The Pleasant Home Eagles football team did not get the 2018 season off to the start that they wanted, losing to Elberta High School 27-18.

Head coach Rick Mercer said that the team had every opportunity to win the game, but things didn’t turn out the way they wanted.

“We took the lead first, but didn’t make the extra point,” Mercer said. “So then they scored and made their extra point so it just went on from there.”

The Eagles fought the entire game and were down by just three points right after halftime.

“We were only down by three so we thought we could make a comeback,” Mercer said. “And then we had a turnover at the end of the fourth quarter and then they finished us off.”

Mercer said that despite the loss, there were positives that he saw in the team.

“Offensively, we were moving the ball,” Mercer said. “Brendon Douglas, Eric Bradley, Josh Ruth and Jon Cooley all were key on offense.”

On defense, Mercer said that the Eagles still have a lot of work to do.

“We just couldn’t tackle,” Mercer said. “But they did work hard, they made sure to stop them when it counted in the second half.”

Mercer said that next week will be treated as if they are in spring practice because they are not playing.

“We have an off week next week, so we will treat it like spring practice,” Mercer said. “We have Elba coming up and it will be a tough one so we are going to work out a lot of the kinks.”

Mercer said that he is proud of the way that the team looks and will spend next week working to get the rust off of some players.

“We are on the right track,” Mercer said. “We just have to knock the dust off of some of these seniors. That will help us on offense and defense. Things will shape up.”

The Pleasant Home Eagles will host the Elba High School Tigers on September 7, at 7 p.m., in Pleasant Home.