Week 0 picks: Rock Springs storms the castle

No Class 4A team is more interesting this season than Rock Springs.

The Tigers went 5-5 last season — exactly middle-of-the-pack kind of stuff. But, boy, was it interesting.

Of Rock Springs’ 10 games, eight were decided by a possession or less. The Tigers won those close games against teams below them in the standings (14-13 against Laramie, 28-21 against Kelly Walsh, 28-27 against Evanston, 50-47 against Cheyenne South) and lost those close games against teams above them (13-7 against Cheyenne East, 20-12 against Sheridan, 19-14 against Natrona, 14-13 against East again).

That dichotomy — playing close against both the best and worst 4A teams in the state — made Rock Springs an intriguing team to watch in 2015. With a significant crew of players coming back from that squad, many people, including yours truly, think this can be the Tigers’ breakthrough season.

The first test? East: The team that beat Rock Springs twice by a combined seven points last season.

Conveniently, Rock Springs hosts East on Friday to open the season.

If Rock Springs can beat East, it may signal a shift in 4A’s power structure. Since 2011, Gillette, Cheyenne East, Natrona and Sheridan have been a combined 136-4 against the other six teams in the classification.

The Tigers know what they’re facing. They haven’t beaten a Big Four team since beating East in 2011, one of the four in that 136-4. They’ve come close, though, as last year showed.

Playing close is a good start, but last year, close ultimately went down as an “L” too many times for the Tigers to make that jump from middle-of-the-pack to title contender.

Last year, Rock Springs stormed the Big Four castle, but only got as far as tearing down the fence around the castle. For the Big Four, the Tigers were frustrating, and they exposed some weaknesses, but ultimately tearing down the fence didn’t affect the castle at all.

This year, the fence isn’t enough. The Tigers are aiming for the tower. And they might be able to slip past the moat in the season opener….

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As usual, picks are below, with teams in bold the teams I’m prognosticating as the winners of said games. For a full season schedule with kickoff times, click here.

Games
Friday
Class 4A
Cheyenne Central at Natrona
Cheyenne East at Rock Springs
Evanston at Cheyenne South
Kelly Walsh at Gillette
Laramie at Sheridan
Class 1A six-man
Hulett at Meeteetse
Interstate
Jackson at Teton, Idaho
Juab, Utah, at Star Valley
Lead, S.D., at Upton-Sundance
Lyman at Altamont, Utah
Moffat County, Colo., at Rawlins
Newcastle at Custer, S.D.
Powell at Miles City, Mont.

Scrimmages and Jamborees
Friday: Cokeville at Kemmerer; Farson at Evanston JV; Greybull at Shoshoni; Mountain View at Green River; Pine Bluffs, Torrington at Glenrock; Pinedale at Big Piney; Riverton at Cody; Thermopolis at Lander; Wind River at Lander JV.
Saturday: Douglas, Southeast at Wheatland; Dubois, Midwest, Snake River jamboree (at Natrona); Guernsey-Sunrise, Riverside, Ten Sleep at Kaycee; Lovell at Buffalo; Lusk at Burns; Moorcroft, Wright at Big Horn; Rocky Mountain at Powell JV.
Off: Burlington, Hanna, Lingle, Normative Services, Rock River, St. Stephens, Saratoga, Tongue River, Worland, Wyoming Indian.

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To be clear, here are the rules I use to determine whether a Zero Week contest is a game or is something else:

• 1. Was the game played with four 12-minute quarters with normal timing rules?
• 2. Were officials used? And were normal rules of play instituted for the game?
• 3. Was score kept?

If these three criteria are met, I call it a game and record it as such on this site. Many of the contests listed above violate rule No. 2 — they play a normal game but don’t have special teams plays.

Aside from Class 4A, we can think of Zero Week as Wyoming football’s “soft launch.” We can see some pieces come together, but we won’t see all we need to see until a week from now.

So what do you think — about Zero Week, the 2016 season, football, life? Post a comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

–patrick