PORT ARTHUR — NEDERLAND – Be careful what you wish for, coach.

    Nederland’s Larry Neumann talked about wanting to play West Orange-Stark because they are always a good, physical team that provides a big-time test early in the season for the Bulldogs.

    That’s exactly what they got last Friday in Nederland’s first of two scrimmages this season. The Mustangs came out and played extremely well defensively, as the defensive backs closed on balls from Carson Raines, returning one for a touchdown after it bounced off his receivers’ pads.

    The WO-S defensive line’s quickness also posed some problems for Nederland’s offensive line, forcing a rethinking of how the Bulldogs will play up there this week, as Nederland travels to Dayton for its final scrimmage of the fall on Thursday.

    “The consequence of the scrimmage that we didn’t know until the next day is Chris Henry” Neumann said. “His injury has changed our dynamics. Injuries and low performance have caused us to change things up this week. All those guys have worked those positions, so it’s not a big deal. They just haven’t worked in season until now. It’s just because of those two things. No one has been fired, we’re just dealing with some injuries.”

    The biggest changes on the offensive line have come about because center Chris Henry hurt his foot in practice last week and hadn’t sufficiently recovered.  That injury caused some of the problems up front, which is why the Bulldogs will feature a slightly different looking offensive front, with Cole Brown sliding over to center, Dannis Latiolais sliding over to guard and De Shawn Washington moving over from tight end to right tackle.

    “We’ll see what happens,” Neumann said. “Our focus is close right now. Once Chris comes back, I don’t know what will happen. I know De Shawn can play anywhere we want him to play and he can help us there. The physical part of him working out this week has been phenomenal. Now, he needs to work on the plays a bit, but we feel pretty good about him being there.”

    Washington’s move will be temporary, as he will still see quite a bit of playing time on defense. That’s good news for the Nederland group and bad for opposing quarterbacks, as Washington’s explosiveness off the ball got him into the WO-S backfield a handful of times last Friday.

    Still, the move was necessary to give Henry time to heal and stabilize that unit before Nederland opens the season against Crosby in two weeks.

    “We had to do something,” Neumann said. “We thought that we’d give this a hard look this week. I suspect it may stay like this, but we’ll see.”

    Henry won’t be the only player sitting out for precautionary reasons Thursday at Dayton. There are a handful of other starters who won’t see playing time, with Nederland getting a good look at their backups to see how much depth they might have heading into the season.

    “We’ve got a couple starters out on defense,” Neumann said. “Juron Johnson will start at defensive end for us. Justin Byrd will also see some time there with William Holman seeing some time at defensive tackle. Brandon Dial and Bryce Whaley will play some at the safety spot. We’re just going to see how some of these guys look like in a game environment.”

    Four of the five sophomores listed on Nederland’s roster this season played significant minutes against WO-S. A couple of them also figure to be starters this season, including fullback Marcus Barton, who was one of the few bright spots of the first scrimmage.

    “He made a couple of good runs,” Neumann said. “My recollection of the times I saw him, I was pleased. That may give us a different outlook on him. Marcus did a good job.”

    Barton has been working with Jordan Wood at that fullback spot, trying to replace the graduated Brett Brown. One other point of emphasis this week for the offense may be the running ability of Carson Raines.

    That’s an area where the Bulldogs think they can see some improvement out of the third-year player. Raines is fast enough to make an impact on rollouts, but needs to improve his decision-making over what he did against WO-S.

    “There were opportunites for Carson to do more running against West Orange,” Neumann said. “Those reads weren’t where we want him to be. He’s got the ability to do some things with his legs. I’d like to see him read it a little better. It’s a dimension we need in our offense. Hopefully, he’ll take advantage of the opportunity to run the football off the running game.

    “We did a lot of that in the spring. For whatever reason, he just didn’t see it real good the other night.”