— From flags to lightning, things just aren’t going well for Muskogee.

After drawing 178 yards of penalty flags in a season-opening loss to Sand Springs which Roughers coach Josh Blankenship called “disgusting,” the trend seemed to continue against Owasso as through a quarter and a half, the count stood at 10 calls totaling 80 yards.

Then came divine intervention, perhaps — a lightning storm that pushed the game back twice before being canceled, a game meaningless by the fact it’s a non-district tilt.

Still, Blankenship would have taken 80-0 instead of 28-0 (the score at the time it was stopped) had he gotten his young team reps. Owasso, he said, wanted to call it a night.

But the decision came down to athletic director Bobby Jefferson.

Jefferson didn’t have the rules — which he said were clarified in a memo from the OSSAA a couple years ago —  in front of him when reached about it Wednesday night, but said they followed guidelines on initiating a second delay after a near restart.

“I felt like I had a good take on it. It was clear for 20-25 miles then it was on top of us again. It was like it was playing possum and not knowing at that point what direction it was all of a sudden coming from, I felt like we needed to err on the side of safety,” Jefferson said.

Safety just isn’t a friend of the Roughers. Add to the plethora of early season injuries is the discovery Wednesday that defensive lineman Kelton Randolph has a possible broken arm. Randolph was playing in Dillon Rice’s spot in the middle on a revamped 3-4 package. Rice is out indefinitely with back issues and was to have an MRI late Wednesday.

Regardless, he was out for Friday’s trip to Fayetteville, Ark., and a meeting with the defending Arkansas Class 7A champion Fayetteville Bulldogs.

Blankenship and his staff had decided a better way to get their young team prepared was to match starters against starters this week.

“My hesitation in the past is our numbers are so low that I wanted to make sure we were healthy on Friday,” he said.

That was before he got the news on Randolph.

“I‘m to the point now where I can’t tell you who’s hurt and who’s not,” he said. “Whoever’s out there we’re going to coach them up. If we have someone out there were going to make sure he knows what he’s doing and he’s getting better with every play he gets. If we get someone back, it’s a bonus.”

The more they pile up, the more pressure on a pair of units that have struggled to find cohesiveness with constantly changing — and raw — parts.  Blankenship knows the youth and inexperience elements contribute to the flag problem.

“But things like face mask and holding, blocking in the back, to me those are poor fundamentals. You’re not tackling properly, you’re not blocking properly, your feet are not in position and those are coaching things we have to go back and stress,” he said. “Not that we haven’t been doing that but apparently not well enough.”

“The ones that have me most upset are the false starts and offside penalties.  Going 1s vs. 1s will help that. You’re coming off the ball against a guy that’s closer to what you face Friday so you’re not as twitchy.”

As long as they stay healthy.

The adversity, he says, isn’t overwhelming — at least from what he’s witnessed in his underclassmen filling starting roles.

“I think they love being out there but at the same time I know they feel pressure. And I think they would admit that because they’re competitors,” he said. “We’re trying to take some of that off their shoulders by simplifying what they’re doing and we want to put them in a position where they can be successful.”

It’s a tightrope kind of quandary, though.

“The nightmare in bringing up young guys is that their confidence gets shot. I see that in quarterbacks getting put in before they should be. I’m trying to be careful about that but at the same time we need those guys.”

Fayetteville comes in 0-2 though ranked No. 4 by the Associated Press in the Arkansas 7A poll. The Bulldogs were upended 49-39  by Class 6A No. 5 Jefferson City, Mo., last week and 42-20 by Memphis (Tenn.) University School in their opener two weeks ago. Memphis University School is ranked eighth in one all-classes statewide poll in Tennessee.

“They’ve played two very good teams,” Blankenship said. “They’re right with Jenks, Union, Broken Arrow and Owasso.” And in an apparent reference to Jenks, coming off losses against Union and nationally touted DeSoto (Texas), “there’s a lot of good 0-2 teams right now.”

Quarterback Austin Allen, linebacker Brooks Ellis and safety Alex Brignoni have verbally committed to stay home and play at the University of Arkansas next season. Allen is the younger brother of Brandon Allen, who replaced Tyler Wilson behind center for the Razorbacks late in their loss to Louisiana Monroe on Saturday. Their father is Bobby Allen, who is on the UA coaching staff.

As a junior, Allen set the state record for most passing yards in the highest classification, throwing for 4,150 yards and breaking his older brother's school record with 46 touchdowns. He helped lead Fayetteville to a state championship win, upsetting nationally ranked Bentonville High School in overtime of the finals.

Ellis helped make a name for himself in that game, recording 3.5 sacks. He finished with 92 tackles and a team-leading 13.5 sacks as a junior after recording 130 stops as a sophomore.

Brignoni led the Bulldogs with 124 tackles set a school record with 10 interceptions last season, returning two for touchdowns.

The game will be played at Fayetteville High School’s stadium with kickoff a half-hour earlier than normal at 7 p.m.

“Our main focus,” Blankenship said, “is to get better these next two weeks.”