Despite a 10-2 season and a 2nd place finish in Region 6-AAAAA last year, Coach Leo Barker still has a bitter taste in his mouth.

“We had a chance to make a run,” he said. “But overall out kids played hard and they did a good job. We just fell short at the end, but there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

With five offensive starters returning, Barker will stick with his pro-style, I-Form offense. Quarterback J.P. Douglas will be taking the snaps and running back Martez Sumler will be getting most of the carries.

“Not too many teams use a fullback nowadays, but we like to,” said Barker, a former eight-year veteran of the Cincinnati Bengals. “We would rather hit you in the face than run east-west.”

With three of the five returning starters being linemen (Ryan McDonald, Wilson Heres and Joe Turner), Barker feels confident in his ground game despite the loss of leading rusher Duvall Smith. He anticipates that two or three other backs will get some of the carries as well to help lift the load off Sumler.

And Barker said it won’t take hours of film preparation for opponents to realize that Roswell has every intention of running the ball down their throats.

“Playing that style of offense eats the clock, keeps your defense off the field and sets up play action,” he said.” We are going to try and take advantage of that with our running game.”

Roswell lost three key receivers last year including Chris Boyd (Vanderbilt), Keegan Hughes (Nebraska) and Brett Beidel (Georgia State). Barker has a very talented Nick Henderson returning at tight end, and he is expecting big things out of wide out Jonny Peace, who didn’t play much last year.

“He has big shoes to fill, there is no doubt about that because we had a wonderful receiving corps last year,” said Barker. “Jonny has worked real hard this summer, and I think he will have a good year.”

Defensively, Barker has seven of his 11 starters returning, including leading tackler and middle linebacker Taylor Beckmann. They will stick with their basic 4-3 and when it comes to defense, Barker does not like to get too fancy.

“We just want our guys to be physical,” he said. “We have a ‘don’t bend, don’t break’ attitude when it comes to defense. We don’t blitz a lot, but we are aggressive and we hit hard to try and slow down the opponent.”

Despite giving up an average of 18.5 points a game, Barker said he will not make too many adjustments on the defensive side of the ball.

“We just want to keep the ball in front of us, play physical and hopefully cause a turnover every now and then,” he said.

Barker said after breaking down the season last year, there are a few areas he would like to work on to see the team improve. The first area he wants to address is how hard they work in the offseason.

“Conditioning is where football games are won and lost,” he said.