In the ninth weekly edition of the Intelligencer/Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football,’ high school football beat writers Kevin Cooney and Dom Cosentino share their thoughts about several of last week’s key SOL games and take a look ahead at this week’s big games. They also offer their opinions about the district tournament format.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: North Penn rallied from a 16-0 deficit to defeat Souderton. Comment on that key Continental Conference game.
Kevin Cooney: You look at the comeback North Penn put together – you’re down 16-0 on the road and just fumbled on three straight offensive plays, and you’re thinking, ‘Wow, maybe this is the end for North Penn as far as being the undisputed power,’ but they suddenly turned it around.
Dom Taggart has become the best player in the area. He had five touchdowns, he had an interception. He just brings such a dynamic to that team, and he brings such energy. I think if North Penn goes on a run here, we’re going to look back on the final five minutes of the first half of that game and how they went from 16-0 down to 20-16 up in that span and feel that’s the turning point of the season. It’s perhaps too soon to start thinking about that in those terms, but I think you almost have to because you have to go with the idea that they’re the best team, and they’re now doing what they’re expected to do.
That win was huge for North Penn. They’ll probably be a four or five seed in districts, and they could end up with a second round matchup against Neshaminy.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Kevin, you were at the North Penn game. Talk about Dom Taggart’s emergence as a legitimate star.
Kevin Cooney: There are so many weapons on North Penn, and it’s tough to pick your poison between Brandon Mercer, Craig Needhammer and Corey Ernst. What Taggart has done is established himself as the main guy in that bunch, the guy who can run inside and outside, and the guy who can get free out of the backfield and catch a pass if needed. He brings such a versatility to that offense. I think what you’re talking about is a player who’s kind of setting the tone. He set the tone for them the other night. When teams adjust and try and take him away, someone else will have to do it. I think he has become their number one offensive weapon.
SuburbanOneSports.com: After watching that game, what are your thoughts about Souderton?
Kevin Cooney: When they play together, they’re a very good team, but they don’t have a margin for error like North Penn. North Penn could have a bad quarter but has enough firepower where they can bounce back if they fall behind. Souderton – because of the way their offense is set up – is not a good come-from-behind team. They’re great frontrunners, for lack of a better term, and that eventually does bite you. You have to be able to score and score quickly, and that’s not necessarily their strong point at this point.
I like their three running backs with Javon White, Tyler Scholl and Joe McNamara – they’re good, but they don’t have a lot of other weapons. Defensively, they’re kind of vulnerable in spots, especially in the secondary.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Despite the loss, Souderton is still in the mix for a district playoff spot. Talk about that.
Kevin Cooney: Souderton played a couple of early elimination-type games in the beginning of the season. They lost to Neshaminy and Abington. Then they played CB West, and that was an elimination-type game. Pennridge was an elimination-type game. Now they’re all legitimately elimination-type games the rest of the way. If they end up losing one of their final two games, their season is over because, quite frankly, I don’t see a four-loss team getting in. CB East may have a chance. Pennsbury if it wins out may have a chance, but there’s only one three-loss team in the field right now, and that’s Souderton. That’s kind of telling.
Souderton has enough weapons that they should win both of their final games, but they have slipped, and they always seem to ride this last wave – they’re always one of those teams that you’re watching on the bubble, so they’re kind of used to the drill. I think they’ll get in. They have enough weapons to get in. If they don’t, I think they’ll be extremely disappointed over there because they should be a playoff team.
SuburbanOneSports.com: One of the teams standing in the way of Souderton and a potential playoff spot is Central Bucks East. Talk about that matchup on Friday.
Kevin Cooney: East is a different team than they were at the beginning of the year. Having Justyn White back makes a big difference on both sides of the football. Defensively, he has been a great player for them and made a great impact.
It would have been interesting to see how their season had turned if they had beaten West a couple of weeks ago because it’s a little bit of an easier path maybe, but they would still have to get by Souderton.
John Donnelly and Ed Gallagher have played against each other for a long time, and some of their games when Donnelly was at Quakertown used to be pretty good ones. East has a chance to upset Souderton. It’s a question of which Souderton team shows up and which East team shows up because on paper Souderton has the better team.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Council Rock South has all but been crowned the National Conference champion and number one seed in the district, but Abington would like to say something about that. What are your thoughts about that game?
Dom Cosentino: The first thing is that Rock South can clinch a share of its first league championship if it wins, so they have everything to play for. It really is their last big test before the playoffs. I think that, by beating Neshaminy, it became apparent that they had a very good chance of being undefeated, and this is the last real test for them.
This is a good Abington team. Everyone knows what Julien Ireland can do, and Abington’s defense – I’ve been saying this all year – doesn’t get enough credit for being a terrific unit. You’re going to have two good defenses going at it this week in a game that will be 10-6 or something like that. Of course, I say that, and it will probably be 40-30, but whatever.
That said, I just don’t know if Abington has enough weapons on offense beyond Ireland to be able to really do enough against that Rock South defense. We’ll see. Abington’s offense relies so heavily on Ireland to make plays for them, and, at least in their lone league loss, Neshaminy’s defense was able to exploit that; Neshaminy limited Abington to 106 yards in that game. Julien Ireland was involved in just about every one of Abington’s offensive plays that night. I think just the way Rock South’s defense is predicated on attacking and swarming to the ball – I just don’t see how Abington is going to be able to put together a sustained effort. Unless there’s a big play that they’re able to spring, I don’t see how they’re going to do much against the Golden Hawks’ defense.
At the same time, Abington’s defense gives it a chance against just about anybody. It hasn’t been talked about much, but they’ve limited every opponent they’ve played – other than Neshaminy - to 15 points or fewer. That’s a credit to the kind of defense they play, and that will allow them to stay in the game because if they get a turnover or make something happen, that’s how they can win this game.
Kevin Cooney: This is realistically the last hope for someone to beat Council Rock South before the playoffs. It will be interesting to see what happens with Julien Ireland. He had a good game last week, but he has been dinged up at times this year. Hey, South is on such a roll right now. Anybody picking against them is doing it at their own peril. Billy Fleming has had a great year. He’s got to be in the mix for Player of the Year. It will be interesting, and it will be different.
SuburbanOneSports.com: The winner of Friday night’s Upper Moreland/Cheltenham game will be in a position to win a share of the title, thanks to the Golden Bears’ win over Upper Dublin last Friday. Any thoughts about that?
Kevin Cooney: That was a huge win for Upper Moreland. For them to get over the top against Upper Dublin – a team that had beaten them since ’04 and the way they did it with a missed extra point for Upper Dublin. They have a tough one with Cheltenham on Friday. They’re not out of the woods yet, but they’re in pretty good shape right now to win that conference title.
Dom Cosentino: Cheltenham’s one loss was to Upper Dublin, and Upper Moreland lost to PW, so it’s difficult to get a read on this one based on who they played. It certainly looks like now the two best teams in the American Conference. Upper Moreland has plenty to play for beyond a league title. They’re in the running for the top seed in Class AAA in District One. Cheltenham is in the driver’s seat for a playoff berth too. It should be a good game, possibly the game of the year in that league.
SuburbanOneSports.com: What are the games with district playoff implications this week?
Kevin Cooney: If you’re looking at it strictly from an SOL standpoint, Souderton and East is a big game as far as setting the tone. If you look at the rankings top to bottom, week nine is interesting because – as it stands now - you have CR South, which is one, playing Abington who’s 10. Ridley is two, and they’re playing Garnet Valley who’s 12. Boyertown is tied for fifth – they’re playing Owen J. Roberts that’s 13. You have a couple of these crossover games – if Abington, OJR and Garnet Valley lose, now you’re talking about opening the door up for CB East, Pennsbury, Upper Darby and some of these other schools to get through.
Upper Dublin is interesting this week because of the fact that they get Wissahickon and that will be it. They have the week 10 bye. That, in a way, helps them and maybe puts them up to a 10 or 11 seed as opposed to maybe slipping down to a 15 or 16 if they lost that game.
This is the only way they can do the power rankings. It stinks, it’s awful, but it’s the best way they can do it. I have a problem with 16 teams. I think it should be eight, maybe 12. Eight right now is CB West who I think deserves to be in.
SuburbanOneSports.com: As someone familiar with the western part of Pennsylvania, what are your thoughts about the district playoff structure?
Dom Cosentino: I remember writing about it a few years ago when they decided to go with 16 teams. Basically, the reason they expanded the season to a 16th week around the state was to accommodate playoff qualifiers in other districts.
In Pittsburgh – Class A through AAAA -- they have all the championships on one weekend, and they play them at Heinz Field, where the Steelers play. Remember, the PIAA playoffs only date to 1988. But District Seven (WPIAL), in the Pittsburgh area, has staged its championships at either Three Rivers Stadium or Heinz Field for far longer. It’s a major cash cow, the games are all televised, and it’s a tremendous source of pride – so much so that the WPIAL even threatened to pull out of the PIAA in the last year or two if any of it had to be altered, so the rest of the state had to work around that. So based on the way the brackets were drawn when District 12 entered the PIAA a few years back, which resulted in far more big schools being located in the East than in the West, they had to add another week to the season to be able to make everything fit with Pittsburgh still getting its four championships to wind up at the same time
The PIAA did kick around the idea of reducing the season to 15 weeks, while also expanding the number of enrollment classifications from four to five or even six, but when you got down to it, a lot of upstate districts, including District 11, liked having the additional round of qualifiers. They don’t get 16 teams like District One, but they get eight and they like that because they used to get four, and they felt that wasn’t enough. And the WPIAL, which made going beyond four classifications non-negotiable, led the charge, and they were able to get enough districts to go along with them to keep things the way they are. And so we’re stuck with 16 weeks, and 16 playoff qualifiers in District One.
Interestingly, District One did kick around the idea of having a bye week and going with eight teams or even going with 12, but no one really wanted to have a week off that late in the season. Nobody really likes the 16 except for the teams that are able to back in at the bottom of the stack because it gives them something to play for. There is one view that says that’s the good thing - it gives kids an opportunity to play in a playoff game. At the same time, it waters down the product. I don’t think anybody can argue that.
Personally, I just think there are too many teams. I don’t think it does a whole lot of good to have some of the teams at the bottom of the bracket playing some of the teams at the top. It’s an unnecessary playoff game.
Even at the lower levels – AA and A, but especially Class A this year -- four teams get in, and there may not be four teams that have a better than .500 record. As a result, District One decided to take only those teams that have a .500 or better record, even if there’s just two.
One other thing: 16 is still a better system than what we had 10 years ago, when only four teams made the playoffs, which was REALLY unfair. I think the district has proven that it has eight or more teams that are probably worthy of a playoff spot, but I think most years you don’t have 16. That’s just the way it is.
SuburbanOneSports.com: The Phillies devastated an entire city with their loss to Giants in the NLCS. Both of you were at the sixth game covering it for the Intelligencer/Courier Times. Share some of your thoughts.
Kevin Cooney: This was a total team breakdown. I wrote that it wasn’t what the San Francisco Giants did, it was what the Phillies didn’t do.
There are two iconic moments – one is the fence scraper that Uribe hit in Game 6 and the other is Ryan Howard taking a called third strike to end Game 6.
Lost in the blitz of it would be the poor defense all the way around by the Phillies but especially by Chase Utley. The other was the lack of production at the top of the lineup. I came into this series thinking if the Phillies were going to lose they were going to lose four 2-1 games, and they lost three one-run games. I don’t think it was anything the Giants pitchers did. I know that’s not a popular opinion judging from my e-mails, but the Giants starting pitching was beatable. You look at Lincecum in Game 1, you look at Sanchez in Game 2 and you look at Sanchez in Game 6. They were okay but not great. They were beatable, and the Phillies did not take advantage.
Now the question is to see what kind of adjustments will be made to the lineup structure in the offseason. I said all along I think they have to cut down on the number of strikeouts because I think that really hurt them. Unproductive outs in October kill you, and the Phillies made way too many this year, and that’s why they’re watching the World Series on TV.
Their inability to get the big hit was not a new trend. This was something that had been there all season. It went away a little bit in September and then came back. They’ve never hit to their capabilities. It’s a blip. It’s not an end-of-the-world thing for this franchise. They have enough talent – depending on the moves they make – to get back next year, but they’re going to have to do some work.
Dom Cosentino: Rich Hofmann of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote a tremendous column after the Eagles lost to Tampa Bay in the 2002 NFC Championship game that included an awesome closing line. It was the final football game at Veterans Stadium, and the final line of Hofmann’s column, which I’ll paraphrase, was, ‘When fans show up at Lincoln Financial Field next year and gaze skyward, it won’t be for divine intervention, but for a falling safe.’ That image is just perfect: For many years, it pretty much summarized the fatalistic mood that so many fans in Philadelphia harbored. No matter what, these teams were going to let you down.
This Phillies team has had a great run, but I do think the prevailing mood in this town is that they should have won another championship. That said, that attitude really speaks to how much they’ve transformed the city’s mood, too.
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