Football is all about momentum.

The cliché that you are either moving forward or backward is a truism and nothing could be more true for Porters Chapel going into Friday’s home opener against Prairie View (La.) Both are 0-1 teams looking to get the young season into gear and avoid a confidence-killing 0-2 start.

Prairie View got toasted 48-7 in its opener by mighty Trinity Episcopal. Even so, first-year PCA coach Bill Fleming is bothered by the beef on both of their lines.

“They’re huge,” Fleming said. “Overall size, every position, they are very big. Matching up front, we’re going to have to utilize our speed in all aspects of the game.”

The Eagles are coming off a gut-wrenching 27-23 loss to Tallulah in Week 1, a game in which they nearly erased a 27-9 deficit with eight minutes remaining.

In that loss, the Eagles found a primary running back, Jay Wiley. The senior rushed for 132 yards on 15 carries and a touchdown, but since he’s their primary tackler on defense and got heavily fatigued, they had to go away from him in the fourth quarter.

While Colby Rushing’s numbers were not overly spectacular, the senior and first-year starter at quarterback engineered both of the fourth-quarter scoring drives, scoring on a pair of short plunges to cap both.

The key will be getting more touches for college prospect Reed Gordon. The senior tight end only had two catches for seven yards as he was shadowed by a host of Tallulah defenders all night last week.

The Eagles intend to negate this by going to more of a spread look on offense, using four wideouts more often to give Wiley and Gordon some needed operating room and make Prairie View’s defense cover the whole field.

Fleming intends to have all of his playmakers on the field at all times.

“There won’t be any of this, having two or three of our best athletes on the sidelines,” Fleming said. “Everybody is on the field at one time. I think that increases our overall team speed drastically. Now you have to account for five or six people on offense rather than three or four.”

Defensively, the Eagles yielded 20 points, but just a few more plays made on defense could have easily tipped the scales in their favor.

After facing a hard-running option attack in Tallulah, the Eagles will get a taste of deja vu facing Prairie View’s double-slot option game.

“It’s only going to help us down the road because we’ve got a couple more teams that run the veer and are pretty good on our schedule,” Fleming said. “The thing about it is, if you are disciplined, you can stop the veer.”

Prairie View, a Bastrop, La.-based school, brings a senior-laden team into Friday’s matchup. Hunter Smith will be getting the start under center after sharing quarterback duties with Robby Jones, who moves to tailback. Also in the backfield for the Spartans will be Pat Laird.

Jones carried the ball for 33 yards and Prairie View’s only score, a 7-yard run.

The Spartans aim to use the option to set up the roll-out passing game, something that PCA has worked on heavily in defensive team work this week.

“We’ve got to execute a whole lot better,” first-year Prairie View coach Don King said. “We missed a lot of assignments. Trinity put it on us pretty good. It was an old-style country butt-whuppin’.”

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Contact Steve Wilson at swilson@vicksburgpost.com