The Brownwood Lions’ second week of preseason football practice will conclude Friday night at Gordon Wood Stadium with the Maroon vs. White scrimmage.

The intrasquad scrimmage is taking the place of the traditional first of two scrimmages per year, however, the UIL cut the number of scrimmages in half for 2020 as part of its COVID-19 guidelines.

Lions head coach Sammy Burnett, who is entering his third season in charge of the program, spoke in regard to what he hopes to see Friday night.

“We’re going to go out there and see if we can execute some simple stuff and see if our kids will be physical,” Burnett said. “We’re just trying to find the identity of our football team, and as of right now our kids don’t know it either. We haven’t gone 100 percent full speed and we’re going to do that on Friday. We’re going to butt some heads and see what we’re made of.”

Three separate scrimmages will take place beginning at 6 p.m.

“We’ll have more of a sophomore type team, which is a mixture of sophomores and freshmen that will be playing against each other at 6,” Burnett said. “Then about 6:45, and it could drag a little later toward 7, we’ll go with our freshmen ones against our JV ones. We had a lot of discussion, Coach (Dax) Dennard and Coach (Bryan) Clark and myself, with that and how I thought about how competitive it would be and they both thought it would be a great match-up for both of them to make them both better. Then our varsity will kick off somewhere around 7:30.”

Diving a little deeper into Burnett’s expectations for the varsity, the Lions head coach said, “For me it’s simple – execution and effort. A kid can make a mistake, but as long as you’re going 100 mph I can accept that. If you’re not giving great effort and you’re not doing what we expect you to do, embracing the grind, that’s something that’s important for me to see. At the same time, you don’t want to run around like a chicken with your head cut off. If you’re going 100 mph and not knowing what you’re doing, you could be a problem. You have to understand the scheme, so I want to see how we’re picking up the scheme.

“Defensively on both sides, it doesn’t matter what team you’re on, I want to see a physicality like none other. I want to see people flying to the football and having great passion, ball hawks is what we call it. I want to see a sense of urgency on defense. Defense wins championships and I want to see if we can start setting our identity for our defense.

“Offensively, it’s about simple execution. A lot of things we do offensively are not really good against our defense but we’re going to go do it because they’re going to work on their stuff and we’re going to work on ours. We’re sure not going to waste time scheming each other, we know what we do.”

A number of position battles are ongoing during preseason practices, but none have received more attention – as is often the case – than quarterback where seniors Blaize Espinoza and Baylor Tidwell and sophomore Chance Jones are vying for playing time.

“It’s still wide open and I won’t let that out until I know for sure what decision I’m going to make,” Burnett said. “That’s going to be my call and I’m going to take the burden for whatever that call is. I’m going to give myself ample time to make the best decision. Who knows, it may be quarterback by committee.

“I’m still working on their specialties, what positive trait does this young man bring that this one doesn’t and vice versa. I’m still evaluating that and I need to see more film. Everyday I can evaluate film and what had happened from the day before and try and fix that before we get on the field, then evaluate that next film.

“We’ll see how they progress through the next week and the scrimmage against Godley and hopefully by the Monday before we play Lampasas I’ll have made that decision. Those kids need to know where their fit is so it’s important that I get that to them, but I have to make an educated decision and that’s going to take a little bit of time.”