The Cerritos College Falcons played the Mt. San Antonio Mounties on Oct.19 dropping their third straight home game 61-14.
The Falcons struggled on both sides of the ball during this game with the defense allowing the first points on the board.
Cerritos defense allowed a total of 538 yards to the Mounties offense with 315 passing yards and 223 rushing yards.
“Our job is to stop them and so obviously when they score quickly and had some quick strikes it puts us at a disadvantage,” said defensive coordinator/associate head coach Fred Fimbres.
According to Fimbres and Cerritos linebacker EJ Smith, the play-action pass and run game was hurting the defense the most.
Fimbres told his defense on the sideline to tackle better, fill the gaps and watch out for the play-action to stay disciplined.
To improve on the issue of tackling, Smith said the team needs to add more tackling circuits in their Tuesdays and Thursdays practices.
Smith added to this week’s issues by stating “We just got to be slow on our reads.”
“We can’t step up too fast to be washed down, we’re just too fast reading, coming down, just getting sucked up, letting the running back cut back,” Smith finished.
Fimbres is looking to improve on all the issues the defense had this game taking accountability for these issues.
“I have to do a better job preparing our team and getting them ready to play, whatever that is,” Fimbres said.
The Falcons struggled to get the passing game going on offense as well as they were without their quarterback Evan Tomich
Later in this game, they would also be without their quarterback Dylan Eldredge as he went down with an injury.
The running game wasn’t going well for the Falcons either as they weren’t able to rely on it as they were down early with an average of 2.2 yards a rush.
Cerritos would also lose the turnover battle with two lost fumbles, one returned for a touchdown and two interceptions thrown by Eldredge which were each returned for touchdowns.
“We have to play better, there’s no doubt about that but when you play the number one team in the conference…you have to play almost perfect football and that’s the challenge that’s what we need to be able to step up and do,” Fimbres said.
Fimbres shared his thoughts on how the team is looking to improve coming off this loss.
“The preparation that we’re looking to do is just to play like we played earlier in the year.
I think that the big challenge for us is not to forget what just happened…we have to take this as a learning opportunity.”
Fimbres finished by stating that the team has three more games to play and if the team plays the way that they are capable of playing, they should be able to finish on a high note.
Cerritos next matchup is another conference game at Citrus.
