In the 14th weekly edition of the Intelligencer/Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football,’ high school football beat writers Kevin Cooney and Dom Cosentino take a close look at last week’s District One Class AAAA Tournament semifinal games. They also offer their opinions on this week’s huge all-SOL district final pitting North Penn versus Neshaminy and predict the outcome of all four Quad-A contests.Cooney and Cosentino – who boast a combined 23 years covering high school football – are two of the area’s most respected and knowledgeable football writers. To stay on top of all the latest high school football news in the area, visit the web site http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/sports_now.html
SuburbanOneSports.com: Share your thoughts about North Penn’s win over Council Rock South.
Kevin Cooney: I was impressed by the way that North Penn took care of its business. For lack of a better term, they were very professional. They were able to take away the momentum of the game early and really befuddled everything Rock South had done successfully all season long. I think that was a very professional effort by a very good football team.
The one thing you saw from North Penn was better execution. It’s not like they’ve reinvented the wheel. I think their quarterback – Corey Ernst – has gotten a lot better. We’ve seen Dom Taggart establish himself as a really premiere player. Remember, he was coming off an ankle injury in the La Salle game. Part of it, quite honestly, was they played a schedule that allowed them – after the St. Joe’s Prep game – to kind of rest up and get ready for this time of the season.
I think what we’ve seen is a team that has understood what it’s doing and where it wants to go. The one thing we’re going to talk a lot about this week is did they learn a lesson from last year’s game against Ridley, and will that translate over into Friday night.
I didn’t cover North Penn last year, but they were so good, and they rode into the district title game with such a swagger. Then when Ralph Reeves got hurt, it kind of disappeared. Right now you’re seeing a different type of team because they have felt the sting of a loss, and sometimes that’s good, especially if it’s early in the year.
Dick Beck said something today when we were talking to him – it’s not going to come down to the coaches or anything else. This is going to be a game where you’re going to see players make the difference. This is not going to be a scheme game. There are no surprises here. This is going to be a game where the two best teams are going to meet, and the winner is going to be the team that executes better. That’s just as flat out plain as it comes.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Comment on some of the players that stood out in North Penn’s win.
Kevin Cooney: North Penn’s execution was really good. Every play they seemed to execute right to where they wanted to go, and that’s a huge, huge thing at this time of year. You need to be at the top of your game, and I think that’s what you saw the other night on both sides of the ball.
On offense, Gerard Wendowski was great in his route running. Beck was saying you could look at the routes on film, and they were run within two or three inches of where they were supposed to be. Then you look at Corey Ernst. He was comfortable in the pocket and able to take advantage of that.
Finally, the one thing I think we lose sight of is that North Penn is a team that has improved defensively throughout the season. What they did on Friday night was wrap and tackle. They wrapped and they tackled extremely well. They forced guys to the ground, and none of Rock South’s big plays turned into touchdowns. They forced Rock South to grind it out, and they never really could.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Rock South drove down the field on its opening drive of the game but missed a field goal. Do you think things might have been different if South had scored on its opening drive?
Kevin Cooney: That was big for confidence both ways, but in the end, do I think it would have changed the way the game went? No, I think North Penn would have still won that game.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Comment about the performance of Council Rock South on Friday as well as the Golden Hawks’ season overall.
Kevin Cooney: They have established themselves as one of the top teams in the area. When you get to the district semis, you’re instantly in the conversation. I thought the one thing Rock South did the other night that was a little odd – they got away from Mark Damirgian a little bit, and everything was Billy Fleming, and I thought that was a mistake. They became a little too one-dimensional on offense, but still, that’s a good football team that’s well coached by Vince Bedesem all year.
It’s going to be interesting where they go from here. I don’t think they’re going to go all the way back, but I think they have to take a step back because they’re going to lose Fleming and they’re going to lose some key players.
Dom Cosentino: North Penn was the better team, but Council Rock South had a great season, a great run. It’s something for them to build off of, if they can. It will be interesting to see what they do, but North Penn was preseason No. 1 in the state for a reason. They have a very talented group, a veteran group.
You reach a point in the playoffs, and someone has got to lose. Council Rock South just ran into a team that a lot of people thought was going to play for a state championship before the season and just might yet. I’m not besmirching Council Rock South in any way by saying that. North Penn is North Penn, and this team is a very good North Penn team.
This also was a very good Council Rock South team. Vince Bedesem has been building this program brick by brick from the beginning. He’s gotten to the point now where he has some seniors and a lot of juniors getting playing time. It’s a credit to them that they survived that conference they’re in with one loss. They won a pair of playoff games. They deserved to be where they are. It ended because they went up against a team that might be the best team in the state. There’s no shame in that. They acquitted themselves well. If they score early in the game when they’re moving the ball, it may be a different game.
It’s too soon to tell if Rock South is here to stay. You’re talking about young kids in different circumstances, and that’s what is so amazing about the jobs Dick Beck and Mark Schmidt have done to sustain things for so long when you consider the turnover of personnel and the fact that you’re dealing with kids. It’s too soon to tell, but you want to think there’s been a culture created that’s going to trickle down to the younger guys at Rock South, and they’re going to see that the work and the belief there’s something greater than themselves that the older guys bought into and left for them, but you never know. North Penn and Neshaminy really are the exception to that. When you consider the level those two programs play at every year, it’s a rare thing.
SuburbanOneSports: Neshaminy really took it to Bayard Rustin. Was there anything that surprised you about that game?
Dom Cosentino: I really think their defense again played very well. They were up against a team that had a very good wide receiver in Anthony Nash who caught a ball early in the game, and after that, they really did everything they had to do to shut this team down. They stopped them on a fourth-and-one early in the game and never let Rustin get anything going until it was 33-0 in the fourth quarter and the game was more or less over.
It was very telling, I thought, that with about four minutes to go in the third quarter when Rustin decided to punt on fourth-and-1 at their own 36, trailing, 21-0, which, to me, was sort of a waving of the white flag. Obviously, they’re putting themselves in a tough spot if they don’t get it there, but being down three touchdowns with a little more than a quarter to go, they really needed to make something happen if they hoped to have any chance of winning that game. It was a very telling indication of the kind of job Neshaminy’s defense had done all night long.
Neshaminy’s defensive line – starting up front – has done a tremendous job all season. Ryan Katona was matched up against Chase Hoyt, a Division I-caliber tackle, and he held his own and really played a good game. Neshaminy’s defensive backfield did a great job of taking away Abington’s deep threat, and they did it again this week. Bobby Marterella at one corner and Dylan Donnelly at the other with Dwight Williams at safety and Sean Ulmer rotating in there – that group has really done a great job being a shutdown unit in terms of taking away the deep ball from teams. The guys up front flow to the ball. It also helps that Corey Majors is finally healthy, and the last two weeks he’s back to being that sideline to sideline middle linebacker that has been a big part of their defense in general.
Offensively, it’s the same balanced attack, but really it starts with that offensive line up front being able to create holes for Anthony Woodroffe and Sean Ulmer to run through, and if they get that running game going, it opens things up for Charlie Marterella to strike downfield with his receivers. They have great balance, and it’s similar to North Penn in that way.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Share your thoughts about the district final showdown between Neshaminy and North Penn.
Kevin Cooney: Anthony Woodroffe apparently has become quite a player for Neshaminy if you look at 16 carries for 163 yards with a touchdown. Neshaminy is pretty damn good. The balance they have with Charlie Materella, Woodroffe, Sean Ulmer, Corey Majors, Dwight Williams – you could go on and on. It’s going to come down to which team’s weapons can get stopped. That’s not exactly a football brainstorm, but the better players are going to win this game.
I think the team that falls behind in this game is going to be in trouble because momentum in a game like this is huge. We saw two years ago when these two teams met in districts (a 28-0 North Penn win) – that first score is pretty important. Neshaminy had a field goal that sailed wide after a long drive, and then North Penn came back and scored right away. It boils down to who executes. The team that executes better and jumps out in front will win this game. It’s probably going to be a seven to 10-point game either way. I think it’s going to be a tighter game than people think.
I want to see how this game starts. I want to see if North Penn comes out and lays a whooping on Neshaminy. If North Penn comes out and plays with a purpose, I think they’re the better team. That being said, Neshaminy has some weird mojo going. I can’t get a read on it.
I think the winner of this game is going to end up in Hershey. I think the winner will beat La Salle or Easton because I think the La Salle/Easton game will be a blood bath this week. Would I stake my whole fortune to it? No, but I think District 11 is kind of upset after what happened last year, and La Salle could be a little rusty after a week and a half off. I don’t know. It’s come awfully easy to La Salle to this point. Let’s see if they get pushed a little this week. At some point, they’re going to have to win a game where they’re pushed. It’s either this week or next week.
Dom Cosentino: There’s a great deal of similarity in terms of the balance both of these teams bring to the table with their offense. You can’t key on the running game exclusively, and you can’t key on the pass, either. You have to account for a little bit of everything. It’s going to be a match of wits in some ways.
Neshaminy can’t make mistakes. It’s a cliché, but if they can hang onto the ball and move the ball a little bit, they can stay with North Penn. They’re going to have a tough time stopping North Penn’s offense with all the weapons they’ve got. They’re going to have to play mistake-free football in order to give themselves a chance. If they’re able to then force a fumble or an interception and get a turnover or two, it will be all the better for them.
North Penn is the favorite, no question. The skill players they have and the line they have makes them, at least on paper, appear to be the better team. Sure, this Neshaminy team has gotten progressively better as the season has worn on. This is not exactly the same team that lost to Council Rock South in October. They’ve improved because – and Mark Schmidt will tell you – it’s a very receptive group and a very resilient group given some of the off-the-field things they’ve had to deal with, like Marco Dapkey and the death of Joe ‘Mustang’ Foster in August. They’ve just kind of rallied together, and they seem to be a close group, perhaps the closest group Mark has ever had.
As Schmidt put it, ‘You’ve got to show the kids you care,’ and that’s a big key to creating a program. He seems like a guy you’d want your son to play for – for a lot of reasons that go beyond football. Mark is passionate about a lot of things, and part of that is working with kids.
Even though North Penn is the favorite, Neshaminy has the kind of group, I think, that can perhaps put something together and pull off a surprise on Friday.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Dom, you followed the Truman story this year and although the Tigers lost their final game to Conwell Egan, share your thoughts about this team making it to the finish line, something few people gave them a chance to do.
Dom Cosentino: Truman is the best 2-10 team of all time, and I say that because there was a lot of genuine uncertainty in late September about whether they would be able to finish the season out and not only that, what it would mean for the future of the program in general. If they had to wrap it up, there might not be Truman football anymore, and just by being able to get to the finish line and play this out, they have accomplished as much as anybody, really, because they’re going to continue to have a football program there at Truman.
Ed Cubbage has the job – they lifted the interim tag from him a few weeks ago - so he can build off of this and try and sustain something going forward. That’s always something these kids can look back at and be really proud of, and they should.
I don’t know that there are the kind of kids in other programs that would have been able to do this. This speaks to the kind of kids they had to be able to want to continue to play this season out when it would have been really easy to fold their tents and go their separate ways and be done with it. They left a legacy, and there’s going to be a 2011 football season at Truman because of these kids and because of Ed Cubbage and that staff. They met that challenge head on and accepted it. You can’t say enough good things about it. It’s one of the cooler stories I have encountered in my time here.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Kevin, you wrote a column about Thanksgiving Day games and your feeling that they are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. A lot of people disagree with you. What are your thoughts after this year’s Turkey Day games?
Kevin Cooney: Look at what happened with Ridley (which lost to Interboro). Look what happened to Upper Moreland (which lost to Hatboro-Horsham). Look what happened to Cheltenham who played the same team (Abington) and pretty much had the same result. It’s just not conducive to good football.
When you look at the way things are – to think that the District One title is not as important as playing a Thanksgiving Day game is just foolish in the modern era. We live in a playoff society. This is what drives college football. People want a playoff. You focus on the final month of the NFL season more than you do the first month.
You focus on the final five weeks of the high school football season because you’re playing for those final spots. This is the process it has become with 16 Class AAAA teams in the tournament. When you look at Upper Moreland, you look at Ridley, you look at Cheltenham – you look at the teams that played on Thanksgiving and the striking numbers of them, and it has become apparent now that the Thanksgiving game, in my mind, has lost its luster.
But, if teams want to play on Thanksgiving, God bless them. I’m not going to say there should be a state law that bans it, but let’s just acknowledge that it’s done.
You have Easton playing a Thanksgiving Day game against Phillipsburg and then coming back two days later and playing in the District 11 title game. We’re in this huge safety concern era in the sport, but we’re letting a team play three games in eight days. What is wrong with this? It doesn’t make sense. In a contact sport, there’s a reason why you play once a week.
I understand it’s a money maker. I understand what’s involved, but I’m not going to sit here and say it’s as special as it was when I was in high school. Time moves on.
Dom Cosentino: I disagree with that a lot just because I was at Bristol-Morrisville on Thursday, and that game was a big deal. I talked to a couple of old timers who came to that game, and they look forward to this every year. Remember, the playoffs are a recent phenomenon. They have only been around since 1988, and that has become the focus for everybody, but at the same time, there’s still a tremendous tradition with a lot of these games. Easton has found a way for years to play its game with Phillipsburg on Thanksgiving and still play in the playoffs because of how big a deal it is. I have been to Easton/P-burg, and there are 15,000 people at Fisher Field for that game. It’s a big deal. You just can’t get rid of these things. They mean a lot to their communities, and don’t think for a second that selling all those tickets on Thanksgiving morning doesn’t help the athletic office buy equipment the next year. It’s good money for some of these schools from a very practical standpoint.
I think finding a way to balance it is the key, and a lot of schools have. There are a lot of games that have gone by the wayside, but others that have continued to be played. Other than Easton, you don’t run into situations where teams are playing a Thanksgiving game and a playoff game on the same weekend. It doesn’t happen all that often. Just seeing what this game means in a place like Bristol-Morrisville - small communities that really, really look forward to this game - it would be unfathomable to get rid of it.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Looking at the Quad-A state bracket – who do you like besides La Salle and the District One squads?
Dom Cosentino: I liked North Allegheny – I have said that from the beginning of the year. They knocked off my alma mater last week (Pittsburgh Central Catholic) and won at Heinz Field on Saturday. They have a good coach – Art Walker is their coach, and he was the Pittsburgh Central Catholic coach in 2004 when they beat Neshaminy in the state championship. If there’s anybody that can stop the North Penn/La Salle train, it could have been them, though they lost their best two running backs to injury last week
One thing I have discovered in years past is it’s really difficult to compare some of these teams when they don’t play each other or have common opponents. Everyone thought Woodland Hills would beat Neshaminy in 2001, and they didn’t. There are certain teams you look at like North Penn in ’03 and Central Catholic in ’04 that are so good and riding a certain wave, and you’d be shocked if they lost. This year I don’t think we have a team like that. Everybody has a loss. There isn’t a Quad-A team in the state that is undefeated, so it’s very hard to point to a team and say, ‘Yes, they’re going to win the state title.’ La Salle is the defending state champ and right now, they have a bit of that aura. Their only loss is to a team from out of state, and they handled North Penn early. They look like the best team right now, but it’s possible that North Penn could get another shot at them next week, and that could be a very interesting game.
SuburbanOneSports.com: It’s time to pick the winners of this week’s games throughout the state.
Kevin Cooney: North Penn 27, Neshaminy 17
La Salle 24, Easton 21
Cumberland Valley 21, Red Lion 10
North Allegheny 14, State College 10
Dom Cosentino: North Penn 21, Neshaminy 14
La Salle 20, Easton 10
Cumberland Valley 28, Red Lion 7
North Allegheny 28, State College 6
*The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of SuburbanOneSports.com. Check back every week for more football talk with Kevin Cooney and Dom Cosentino. To offer comments or ask questions, write to Cooney at KCooney@phillyburbs.com and Cosentino at DCosentino@phillyburbs.com.
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