2023 Pigskin Preview: NRHEG has the depth to step up and the playbook down pat

(ABC 6 News) — The NRHEG Panthers are gearing up for football once again following a rough 1-8 campaign in 2022. A crucial handful of seniors from last season are gone, including Makota Misgen and two-way star Andrew Phillips.

Phillips was the Panthers’ leading rusher a year ago as well as one of their leading tacklers on defense. Now, it’s up to the next batch of starters to fill his spot. Offensively, the backfield looks to be a running back corps by committee while there are some rising stars in the receiver corps.

“The next guys have to be in line and ready to step up,” senior defensive end/punter George Roesler assessed. “If they can’t step up, we need people behind them to step up. We just need quality depth throughout the whole team.”

“We got a senior that came back up this year, 6’5″ Jackson (Chrz),” senior quarterback Alden Dobberstein said. “He’s been putting in work, he’s been at everything all summer, so he seems like he’s ready to go.”

NRHEG feels certain things will improve for the better as the team has really taken studying their playbook to heart. So much so that Head Coach Marc Kruger thinks this is the most intelligent team the program will field this year.

“Just based on the playbook — we have the entire playbook in this summer, got a lot of stuff done,” Coach Kruger added. “So we can do a lot of things, play around with formations, motions, all that sort of stuff. So, it’s being exotic in that way.”

The Panthers’ first game of the season will be at Randolph on Thursday, August 31.