure out how to do something teams facing Venice haven’t accomplished this fall: stopping Laroche.

He’s rewritten the Sarasota County record books with a 2,075-yard regular season that shattered the mark former Sarasota High and University of South Florida great Mike Ford set in 2004.

Ford ran for 2,016 yards that season during the regular season, before racking up even more yards in the playoffs.

Laroche proved difficult to stop last week, and last month when Braden River got its first dose of his sensational season.

“We’ve played good defense here for the better part of three years and we’re not going to have one game throw everything out the window,” Bradley said. “We just have to clean up a few things. We missed some tackles, but we put some kids in bad positions that led to some of those missed tackles and obviously not taking anything away from Laroche. He’s a heckuva football player.”

But there’s a driving force behind stopping Laroche.

“We don’t want this to be our last game,” Haftke said.

On Friday, that test becomes a reality.

This story was originally published November 16, 2016 at 10:02 PM with the headline "Braden River linebackers ready to improve on missed tackling in Venice rematch."