Gridiron: Leadership has Pirates well positioned in the trenches

Success in football is often dictated in the trenches.

While the Perryville Pirates are entering the 2023 season with an influx of youth, it is in the offensive and defensive lines.

Senior quarterback Rilaynd Graham will be protected by an offensive line that features three returning senior starters, including center Mason Cochran and Ca-leb Triller.

“It’s extremely beneficial because Mason is probably one of probably the smartest football players on our team,” Graham said. “So it’s nice to have somebody that I trust and knows what he’s talking about, and able to call out and help me see things that maybe I don’t see or he sees from a different point of view since he’s on the line.”

Triller is also the only returning senior on the Pirates’ defense and is also moving closer to the action by shifting to the defensive line.

“I used to be a middle linebacker, and now kind of started moving to the line,” Triller said.

Triller made the move to the defensive line thanks to completing his off-season development in the weight room. He earned a spot among the strongest Perryville players in deadlift and squat.

“It was a big motivation to get up there,” Triller said, “pretty challenging.”

Cochran has seen the team change over the years as he rose to the leadership role in the line.

As the center, Cochran is tasked with knowing the offense almost as much if not more than the quarterback.

“Everybody does something different every play, and I have to know what everybody’s doing in any situation at any given point in time,” Cochran said. “So it’s a lot of focus and a lot of, not really micromanaging, but kind of making sure everybody gets put in place and knows what they’re doing and when.

“Most of my job is knowing what we need to do based on what they’re doing,” he said. “So it’s a lot a lot of film study, a lot of studying our plays and how, if they do something funny, how do we react to that?”

As teams like Perryville change their offense to suit the man behind center, how the blockers align themselves to provide proper protection has a major impact on carrying out those new plays. Cochran has seen the Pirates’ offense change drastically from Aiden McGarvey, last season’s opening-week starter, to Graham.

“We run entirely different plays, and the culture has changed a lot,” Cochran said. “Last season was a really good show of that, because we started with Aiden McGarvey, who’s totally different build, totally different skill set than Graham. You go from a pocket QB to a QB who can run so the game, our plays change, our strategies change, our blocking changes, everything totally mixes up the offense.”

The obvious matchup that Perryville looks forward to is the rivalry game against their arch-rivals, the St. Vincent Indians. However, Cochran said he is looking forward to their home opener and avenging the Pirates’ 28-7 loss to Windsor.

“We had a really bad game against them last year,” Cochran said. “And that’s not happening again this time.”