COVINGTON, Ga. — Time heals all wounds.

Unfortunately, time isn’t always a luxury teams can afford in high school football.

Newton must find a way to put last week’s painful loss to McEachern in the rearview mirror — and quick. The schedule won’t get any easier for the Rams (2-1) this week as they’ll hit the road once again to face another state power in Houston County (3-2) on Friday night.

For nearly four quarters of last week’s road game against the Indians, Newton looked like the better football team. The offense struggled to find the end zone, sure, but it was productive in spurts and did enough to provide support for the undeniably dominant defensive unit.

But as the old adage goes, football is a game of inches. Sometimes it takes just one or two plays for the entire narrative of a game to be altered.

Newton let the game slip away late and wound up on the wrong side of an 8-7 score.

Now, there’s not time to sit back and play the “what if?” game. Instead, the Rams have wiped their slate clean and devoted all their focus and attention to the next obstacle.

“Our message from day one, because of everything that’s going on, has been to take the approach that the only day you can control is today. We don’t worry about yesterday, and we’re not too focused on what’s coming tomorrow,” Newton head coach Camiel Grant Jr. said. “So, when we left Friday night, we put that to bed.”

Grant’s Rams will now gear up to face a Bears squad that has collected narrow wins against Perry (17-10), Coffee (17-10) and Statesboro (23-18) this season. They’ll come into Week 6 licking their wounds, however, after running into the chainsaw that is Warner Robins and being soundly defeated, 44-10.

Houston County has traditionally run a spread offense and aired the ball out. While the Bears still have the ability to ramp up the passing game, they've added a wrinkle that allows them to execute the option as well. Consequently, Newton must play assignment football and keep everything out in front.

Friday night’s game is scheduled to kick off at 7:30 p.m. For live updates from the game, follow @CovNewsSports and @mason_wittner on Twitter.