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Injuries force Marion to shuffle the deck ahead of Jackson showdown

Sports Editor All summer long, Marion head coach Jed Davis couldn’t believe his luck, having two starting-quality quarterbacks on his team.

Juniors Jacob Green and Peyton Walker had their reps split nearly right down the middle and neither could pull away from the other during workouts and various 7-on-7 tournaments.

Until Marion’s season opener against Wynne when Green left with a knee injury on the second offensive series of the season for the Patriots.

The extent of Green’s injury isn’t yet known as Davis awaits the result of an MRI, but what is known is that Green has been ruled out for the rest of the nonconference slate, making his return date September 23 against West Memphis, at the earliest.

In his stead will be Walker, who finished 12 of 21 for 188 yards and two touchdowns in relief against Wynne, and while Davis says that he’s confident in Walker, his new role on offense has created other problems as well.

“Now that he’s our starting quarterback, he can’t play defense,” says the thirdyear Marion coach. “We’ve talked about him going in for certain situations like on the goal line or a third down, but he won’t get a lot of snaps there, so you take away one of your three best defensive players, and now you have to replace him there.”

With Green out and Walker now the team’s starting quarterback, Davis has been busy trying to find a new backup, which culminated in an unorthodox segment of practice earlier in the week.

“We basically had open tryouts on Monday at practice,” Davis explained. “We basically let 15 or 16 guys throw with shoulder pads on. You know, everybody thinks they can throw the football, until they put on shoulder pads, and that cuts out half of them, and then you cut out the rest when they have to make a throw with shoulder pads on and with somebody running at them defensively.”

Davis said that Cody McCullough, who QBs the junior varsity team, and Alex Bay could be in line for snaps if something were to happen to Walker while Green is out.

“The thing you love about Walker is how aggressive he is, it’s almost like reckless abandon,” Davis says. “So when he takes off on a run or something like that, you’re not gonna really see him slide too often.”

Walker getting his first varsity start at quarterback won’t be the only new event at Patriot Stadium on Friday night as Marion welcomes the Jackson Indians to town.

The Missouri outfit is already 3-0 in 2016, and boast an overwhelming point differential of 133-33. The upside is that the Indians closely resemble the offensive philosophies that Marion runs.

“They have some good size up front. They actually do a lot of things similar to us,” Davis says of his week 2 opponent. “They like jet sweeps and inside/outside zone runs, just like we do. Their quick game is comparable to us. Defensively, they’re a lot like Blytheville. They think they’re very athletic and quick and they like to blitz from a lot of different angles and spots on the field.”

The 21st-annual Colton’s Round-up will be held before the game and will begin at 5:30 p.m. 500 tickets will be sold to the event and cost $5 apiece. They can be bought at the Marion School District central office.

Kickoff will be scheduled for 7 p.m. at Patriot Stadium and the game can also be heard on the radio on FM 92.5 KWYNN.

By Chuck Livingston