The Charlatan sat down with Ravens receiver Nate Behar to discuss the expectations for the upcoming football season.
The Charlatan (TC): With camp opening up next week, tell us what expectations and some of the goals are entering the 2015 OUA campaign.
Nate Behar (NB): The first one is obviously playoffs—that’s simple. We haven’t done it yet, but we feel that if we take the same sort of strides from year two to year three as we did from year one to year two, we want to compete. We’re going to talk about it in our opening meetings, for sure—Yates is the goal. It’s everybody’s goal at the start of the season, and many people probably don’t see us in it come the end of the season, but we see it as a viable option.
TC: Talking about the camp itself coming up, and an exhibition game scheduled against Sherbrooke, what is the team hoping to get out of camp?
NB: First of all, we want to get out healthy, especially now that we’re a little more ‘vet’ [veteran]—it’s not so much about teaching the young kids as it’s about tightening up and coming out healthy. Be crisp, be tight, be ready to go for Sherbrooke, and then of course, the same thing for [the season-opener against] Queen’s.
TC: Looking ahead to the season overall, what are things on either side of the football that your team is hoping to improve on?
NB: Well, what we have going for us is speed. Any coach in the province or country would be able to say that, looking at our roster. Doing the little things well; on defense, making sure we can run stuff—not to say that we can’t—because we have so many guys on the backend that are so fast.
On offense, it’s consistency. I think we had close to the most penalties, probably close to the fewest plays. We averaged the most big plays, which is good, but at the same time it shows that most of our points weren’t coming off sustained drives. So if we can be more consistent, keep the opponent off the field, and make things easier for our defense, it’s going to be fun.
TC: Lastly, I’d like to get your thoughts on the schedule. A lot of people think it’s a pretty weak one overall.
NB: I think it’s favourable. I don’t want to say weak, but I think it’s favourable in terms of how it shifts out—not so much the people we’re playing. Getting Queen’s in the first week is great because we get to open up against someone we hate, and then it lines up nicely.
Our schedule lets us build up for certain games, with a big stretch of games to be focused on, then it sort of tapers off, then a bye before a big game against Guelph. The way that it all lines up, not necessarily opponents, but the way that we see them, it’s a pretty awesome schedule—we were pretty excited when we saw it.
