Opp’s going to be facing a much-improved and bigger Excel football team Friday night, Bobcats head football coach Jack Whigham said.

“They’re a lot better than they have been,” Whigham said. “You can tell they’re in a lot better physical shape. They have improved drastically over last year.”

Like the Bobcats, the Panthers lost to Bayside Academy and T.R. Miller. Opp fell to the Admirals 42-14 last week in a game where it didn’t “execute,” Whigham said.

Excel will bring to Channell-Lee Stadium a run-style offense out of the “I” formation. Whigham said the Panthers like to run a lot of toss sweeps, counters and blasts out of the formation.

On defense, EHS has had a problem giving up the big plays.

“They’re a big bunch on the defensive line and offensive line,” Whigham said. “Coach (Richard) Anderson, I think, has done a lot better job with them.”

Against Bayside Academy last week, the Bobcats fell behind 35-0 at halftime.

“We didn’t read our keys,” Whigham said about the game. “We didn’t read coverages. We went down (to Daphne) and didn’t execute our game plan, and didn’t do the things we were coached to do.

“Coaching wise, we — I made some bad decisions coaching,” he said. “We were just completely out of the game from the get go.”

On Monday, the Bobcats got right back to practice and the coach said the seniors came in with a different approach.

“The first two days have been really good,” Whigham said Wednesday.

Yesterday’s practice session included finishing the game plan, working on a couple special teams areas and getting play sequence in order, Whigham said.

“We’ll try to polish all of it together (today),” he said.

Kick off in Opp is at 7 p.m. tomorrow.