CRETE \u2014 In a season where Hastings College football struggled to score the ball, its defense didn\u2019t do much better on the side.<\/p>\n
The Broncos, in last year\u2019s 2-9 season, allowed over 35 points per game, which ranked ninth out of 11 teams in the Great Plains Athletic Conference.<\/p>\n
During last week\u2019s small school media session at Doane, HC head coach Matt Franzen felt that was partly due to his team\u2019s offensive issues, with the Broncos not able to hold on to the ball for long drives.<\/p>\n
With a new offensive coordinator this season, Franzen believes that will only benefit a Hastings defense which returns a lot of standouts from last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a group that there are some young players that really emerged in spring football,\u201d Franzen said. \u201cThere are some upperclassmen that are returning with a lot of experience. It is not a group that has a couple guys that have standouts. It will be a group of committee that pull that rope together.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Franzen doesn\u2019t believe there will be any immediate \u201cAll-GPAC first team-level guys\u201d that come out of the gate, there are several that could play into that level throughout the course of the season, which opens Aug. 30 at Doane.<\/p>\n
Franzen noted Jake Lambert, a senior linebacker who has been a multi-year starter for the Broncos, will be back as a leader on that side of the ball.<\/p>\n
Next to him will be Justyce Hostetler, whose strong spring camp has positioned him to be a starting linebacker entering his second season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is an electric player,\u201d Franzen said. \u201cWe thought he was going to be really good coming out of high school and by his freshman spring he was showing that in a big way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up front, HC returns EJ Hernandez on the defensive line, a senior who missed the second half of the season due to an injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a good first half of the season,\u201d Franzen said. \u201cHe is a big, solid dude in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the secondary, Sam Ahl, Marcus Dustin, Dion Tovar and Gio Mendoza will be counted to make plays in the back on the Broncos\u2019 defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is enough depth and guys that can contribute (on that side of the ball),\u201d Franzen said. \u201cIt will be a solid unit if our offense can control the ball a little bit better than we did last season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CRETE \u2014 In a season where Hastings College football struggled to score the ball, its defense didn\u2019t do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[265,648,232,639,5075,67,68,231,258,2426,7,4135,122,633,634,631,70,63,6,632],"class_list":{"0":"post-229096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-american-football","9":"tag-american-football-bowls","10":"tag-broncos","11":"tag-champion-seasons-in-american-football","12":"tag-college-football-bowls","13":"tag-college-football-conference-seasons","14":"tag-college-football-seasons","15":"tag-denver","16":"tag-denver-broncos","17":"tag-denverbroncos","18":"tag-football","19":"tag-linebacker","20":"tag-national-football-league","21":"tag-national-football-league-seasons","22":"tag-national-football-league-teams","23":"tag-national-football-league-teams-seasons","24":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football-seasons","25":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football-teams","26":"tag-nfl","27":"tag-seasons-in-american-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}