Bulldogs prepare for Steelers

The North Bay Bulldogs do some jumping jacks at practice Tuesday night at Rollie Fischer field. The Dogs hope they will jump all over the Steelers Saturday night in the club's home opener. Photo by Chris Dawson.

The North Bay Bulldogs have been practicing all week in preparation for their NFC home opener Saturday night at Rollie Fischer field.

The Bulldogs will face their Northern rivals from Sault Ste. Marie. Both clubs come into the game with identical 1-1 records with both teams losing to Oakville and winning against Markham. However, the Bulldogs come into this game on a winning note, after defeating Markham 21-12 last Saturday, while the Steelers were humbled 44-9 on their home turf by the Longhorns.

“The Soo is always a tough team, whether they come with 30 guys or 60 guys they come to North Bay and they always come ready to play,” said Bulldogs head coach Marc Mathon.

“The Soo have some key defensive linemen that we need to account for Brandon Lewis is always a big player, so we need to continue to work on our timing on offense and working the edge, maintaining our splits, make sure we give our running backs room to run, explosiveness, open field tackling and our pass rush game, if we are able to improve in those areas as well as our punt coverage I think we should be okay this weekend.”

Mathon expects to see a lot of the Steelers ground game as the Soo ate up more than 10 minutes of the clock during a drive last week against the Longhorns. On the other hand the Steelers passing game has struggled as quarterback Travis Mclean has only 7 completions in his first 27 passing attempts.

Execution

After a strong training camp, the Bulldogs aren’t improving at the pace the coaching staff was hoping for.

“We are obviously not where we need to be,” said Mathon.

“It’s going to take some hard work, we got to continue to practice and try to elevate our practice closer to game situations and the game feel, the faster we practice, the better we get.”

Bulldog Bites

Kevin Ramakko was expected to play a larger role in the offence this season and last week he scored twice in the Markham win… Bulldogs linebacker Randy Nodder knocked Markham quarterback Jamie Fox out last weeks contest with a devastating hit when the QB was trying to make a tackle after throwing an interception… Cogeco will be covering Saturday night’s game and airing it on a later date. Greg Estabrooks and Anthony Valade will handle the broadcasting duties.