Corky Kell: Archer Tigers football preview

Emergent Class AAAAAA Archer faces a Class AAAA Sandy Creek program in the backend of the Day 1 double-header. Sandy Creek has played in a national spotlight for years where the young Archer program looks to be building a foundation capable of that success in the not so distant future. Not many teams in the state are riding with more momentum than Archer is heading into this 2014 season. Like North Paulding, Archer finished with a school-record 11 wins last season. The Tigers were the only undefeated team in Georgia’s highest classification heading into the playoffs last year and fell short to state runner up North Gwinnett 34-32 in a second-round heartbreaker that easily could have been theirs.

This summer, the Tigers claimed the inaugural Corky Kell Classic 7-on-7 tournament and followed the polished quarterbacking of senior Gabe Tiller. The 6-foot tall passer is athletic, smart with the football, and he has incredible field awareness. Tiller’s ability to improvise and make plays suits an offense with plenty of options to get the football to. His top playmakers will be running back Dylan Singleton, tight end Connor Redmond and rising junior Kyle Davis. These three can get Archer down the field in a hurry and the chemistry is there with Tiller.

Defensively, Singleton can step into the secondary and linebackers Quinn Miller and Dillon Bliss lead an improved unit that has some difficulties getting off the field on third downs. Cal Burton, Kobe Smith and Robbie Armstrong make up the trenches on the defensive side.

Last season ended in heartbreak but the clearly bright future of the Archer program got the whole team re-focused in a hurry.

“Like we [the coaching staff] told our kids when we finished last year, only one team is going to leave happy and everybody else goes home disappointed,” Dyer told the Gwinnett Daily Post. “For us, it’s a new season. While we have a lot of returners, this is a new team. Every year’s a new year. We’ve got to do the things that have been good to us. We want to do that and compete and see what happens.”