Three Fridays.

This is all that separates the Richmond Senior football team from another Southeastern Conference title. If the Raiders can take care of business against Lumberton Friday night, Pinecrest the following week and Scotland in the regular season finale, then the Raiders should earn a high seed the 4-AA state playoffs.

Before Richmond can pencil themselves in the playoffs, there is the pesky task of playing the games on the field. If there were Las Vegas oddmakers putting lines on the final three games of the season, then the Raiders would have to be double-digit favorites against Scotland and perhaps Pinecrest.

This leaves Friday’s game with Lumberton. The contest should be a struggle between the Raiders’ offense and the Pirates’ defense. Richmond is scoring just under 39 points a game (38.8), while Lumberton is allowing just 10.5 points a game. Defensively, the Raiders are giving up 21. 5 points a game. The Pirates are averaging 34.0 points on offense.

Even though Richmond fans hate hearing from the Raider coaching staff that the opponents are going to be one of the better teams they will face all season, the fact is — this time they may be right.

Last week, Purnell Swett was 7-0 walking into Raider Stadium, but it was a soft schedule for the Rams. Rams coach Mark Heil knew most of those wins were against teams from lower classifications.

The Pirates have faced much better opponents. Their two losses are by a combined five points and if they had to play those games again, Lumberton could very easily come out on top.

While I may be in “coach-speak” mode giving Lumberton more credit than it deserves, the Pirates are the perfect team to give the Raiders problems on both sides of the ball.

Lumberton on defense is going to be very similar to New Hanover. The Pirates have a very good linebacker corps, which could play havoc on the Raiders rushing attack, which could force Richmond into passing more than it would like.

While the notion of having Tedarrius Wiley slinging the ball 40 times against Lumberton may be pleasing to some, especially coming off a near-perfect game against Purnell Swett, this is not the offense the Richmond coaching staff wants or needs this year.

The Raiders offensively are one of the most explosive teams in the state. With running backs like Labarrian Jones, Walter Ellerbe and Kaleen Stanback, Richmond can run right through any defense. If the Raiders need to throw the ball, then receivers like Quayshawn Dumas, John Rich, Corey Dawkins and Jeff Brown have the ability to reel in the deep pass or break a short pass into a long gain.

But this Raider defense isn’t last season’s. There are no Justin Jacksons, no Phillip Legrandes and no Justin Brewingtons on the roster. Instead Richmond defensive coordinator James Johnson is having to make serious adjustments at halftime to stop the opposition.

This is why the Raiders are running the ball more, to help keep the defense off the field.

Against Anson, South View, Hoke and Purnell Swett the Raiders were in a dogfight against each of those teams in the first half. However, after halftime the defense looked like the Steel Curtain defense of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers.

The two times the defense took several steps back in the second half were against Providence and Butler. In the Providence game, the defense was able to withstand the passing onslaught from the Panthers at the end to hold.

The Butler game on the other hand was another story. The secondary simply broke down. The offense was unable to really get going in the fourth quarter which forced the defense to try and stop a high octane offense. It was successful for three quarters, but was unable to come up with that key stop in the final 12 minutes.

As much as the fans in the stands have come to expect Richmond to outscore their opponents by 30 or 40 points this team is not the type of team to do it. This team may not go on and win the school’s eighth state title, but it will be in the hunt come late November.