The Greeneville football team is hitting the road for the second week in a row, this time heading north to Bluff City to take on Sullivan East in a Region 1-4A matchup.
“We are going to have to show up ready to go and we can’t take a week off looking ahead to a big-time matchup in two weeks,” Greeneville coach Eddie Spradlen said. “We have to continue to get better. Sullivan East is a team that does some stuff you don’t see a lot of and if you don’t do the right things in pass defense they can really make you look bad.”
The Greene Devils are coming off of a 49-6 win at Seymour in which they improved to 4-0 and 2-0 in Region 1-4A play.
Sullivan East is 0-4 on the year and 0-1 in Region 1-4A. The Patriots are coming off of a 44-19 loss to Cherokee.
Despite their record the Patriots pose some challenges this week with an offense that throws the ball 37 times per game. Quarterback Peyton Lingerfelt is averaging 287 yards through the air per game while completing 55 percent of his passes in the Air Raid scheme. His favorite target is Blue Proffitt who has 30 receptions for 523 yards and seven touchdowns this season.
A week ago Greeneville’s secondary intercepted Seymour three times, and the Devils will put a lot of emphasis on defending the pass again this week.
“We’ll have our hands full with what they do offensively. They lined up with five receivers nearly every play last week.  It’s a good challenge for us. They will use different motions and different alignments, and if you don’t do your job right somebody is going to be open,” Spradlen said.
Greeneville has a pretty potent passing game of its own and quarterback Caden Baugh has thrown for 679 yards and nine touchdowns through four games while completing 77.5 percent of his passes.
On the ground Greeneville is running for nearly 200 yards per game, and Baugh leads that effort with 288 yards and five touchdowns. Last week against Seymour Maddox Bishop ran for 70 yards on 11 carries and scored twice. Spradlen felt like it was one his best games on the ground as a Greene Devil.
“That might have been Maddox’s best game at running back,” Spradlen said. “He was patient and ran it hard. He got hit at the line of scrimmage a couple of times, but he kept moving his feet to pick up some yards.”
The Patriots run an aggressive defense that will bring pressure nearly every play. That will be a challenge for Greeneville’s offensive line, but will also leave speedy receivers Zaydyn Anderson and Taren Claridy in one-on-one matchup that they can win.
“It’s going to be big night for our offensive line,” Spradlen said. “We have worked on their pressures all week. We are going to face a lot of pressure from a lot of different looks to try to slow us down on offense.”
Greeneville and Sullivan East have met every year for the last 10 years and the Greene Devils have won every one of those meetings with an average margin of victory of 53 points. Last year Greeneville won 73-8.
The Devils lead the all-time series 18-4-1. The last time Sullivan East beat Greeneville was 2004 in the first round of the playoffs.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. in Bluff City and the game will be live on the air on WGRV 99.5 FM.
