Poplar Bluff freshman quarterback Kannon Carr will start Friday against Chaminade.
After starting quarterback Josiah Kilgore went down with a back injury late in the second quarter against Jackson last week, Carr, who wasn't listed on the roster in the pre-game program, stepped in and played the rest of the game.
His first passing attempt was a 19-yard completion to Chad Casey, and Carr finished 3 for 9 for 34 yards. He also took his first sack and happily said after the game it didn't hurt as bad as he was expecting.
"We're not going to scale (the playbook) back a whole lot, at all. The playbook will change more so on what we think we can do against Chaminade more so than who is calling the signals," said Poplar Bluff coach David Sievers, who called Carr's performance against Jackson a silver lining in the Mules' 63-20 loss. "He's probably our best pure passer that we've got. He probably would have played some earlier in the year, but we just weren't comfortable putting him on the field from a physical standpoint. Not from a football standpoint, because he has got that. But the kid is so dang skinny, we were kind of worried about him. But we don't have a lot of options right now, so we are going to let him play."
Kilgore was taken out of the Jackson game on a stretcher after feeling some numbness extending from his thighs to his lower back but didn't lose feeling in his extremities.
Sievers said after the game the stretcher was largely precautionary, and Kilgore is out this week because he still has some swelling and discomfort in his lower back.
"I don't think it is anything we need to be super concerned about," Sievers added. "It is just a matter of getting the swelling out and getting the soreness out. The ER doctors last week didn't seem to be super concerned about it. It is just a matter of getting the swelling out."
For the season, Kilgore has 450 yards from scrimmage and 10 touchdowns. He has passed for 164 and two touchdowns while completing 50 percent of his passes, run for 193 yards and three touchdowns on 54 attempts, and caught 13 passes for 257 yards and four touchdowns, making him the Mules' leading receiver and the only Mule with more than 100 yards receiving for the season. Kilgore also returned a kick 81 yards for a score.
Designed runs, zone reads and option runs were common with Kilgore behind center.
"We are going to let (Carr) throw the ball around a little bit and let him hand the ball off a lot. We're not going to have any designed runs for him," Sievers said. "We're just going to have him stand back there and throw it around. We've got a few other options we can go to. We're looking at a few other ways to run the offense, but basically, Kannon is going to run the show and we are going to see if we can take care of him.
"Friday night he might be one scared little dude, but right now, we're expecting him to be just fine. We're going to do whatever we can to take care of him, even if it means keeping an extra back in. Maybe a tight end to help block or something."
Where Jackson overwhelmed Poplar Bluff with speed and pressure, Sievers feels the Mules match up better against Chaminade.
"These guys are just big and want to smash us. Both sides of the ball," Sievers said. "These guys, you look at them on film and they kind of look like a small college team. They just line up and they try to roll forward on both sides of the ball. They want to play big, physical football and we match up better with that then we do with Jackson's speed."
Offensively, Sievers anticipates Chaminade running a lot of different formations and some trick plays out of them but thinks the Mules have a good chance of reading what is coming based upon Chaminade's formation and look. He also thinks Poplar Bluff's offense is faster than Chaminade's defense.
"Jackson, we wanted to get up between the tackles. We think we can work the edges a little bit more against these guys," Sievers said. "We think we've found some holes in their defense. We hope they are there Friday night. From a defensive standpoint, we are just going to try to get 11 hats to the ball. You neutralize size with speed and we are going to try to play faster than them Friday night."
Friday will also be senior night for the Mules. Gates will open at 5:30 p.m. and the seniors for football, cross country, swimming, and band will be recognized in a ceremony starting at 6:10 p.m. This class will be Sievers' 31st as a football coach at Poplar Bluff, but his first as a head coach.
"These kids, they are pretty resilient. We just keep asking them to keep working and for the most part, they've done a good job of that. We've just got to overcome all the adversity that you go through in a season and keep moving forward," Sievers said.
"We've got a wide variety of kids. We've got some kids who are super quiet and won't say a thing. We've got some kids who just won't shut up. And then there are some kids in between. It is a very diversified bunch of kids. A lot of times a senior class will take on an identity and this one hasn't. They are all their own bunch of kids. Sometimes, it makes team unity more difficult but sometimes them being their own persons has its perks, too."