The Capital City Cavaliers are looking to build a culture.

One of toughness, one of aggressiveness and one that leads to success.

Coach Joe Collier is entering his second season with a new offensive strategy based on attacking and running the ball, while he said he wants his defense to just line up and go.

“We want to be aggressive,” Collier said. “We can’t control anything that happens in the game, but what we can control is our get off, our effort. How our mindset is each and every play. How we handle adversity.

“First things first, the basis of everything is we want to be aggressive.”

That mindset is attempting to change the outcomes in the third season of a program that has won one game in each of its first two years.

The Cavaliers won one game, a 13-7 victory against Kirksville in the final week of the regular season, during the initial varsity campaign in 2020, then won one game last year, a 46-6 drudging of Sedalia Smith-Cotton in Week 7 for the school’s first Central Missouri Activities Conference win, in Collier’s first year at the helm.

The Cavaliers will look to improve on an offense that averaged only 12.7 points per game last season -- and only nine points per game without the win against Smith-Cotton, while allowing an average of 33.9 points per game.

“We want to focus on ourselves first,” Collier said. “We want to deal with that basis of it. Whatever we decide to do, and whatever we decided to do all summer, we decided as a group and we’re all in that way. Then we said, ‘How are we gonna go about doing this?’ … What I’m charged with is making sure we uphold what we said we’re gonna do.”

Offensively, the Cavaliers have made some changes coming into this year, going from Collier’s “Pro speed” system last year to a split-back veer.

“What we’ve been seeing is the origin of what we want to do,” Collier said. “We run a split-back veer and we can do that many ways. It can look old-school split-back veer or it can look new-school RPO (run-pass offense.) Because last year, I took these guys out of a Wing-T and put them in a pro-style offense and the understanding was a little slow to process it. … Speaking as the head coach, I failed getting them to understand it, so I went to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna start this thing from Round 1, and we’re gonna build this car from the ruts.’ The kids understand that and they know what we’re doing.”

In charge of the decision making in a veer offense, like in most offensive systems, is the quarterback. Keeping his eyes up for incoming linemen and deciding when to hand off, pitch or take the ball himself will be senior Hayden Carroll to start.

“Hayden has the leadership qualities, the variables,” Collier said. “He can throw it, he’s pretty cerebral as to what you want to do, he can mimic it. He can do what you ask without many tries. … So for the younger guys, they have a model to look at.”

But Carroll won’t be alone at the spot, sophomore Isaiah Franklin looked electric in his limited snaps during the Rolla Jamboree, earning a chance at the position as the season gets underway.

“We have another quarterback in Isaiah and the guy, he’s a natural,” Collier said. “He can score a touchdown on you with his feet or he can throw it. He can get himself out of trouble. We’re still in a situation with those two guys, trying to figure out who’s gonna play for us this season.”

Junior Parson Ocheskey will be the third string at the quarterback spot.

“It’s really added to their football knowledge,” Collier said. “Us working out of the triple-option now, and going into some gun stuff too, their knowledge of the game has picked up tremendously.”

Along with a quarterback, Collier said there will almost always be two backs in the backfield, whether that’s two running backs or a running back and a fullback.

“We can go two backs and two tight ends, we can have a pitch guy orbit, we can have him jet, we can have two receivers, we can hit you from any angle with that,” Collier said.

Seniors Hurley Jacobs and Joe Schaefer will be the main backs, with freshman Jaylan Thomas getting regular carries as well.

“He can be pretty explosive,” Collier said of Thomas. “I haven’t seen anybody catch him when he gets outside. I haven’t seen anybody catch him yet in the open field, he’s hard to bring down. His legs are as big as any sophomore college football player.”

Senior AJ Kempker will get carries as well to fill out what Collier said will be a four-back rotation, while junior Phillip Richardson will work into the rotation later.

“They know that, ‘Hey, I can run this play, these two, three, four plays, as hard as I can because I know I’m gonna get a break.’ And they also know there’s a good guy behind them and on the side so they can’t slack off any, so it’s a great competition at running back,” Collier said.

Not every play will go to the backfield, receivers and tight ends will get their share as well to try to keep the defense from stacking the box and making it impossible to run.

Collier said senior Cameron Harrison will be an important part of that mix on the outside as well as senior Ty Wood. He said junior Isaak Nelson will be an important outlet as a tight end, as will senior Brock Kennon and junior Marcus Mahaney for a three tight-end rotation.

None of the offense will work though without time created by the offensive line.

Collier said senior Gavin McDaniel as a tackle will be the veteran anchor of the line, while the other tackle spot will be a competition between sophomore Reyce Turner and junior Elijah Jahr. Marques Golliday and Andy Cubilla will be the starting guards and senior Hayden Miller will take the middle as the center.

“Those guys are not big across the board, but they get after you,” Collier said. “They have coach Chris Lueckenhoff and coach Mike (Cook), we have two really good offensive lineman coaches. They’ve been able to be technically sound with those guys and they know where to go.”

Pressure will be key for the Cavalier defense.

“What makes the defense work is we can run just our base,” Collier said of the team’s 3-4 defensive set. “And it seems like we’re getting a bunch of pressure because our guys are gap changing with each other, they’re having conversations, they’re talking, they’re not getting out leverages, they can line up to any formation the offense is giving them.

“If we can do that, we’re going to be really good.”

Collier said he wants the defense sets and pressures to be easily understandable to leave the most room for his athletes to just go out and compete hard without too much thought pre-snap. He said he trusts the Cavaliers’ front seven to get pressure without needing to throw many different schemes at them and wants them to just focus on attacking the ball.

He said Cubilla, Turner, Mahaney or Jahr will be in the rotation with other spots in a usual six-man rotation still up for grabs. He said McNeil will take one of the outside linebacker spots once again this year.

“He’s a terror on the outside,” Collier said. “That guys has a motor.”

Sophomores Brooks Horton and Roberto Macias and Thomas will all vie for the spot opposite McNeil.

“If nobody stands out, we’ll just keep scoring them in each game and see who wants to keep battling for that,” Collier said.

Golliday will be the main middle linebacker when he’s not protecting the quarterback.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a kid play guard and inside linebacker at a high level,” Collier said.

Jacobs, Nelson, and sophomore Matthew Wiegand will also take turns at the inside linebacker spot.

Collier said originally he was worried about the corner spot, but because of the success he has seen in practice, that worry has abated.

“Those kids have really grown from last year,” Collier said. “We’ve had issues at corner and I keep waiting for us to have issues at corner, but those guys are playing great technique.”

Seniors Jordan Gant and Sincere Davis will take the majority of the snaps at corner, while Kennon and possibly Franklin, depending on how the quarterback battle ends up, will take the starting safety spots.

“He can play safety, he can play quarterback, he can play receiver,” Collier said. “Which makes him really special because he’s getting maybe a quarter of the reps at quarterback and he’s still competing for that job.”

Richardson will add depth to the defensive backfield, as will junior Nehemiah Hamilton.

“We’re putting guys on the field right now that really want to get after you,” Collier said. “… I thought the Jamboree showed that, we didn’t have to do much. We just had to make sure those guys knew were to line up and they did what they do best.”

Special teams will be a committee for Capital City this season.

Collier said Schaefer will take the kickoff duties, while Carroll will take care of the punting responsibilities.

Gant will take most of the kick returns after earning the trust of coaches through practice.

“Last year, you didn’t know whether he was going to catch the ball,” Collier said. “He’s grown tremendously over the summer and from last year, just that experience. He’s ready to go, he’s running it back pretty well. We did some live special teams stuff in our Silver and Blue game and he did pretty well there.”

Thomas and Harris will also line up deep through the season on both kick offs and punts.

As the Cavaliers get ready for the opening of their third season as a program, Collier said the goal is making sure the team stays together and faces challenges head on.

“First of all, our No. 1 goal is to make sure that through anything, through any challenge we have, we uplift each other,” Collier said. “We hold each other accountable, we work as a family unit. We want to do things the right way.”

The Cavaliers will face their first challenge tonight when they face Warrensburg at home, which will once again be Jefferson City High School’s Adkins Stadium as the Cavaliers’ campus stadium construction continues.

Capital City will play host to Hickman and both cross-town rivalries this season, Hickman in Week 3 and Jefferson City and Helias in Weeks 5 and 6, respectively. Then will close the season hosting Kirksville.

The Cavaliers’ road challenges will be at Battle in Week 2, at Rock Bridge in Week 4, at Smith-Cotton in Week 7 and at Truman in Week 8.

“We want to do what championship teams have done in the past and do what championship people do and be consistent,” Collier said. “And we tell each other all the time, they’re not going to feel like doing it every day, but the consistency piece is going to hold it together. It can be something special. … We’ve got to want to be good every day, we’ve got to want to compete in every game we go into and in every challenge we have as a group.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of News Tribune Publishing.