Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. Brookfield running back Christian Davis carries the ball out in space Friday against Western Reserve.

BROOKFIELD — After Brookfield opened the season with a lopsided loss to Ursuline, Warriors head coach Randy Clark wasn’t satisfied with certain aspects of his team and felt that changes needed to be made during practice that upcoming week.

The Warriors implemented those changes — shuffling around their offensive line and moving some other players around to different positions — and since then have won two straight games in comprehensive fashion, including Friday night’s dominant 47-3 win over Western Reserve.

“I think we got the kids in the right position,” Clark said. “We made wholesale changes on defense and wholesale changes on offense. We’re happy with what we’ve done and the kids are happy with where they’re at and it shows.”

One of those changes included moving Brett Carsone to cornerback, and the move has paid off in droves. Carsone had three interceptions for Brookfield, leading the Warriors defense, which finished with five total takeaways.

Brookfield limited the Blue Devils to just 106 total yards of offense, which included seven negative yardage plays and six plays for no gain.

“Defensively, we sat in base defensive coverage and let AJ (Bartolin) and our other linebackers run around,” Clark said. “(Carsone) did a phenomenal job and he was one of the moves we made after the Ursuline game. He’s at that spot now and he’s excelling.”

Western Reserve’s struggles offensively largely came after starting quarterback Luke Henning went down with a leg injury a few minutes into the second quarter. Dom Ricciardi took over, but wasn’t able to build any momentum for the Blue Devils’ offense, as Reserve mustered just 22 total yards in the second half.

“Injuries mounted tonight — we’ve been battling a few all this week and we just kind of ran into a buzzsaw (Friday),” said Western Reserve head coach John Armeni. “Brookfield’s got a very talented football team and they’re tough and they put one on us tonight.”

The injury bug affected Brookfield as well, as two of the team’s starting offensive linemen went down with injuries after the first couple of offensive series.

“We had to put some younger guys in and they did very well for what we expected of them,” Clark said.

The injuries didn’t affect Brookfield’s offense though, as quarterback Donovan Pawlowski finished 10-for-18 for 182 yards through the air and with 96 yards and two touchdowns on the ground.

Isaiah Jones was Pawlowski’s primary target, catching seven passes for 134 yards, while picking up a 7-yard rushing touchdown on a jet sweep.

“Donovan did a good job of running the game plan, Isaiah had a great game and our running backs played well,” Clark said.

In the second half, as the Warriors started to blow the doors open, things started to get a bit chippy between the players on the field. Brookfield finished with 11 penalties, while Reserve tallied eight, as the officials tried to keep things from getting out of hand.

“Brookfield’s kids play tough and our kids play tough, so sometimes that stuff happens,” Armeni said. “But for the most part, I’m proud of how our kids acted.”

Both coaches were focused on keeping their team’s emotions in check.

“I told them at halftime, there’s certain individuals on the other team that have nothing to lose, so don’t get involved with any chippy stuff and we actually did a nice job of that,” Clark said.

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com