FOOTBALL: Flathead set for family showdown

The story this week has been an easy one.

Under tonight’s Friday night lights, Mark and Kyle Samson, father and son, will meet on opposing sidelines for the first time as head coaches. Seemingly joined together forever in football, they have spent years either coaching together on the Montana State-Northern staff or teaming up as head coach and quarterback to run roughshod over opposing defenses, in both high school (Helena Capital) and college (Northern).

The younger Samson, though, has bigger things to worry about.

His Braves (0-2) will hit Great Falls not quite panicking but in desperate need of a win. Flathead chalked up a week one home loss to Great Falls C.M. Russell to early-season rust, but the 47-14 spanking it suffered a week ago at home against Helena High evoked Braves teams of earlier in the decade, squads that posted six straight losing years from 2008-14 and prompted Samson’s hiring as head coach before the 2014 campaign.

“It was not a great situation on Friday night,” Samson said of the loss to the Bengals. “I’ve got to give credit to Helena High, they’re a great team, but we just didn’t do the job to win that game.

“Our kids have really bounced back, though. That’s one thing about high school kids, they’re really resilient.”

Compounding matters for the Braves’ coach is that his usual sounding board isn’t helping this week with the Xs and Os.

“I talk to my father a couple times a week and we usually talk about football and family,” Samson said. “We’ve only talked about family this week. We really haven’t talked about the Braves and the Bison.”

Much of the Samson family — including another of Kyle’s weekly football phone calls, his grandfather and longtime Carroll College coach Bob Petrino — is expected to be at Memorial Stadium tonight when the Bison (1-1) and Braves kick off at 7.

“I think my mom’s having the hardest time,” Kyle said. “They’re all going to sit together and that will be interesting. They’re trying to decide what side to sit on … they’ll probably end up in the grass somewhere.”

On the field, Samson his coaching staff have turned back to the fundamentals — blocking and tackling — to try and reverse the early season skid. The Braves have allowed nearly 400 yards on the ground in their two losses and netted just 14 rushing yards on 25 attempts against Helena.

“We’re not trying to rewrite the book,” Samson said. “The biggest thing for me is we’ve got to stop the run on defense and we’ve got to run the ball on offense. I think our kids are going to accept that challenge.”

Last year at Legends Stadium, that Braves did just that against the Bison in a 41-12 win. Then-tailback Josh McCracken ran for 214 yards and accounted for four touchdowns in the win as Flathead controlled possession and outgained Great Falls by nearly 300 yards.

With McCracken graduated and senior running back Ryan Skramovsky still out with an injury, the Braves have relied on a trio of young runners the first two weeks with limited success. Seth Adolph, a wide receiver and occasional wildcat quarterback, is Flathead’s leading rusher with 87 total yards, while sophomore Blake Counts has run for three touchdowns.

“We’re going to keep fighting and I think we’ve got a good plan going into this game,” Samson said. “We’re going to make a couple of adjustments in what we’re doing, maybe a personnel change here and there. We don’t have that one guy but I do believe in our guys.”

Great Falls, meanwhile, presents an interesting schematic challenge since Samson’s offense is modeled after, unsurprisingly, his father’s.

“We’re pretty similar,” he said. “A lot of the things that they do on offense are the same things that we do. Our defense will see a lot of what they’ve seen from us all year and the same thing from their defense.

“[Great Falls] plays extremely hard and they’ve got some confidence. When kids believe they can come out and win that’s a big deal.

“Our kids are just excited to get back out on the field. We need to go earn a win.”

The game will be broadcast live on KGEZ 600 AM and at www.kgez.com.