In the 15th 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 North Penn’s huge win over Neshaminy in the district title game. They also discuss Saturday’s big showdown between the Knights and defending state champion La Salle in the Eastern Final.
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 impressive win over Neshaminy in Friday night’s district title game.
Kevin Cooney: I thought North Penn was just incredibly focused. Frankly, they looked like a team that had waited 12 months to get back to that game. It was a textbook dismantling of a good football team. When you look at the way they went about it – they made the stop on that first drive and turned around and got the touchdown. They forced the punt and then get Ralph Reeves back and scored on the second drive. Bing, bing, bing – everything was over quick. That’s something we haven’t seen from them all year. North Penn made a process all season of letting teams hang around. They didn’t do that against Neshaminy on Friday night.
The most impressive thing North Penn did in Friday’s game was they made a very good quarterback look very pedestrian. They made Charlie Marterella run for his life and throw off balance – it seemed like he couldn’t quite pick up on what they were doing coverage-wise. There were a lot of underneaths, a lot of throwing off the back foot. It was just things we have not seen from Marterella all year long that came back and haunted him on Friday night, but that shouldn’t take away from the kid.
Dom Cosentino: I think North Penn has got a little bit of its moxie back and has proven as the season went along that they are the kind of team people expected them to be prior to the start of the season.
Will they go on to win a state title? With the speed they have, they are going to be a very difficult matchup for La Salle. The biggest thing is their speed in different positions and different areas. Craig Needhammer -- even though he got hurt – had a big night before he went out. You have him and Dom Taggart and Brandon Mercer in the backfield, and you have some really good receivers in guys like Taggart and Gerard Wendowski and even tight end Ralphie Reeves, who got in on the act by catching a touchdown last week.
I thought it was most impressive that they contained Neshaminy’s passing attack - which was a very good unit with some very good receivers – and forced them into turning the ball over. North Penn's speed is their best asset.
Last year when they were beaten up in the district final against Ridley, they learned a lesson from that game. A lot of these guys were on that team last year. They took that loss and learned some things from it. Craig Needhammer moved from linebacker to safety. They have shored up their secondary, and it showed on Friday night against Neshaminy.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Was there a pivotal moment in the game when you knew it was over for Neshaminy?
Kevin Cooney: How about not getting anything right before the half? You’re down 21-0, you’re going to give the ball to North Penn to start the second half. I heard some people wonder why they didn’t kick a field goal there, but really, three points did you no good. Seven was what you needed.
North Penn went down and scored twice to open the second half, and really quickly the mercy rule is on.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Did you agree with Neshaminy’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-two on its opening drive of the game? How important was that stop by North Penn?
Dom Cosentino: Mark Schmidt pretty much said he felt they should be able to get a yard or two in a situation like that early in a game when you’re across midfield. You also figured Neshaminy is the kind of team that can get a yard or two yards in a situation like that. He didn’t apologize for it, and I don’t think he should have. I’m not saying it would have been a different game if they had made it, but that was a huge momentum swing for North Penn to get the ball and one play later Needhammer scores a touchdown. It could have still turned out the same way if they had made it, but Mark felt he needed to show that his team could get the two yards. There were some people on the Neshaminy sidelines saying the spot was bad, but if they get it, it may just be prolonging the inevitable. Just given the way North Penn was playing, I don’t think it would have made that much of a difference.
Kevin Cooney: What that play may have showed was that Neshaminy may have thought they were outgunned from the start. When you don’t feel like you have the horses to go toe to toe, you take a strange chance sometimes that you may later regret. It almost worked, and there’s a legitimate question about where that spot was. You see the videos today – it looked like the officials got a little better look at it than I thought, but I would still say I thought it was a first down just judging from the naked eye.
That chain of events – those two plays – set a tone. We spent all last week talking about the first team that punches the other team in the mouth was going to win, and that’s what happened with North Penn and Neshaminy. I thought North Penn laid the first haymaker, and Neshaminy never really got their sea legs under them.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Despite the disappointing ending, comment about Neshaminy’s season.
Dom Cosentino: Neshaminy had a very good team. They overcame a lot of adversity and difficult things this season. They had a freshman starting at outside linebacker the entire season in Denny Lord. They won a share of the league title, and they did it on merit.
On Friday night, they ran into a team that could win a state championship. They have nothing to be ashamed about. This Neshaminy team was supposed to be good, but I don’t know that anyone thought they would be 12-1 heading into the district final. It’s a credit to the type of players they have. Mark described them as resilient. They didn’t have the blue chippers, but they played well together. Mark praised them for listening and buying into what they were teaching them, and it showed. They just ran into a very formidable North Penn team on Friday night.
Kevin Cooney: You look at everything Neshaminy went through - I know Mark Schmidt was disappointed the other night, but in time, I think that disappointment is going to wear off. They were expected to be good, but they were not expected to be as good as they turned out.
Did they prove a lot of people wrong? They shared a division title in a year that Pennsbury was down, and maybe there’s still a disappointment factor for not winning that title outright because I know how much that National Conference title means to them.
Neshaminy is really good, but the one thing I think you’ll see with Schmidt is that it’s a cyclical thing. He may have one down year – I’m not sure you would say last year was a down year, but it was not a standard Schmidt year. They kind of snuck into the playoffs, ended up playing North Penn and got beat in the second round.
What you saw the last few weeks was a Neshaminy team that played with a lot of heart and a lot of guts. They don’t have D-1 players at every position. There have been Neshaminy teams with more talent that haven’t accomplished what this team did, and I think that’s a pretty good legacy to have.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Talk about some of the players that are making North Penn such a dangerous opponent right now.
Dom Cosentino: Dick Beck has a lot of guys that on a lot of other teams would get the ball 15-20 times a game. How many carries did Brandon Mercer have the other night? Four carries and two go for touchdowns.
The players have all bought into the fact that it’s a team game. They have to sacrifice their egos to make that happen.
Dom Taggart converting from a receiver to fullback – it’s not the easiest of transitions. You’re asked to do a lot of different things, but it worked. Needhammer has been there. They have a lot of guys, with a lot of experience. Remember, a lot of these guys played last year, too, on a team that reached the district final.
I think a key play the other night was the interception by Matt Donovan who read the route the tight end was running and made a play that continued the momentum for North Penn.
Gerard Wendowski had an interception and is doing things in different ways to contribute for North Penn.
It does help that North Penn doesn’t have as many two way guys as a lot of the other teams.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Easton gave La Salle all it could handle. Does that bode well for North Penn?
Dom Cosentino: Easton is a pretty good team, and they played La Salle tough last year as well.
La Salle has a passing game, and they took it to North Penn with that passing attack the first game of the season. They have a terrific running back in Jamal Abdur-Rahman, who has over 1500 yards and is going to Villanova, and they’re a physical team.
Outside of Ridley - when these teams played each other in week one, a lot of people thought it could be a preview of the Eastern Final.
SuburbanOneSports.com: What are your thoughts about North Penn’s upcoming game against La Salle?
Kevin Cooney: North Penn is now going to face the one team that beat them, and they’re going to face the one team that can matchup weapons-wise against them. You look at running back Jamal Abdur-Raham, you look at their quarterback, Mike Magarity, and you look at how they spread the offense. The style that LaSalle showed to me is the Gordon’s – Drew and Brett. Their game plan is so meticulous. Everything has a purpose. There’s no wasted energy, there’s no wasted steam. Everything works in concert with each other. Having watched Brett quarterback when he was at LaSalle 15 years ago – it was that way when he was at La Salle. That’s going to be the interesting matchup this week.
North Penn has to shut down La Salle’s running game. Everybody sees the four wides, and they get fooled into thinking, ‘They’re the old pass-the-ball-around team,’ but no, they will run the football. They have a 1500-yard running back in Abdur-Raham. They run the ball, they use the spread to run it out of, so they’re willing to play wild cat a little bit.
The team that stops the run is going to win this game. The other thing is – and it’s cliché in a game like this, but don’t turn the ball over. If you look at the first game between the two, it was the big mistakes and not getting in the right field position and not getting the right coverage. You’ve got to avoid the big mistakes, you’ve got to avoid the seven-point mistakes. You have to force teams to drive, and in the end, that’s where I think the game will go, and that’s where North Penn has improved a lot of the last six or seven weeks.
Dom Cosentino: From what I saw, North Penn seems to be very efficient and very on point. They kind of found their stride, and the big thing was shoring up their secondary because they have the guys up front and the skills players on offense. They seem to be heading into this game with a lot of swagger and confidence.
The keys to the game for North Penn will be protecting the ball and being physical. What was so shocking about last year’s loss to Ridley was the physicality Ridley brought into the game. North Penn had kind of steamrolled everyone last year, and I think that punch in the mouth might have woken them up. They will have to bring that kind of physicality individually and as a team.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Will the winner of the La Salle/North Penn game be the favorite in the state title game?
Dom Cosentino: The big thing with North Allegheny is they lost running back Alex Papson and his backup, but they were still able to put on a good showing against State College. I would think they have enough to beat Cumberland Valley as well.
North Allegheny coach Art Walker was the coach at Pittsburgh Central Catholic. This is a coach who has been through this before, and I would expect it to be North Allegheny playing La Salle in next week’s state title game. Even though North Penn has improved since the first week of the season, I’m still going to give La Salle the edge just because they’re the state champs, and they have done it all year. Keep in mind – La Salle hasn’t lost to a team in the state this season. I’m going with La Salle in a close one.
Kevin Cooney: The strange part is – District One hasn’t been back in the state finals since that Neshaminy team won Quad A in ’04. Is it because the rest of the state has caught up, or has District One slipped? It’s probably a little bit of both.
LaSalle is a game changer. La Salle is a great program. LaSalle would have competed in the old days, and I know the people in Doylestown, including some of my bosses, will retch when they read that, but the Gordon teams could have competed against the (Mike) Pettine teams. They really could have. Their offensive scheme was ahead of its time. If you put La Salle in the PIAA playoffs back then, they have a shot at winning the whole thing.
Would they win? I don’t know, but they’re not going to get blown out. What you see now is you throw La Salle into this mix – Liberty and Parkland have gotten better from District 11, and it’s just a different dynamic. These programs adopted more of a D-1 kind of feel – the year-round training, the heavy weight room, the flexibility time. It’s stuff we saw from the Pettine age getting copycatted a little more around the state, and that’s the main difference right now.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Now it’s time to predict the scores.
Dom Cosentino: La Salle 21, North Penn 17
North Allegheny 28, Cumberland Valley 20
Kevin Cooney: I have waffled on this. I went in thinking I was picking North Penn and shouting it from the heavens because I thought La Salle looked rusty last week, but I have put all that on hold. I’m still going to pick North Penn, but I’m really, really nervous about it. I’ll go with North Penn winning 24-21.
North Penn had that look last week that teams get when they go on a run for a state title. They have that dominating, iron fist type of look. I find it hard to believe that it’s going to slip away in a week. La Salle is the favorite, but North Penn has momentum, motivation and tools. This is not a little sisters of the poor kind of upset. If North Penn does this, it’s because they are a good football team. I think everybody underestimated La Salle coming into the season because of all the new bodies they have. I think this time everybody is underestimating what North Penn can do. I think North Penn has a good chance. They really do, but they have to be healthy. They have to get something out of Craig Needhammer. I think Brandon Mercer is the guy who’s the X factor in this game.
North Penn is not the type of team that is so reliant on one guy. They are the team that has the home run hitter coming off the bench. Mercer is not coming off the bench, but he doesn’t carry the ball like Dom Taggart or Needhammer. It’s an interesting dynamic in play.
SuburbanOneSports.com: On a non-football related subject, what are your thoughts on Jayson Werth signing a $126 million deal with the Washington Nationals?
Kevin Cooney: I’m sure there were people who will say the Phillies should have made a move 10-11 months ago to get this guy under wraps, but with the economics of baseball today, Jayson Werth was not going to come back here for a song. He wasn’t giving a hometown discount. He wanted to get top dollar, which is his right. I think all of us would agree that this is what he would do and what he should do. This is a guy who has had injury problems and who feels like he has missed a few major paydays. I don’t think anyone begrudges him that.
I think the Washington Nationals are out of their minds. I say that with all due respect. Jayson Werth is a very good player, but part of it in my mind is – is he the kind of guy that you put your money down and go pay to see, and that has to figure into the value of a player when you spend that kind of money. The other thing is – the Nationals’ franchise player is Ryan Zimmerman. His contract is up in 2013 – if Werth is getting this much money, how much is Zimmerman going to get? Zimmerman is probably as important on both sides of the ball as anyone in the game.
The Nationals know they overpaid, so I don’t think you could fault the Phillies on letting him walk. The question now is who comes in and fills the gap? I have one person I know in the organization who said they always find a way to pull the answer out. We’ll see. It’s going to be a tough sell showing Ben Francisco and Ross Gload as your right fielders on opening day. They have to get somebody. They can’t just rely on what they have in house, especially if they decide that Brown isn’t ready.
Anybody who says they would not have taken that contract and wanted him to show a personal sense of loyalty to the Phillies is insane. The Nationals knew they had to overpay him to get him to come to Washington, and they did. They’ll all live happily ever after or they’ll all crash and burn. It could be the Aaron Rowan contract very easily.
Dom Cosentino: As a Pirates fan, it reminds me of when the Pirates gave Jason Kendall a $60 million dollar, six-year contract, once upon a time when they were bidding against themselves. I think Washington is trying to show its fans that it's committed to winning, but I don’t know if Werth is the kind of guy you build your team around and certainly not a player that is worth that kind of money. He played a very good role with the Phillies as a right-handed power hitter, but they obviously could not have paid him that kind of money. He may regret leaving someday, but he'll be able to light cigars with $50 bills to make himself feel better.
*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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