Intelligencer/Courier Times: "Let's Talk Football" (10-8-20)

10/08/20 10:34pm Posted by Lets Talk Football

Back for its 11th season, the popular Intelligencer/Bucks County Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football’ features football beat writers Drew Markol and Todd Thorpe. To stay on top of the high school football news in the area, visit the Intelligencer (https://www.theintell.com/sports/high-school) and Courier Times (https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/sports/high-school/) web sites, which will feature a live blog on football Fridays.

SuburbanOneSports.com: Your thoughts about opening week in the National Conference.

Drew Markol: “In the National Conference, you had two heavyweights going at in with North Penn at Neshaminy, and Neshaminy beats North Penn 35-19 in a game that was a two-point game at the half with Neshaminy up. Neshaminy scored the only points of the second half. Penalties hurt North Penn, which is rare for a Dick Beck coached team because they’re usually very disciplined, but again, it’s a different kind of year. These kids haven’t played because of the whole pandemic. It was harder to get teams ready. At the game I went to, there was just a lot of cramping, the kids weren’t ready. Chris James, their three-year starter at running back, had a touchdown and ran for 143 yards, which he normally does. Neshaminy has a big offensive line with some experience back, and that’s been their MO for a long time. If you have a good line and good running back in high school football, you can do well, and Neshaminy has that.

“For North Penn, junior Khalani Eaton had 140 yards rushing and only had 14 carries. They weren’t stopping him, and not many teams will, but Neshaminy was just too much for them. In this shortened five-game season where they’re only counting five games towards who qualifies for district playoffs, you really can’t afford to lose. You’re going to have undefeated teams kept out of the playoffs. North Penn may have put itself in a bad spot losing that first game as far as any playoff hopes might be. Neshaminy on the flip side, has to be pretty happy because they beat what was a really good North Penn team.

“If you run through the rest of the National Conference, you have Abington – a team I really like - that mercy ruled CB South. Oreck Frazier, who’s a legit D1 defensive back, ran for a ton of yards against South. Abington is legit, that’s for sure.

“I think CB East might be too. Senior quarterback Anthony Giordano knows how to play. He can throw it, he can run it. They have sophomore running backs Tommy Day and Dylan Rotondo. They build a lead on Pennsbury, and Pennsbury switched back to its old style of just trying to pound the ball. They made it close – 28-21 final, but that was a good job by East going down to Pennsbury and getting that win.

“You look at Pennridge/CB West. Pennridge is coming off a three-win season last year, and West won the conference title back when they were in the Continental with their great season, but West lost a ton to graduation, and Pennridge got senior Shane Hartzell back. He’s the heart and soul of that team on offense in the backfield and on defense at linebacker. He scored a couple of touchdowns and had a huge role on defense with 400 tackles. Pennridge, I think, is somebody to watch in that National Conference, which is a pretty good conference.”

Todd Thorpe: “Neshaminy thought they were going to be better this year. You had to wonder because they lose a quarterback, Brody McAndrew, who was a three-year starter, but overall, whether it was line play or defense or depth, they thought they were going to be better this year. Whether that means undefeated or whatever, they were going to be better than the 5-5 team they were last year. If you look at the last four weeks of last year, there were signs. As they started playing teams they had an advantage over, they started playing a lot better. Neshaminy being better isn’t a surprise, beating North Penn is. It wouldn’t have shocked anybody if those were the two best teams in the conference, but to win in week one - North Penn has a lot back, but in the same breath, they have a sophomore quarterback in Ryan Zeltt. Whether he played a lot last year or not, he’s still very young. I think Neshaminy was prepared for that game, and not having any prequels leading up to it probably helped Neshaminy a little bit. They were just squarely focused on North Penn. I really like Chris James, their running back. He’s a three-year starter and just a really tough running back. He’s not the biggest kid in the world, but he really can get after it. All of a sudden you have to wonder if Neshaminy is the team that’s going to end up 5-0 coming out of this division. They have a chance to be a playoff team after that win. I think that conference is going to be just one gauntlet after another.

“Neshaminy has to go up against Pennridge this week, and Pennridge went to CB West and really handled CB West, a sign that Pennridge is going to be better, improved, and CB West is going to take a little bit of a step back after last year’s historic year they had. It’s really an interesting year.

“I was at CB East against Pennsbury. CB East looked like a team early on that had a lot of returning players – a returning quarterback (Anthony Giordano), a starting wide receiver (Will Silverman). They came out flying and built a big lead at halftime. John Donnelly said after the game, ‘We had some drops, we could have been up 35 instead of 22,’ but they weren’t. Giordano had a big first half. He’s a guy who’s going to be able to beat you in a lot of different ways. He can run the ball a little bit, and he’s got a lot of weapons. He threw to five or six different guys, and he’s got that experience playing. Defensive coaches are going to really struggle to come up with game plans to shut them down.

“Pennsbury – it took them a half to see where their advantages might lie, and they came back and really made it a game. If they’d had a fifth quarter, Pennsbury might have won that game. Pennsbury is pretty much a new team with only three starters total returning on either side of the ball, and I think it took them a half to adjust to the speed of it. When you’re playing against a team like CB East who’s going to spread it around and throw it all over the place – the first drive of the game, CB East threw the ball six times and drove right down the field and scored a touchdown. If you’re Pennsbury, you’ve got a lot of new varsity starters. How do you even get ready for that kind of offense, but I thought Pennsbury showed a lot in the second half. They’re going to be a team that’s competitive. This isn’t going to be a year they can’t compete week to week. You look at CB East and say - give them a week when they are firing on all cylinders, and they aren’t having the drops they had last week, and maybe CB East is in that mix.

“Abington had a huge win and scored a bunch of points in its win over Central Bucks South. Nobody really knew what they had besides Oreck Frazier and Caleb Baker, their wide receiver. Frazier is playing more offense this year – he’s a real talented kid, a 1AA college level player. All of a sudden, they’re back. I really think Kevin Conlin is building a program because when you lose a multi-year starter at quarterback and your tailback – they kind of look like they’re going to be there again. I think that conference is wide open.

“North Penn is lingering. It’s not like you can write them off. I can’t think anybody in that conference isn’t a little worried going in to play North Penn. That conference definitely looks like the old Power 10 - we’ll call it the Power 8 – of yesteryear because the best teams are there, and that’s what we expected. It’s a five-week season, and it’s a gauntlet. Every week is like a test, and you’ve got to be ready to go. We’ll find out more this week, but I don’t know if we’ll have any answers.”

SuburbanOneSports.com: What are your thoughts about the Continental Conference after the first week of the season?

Drew Markol: “As we shift to the Continental, nice job by Council Rock North and head coach John Greiner, the former Bristol coach. They beat up on Bensalem 40-6. It’s been a struggle for the Council Rocks lately, and again, it’s just one game, but that’s a nice way to come out of the chute and do what they did when not much was expected of them in that conference. Again, we have to stress it’s week one, and things change quickly, but that was a nice surprise to see Council Rock North do that.

“Council Rock South picked up a win over Hatboro. Hatboro-Horsham is trying to rebuild with new coach Ken Remaily. That’s always hard when you couple a new coach with the pandemic and a late start to the season. There are a lot of things that are going against you trying to get a team ready, so it was good to see the two Council Rocks get a win.

“The game I saw was Quakertown and Souderton. Quakertown dominated play in the first half, but Souderton was able to hang around. They lost Jalen White, their very good running back. He hurt his thumb midway through the second quarter, so Souderton just went to junior Brayden Porter in the backfield. He ran tough, scored two second-half touchdowns – his first ever varsity touchdowns, and Souderton pulled out a 28-23 win. Souderton was a district playoff team last year. They lost a lot to graduation, but coach Ed Gallagher says he’s got a lot of young talent, so we’ll see where they go.”

Todd Thorpe: “I think Council Rock North was a team you looked at coming into the year and said, ‘All right, it’s the second year of a new program under coach John Greiner, let’s see where they’re going.’ John Greiner is a guy that’s been around. He’s been at Bristol, and he was an assistant coach at a bunch of different spots. You kind of had to wonder how long it was going to take and what was going to happen there. The way he spoke about their offensive line especially, and there’s just an overall togetherness as a team. They handled Bensalem, and Bensalem had a lot of question marks. They were very young last year, played a lot of young guys. By all accounts, that was a pretty close game at halftime, 13-6. I guess some turnovers broke it open, but that’s a great win for North. There’s no reason to think they shouldn’t be very confident this week at home against Souderton. Souderton is certainly a team that’s won more in the last half decade or so, but coming off week one, if I’m sitting at North, I’m like ‘All right, we’re confident, we won big, let’s make it two in a row.’

“Souderton had a great win last week too. Beating Quakertown was huge for them because a lot of people had question marks about Souderton too, and they lost their running back, Jalen White, early in the game. It’s an interesting week two matchup, and there are only five weeks. We have to wait and see as we go along. The games are all important now, That’s definitely one of intrigue in that conference. I know Upper Dublin won pretty big too, and they’re in the Continental.

“If you’re Quakertown, you have to win coming off a loss, and Rock South had a close win over Hatboro. We’ll see. I think it’s going to be one of those years where we’ll look at a lot of games, in that conference especially, and scratch our heads wondering which team is going to win this week because I think it’s going to be interesting to see if any of these teams step out or if they're just going to beat each other up all year. Nothing that happened in week one doesn’t suggest that’s not going to be the case.

“It’s a whole new world, and when looking forward to the season, I’ve always said that the question isn’t whether it’s going to be evenly matched, but also, are any of these teams going to put up five wins to make a serious run at one of the four district playoff spots. When we talk Continental Conference and American Conference, there were a lot of new names that we heard. We’re going to have to wait. It’s going to be that kind of year.”

SuburbanOneSports.com: The American Conference had a few surprises. Your comments.

Drew Markol: “Looking at the American Conference last week, one of the games that sticks out is Springfield Township – which hadn’t played in the SOL for a couple of years – goes and plays William Tennent, a Class 6A school and Springfield is 4A, in their first game and they knock them off. That’s just an enormous confident builder for the Spartans to do that. That American Conference has some good teams. For Springfield to get that first win and all the confidence that goes with it moving forward with the pandemic and everything, that’s just great. It was cool to see that Abington coach Kevin Conlin’s son, Willum, scored the winning touchdown for Springfield. It was one of those games – and there were a couple – that just jumped off the page when you see the score. Going forward with this boost of energy, it will be interesting to see what they do.

“Another first timer in the American Conference, New Hope-Solebury lost to Upper Moreland 21-7. I don’t want to call Upper Moreland a sleeper because I think they’re more than that. I think they’re legit. They have quarterback Byron Hopkins and some decent backs. Jon Knight, a senior, had a big game for them. New Hope-Solebury is new to the Suburban One League. They’re going to be okay. Their coach, Jim DiTulio, has been there a long time. He turned that program around years ago. Some people might have been a little surprised that it was only a two-touchdown game, but I wasn’t. I think New Hope will be able to hang in there in that conference. It’s a good spot for them.”

Todd Thorpe: “In the American Conference like the Continental Conference, we started the year wondering where do we stand without a Cheltenham this year that’s the favorite. You also had to wonder where Springfield stood with a school like a William Tennent coming in that quite frankly had been competing at higher levels in terms of conferences and schedules. I give Springfield a ton of credit for winning that game. To hold Tennent to six points really says a lot about them. Tennent obviously still has some work to do, but maybe Springfield’s just good. Maybe that had a lot to do with that result. I’ll be curious to see how they do going forward because that’s a surprising win – not because Tennent’s a district championship type team. They’ve never been that, but to beat a significantly bigger school in their season opener, that was a surprise to me, I admit it.

SuburbanOneSports.com: Any must-see games on the schedule this week?

Drew Markol: “Looking ahead to this week – in the Continental, you’ve got Souderton going down to Council Rock North. Both teams are 1-0, and both teams are feeling good about themselves and they should. Souderton coach Ed Gallagher said after Friday night’s game, ‘We have to go down to Council Rock North next week. It will be our first time getting on a bus.’ You never know how these kids are going to react, and you have a Council Rock North team that put up 40 points on Bensalem, so they’re sky high as far as excitement level, and they should be. Souderton came from behind to beat Quakertown. Whoever wins that game – it’s a pretty good place to be. That will be interesting to see.

“Speaking of the Council Rocks, Council Rock South will go up to Quakertown, and it’s Quakertown’s Senior Night. Council Rock South had the win over Hatboro-Horsham, and they obviously want to go to 2-0. Quakertown can’t afford another loss - a two-loss team when you’re only playing five games in your conference. It would be awfully hard to win your conference with two losses, so Quakertown will have to be ready. Quakertown coach George Banas put a lot of blame for the loss on himself and said there are things they have to clean up. They’ll need to do that against a Council Rock South team that is coming off a win and the confidence that comes with that.

“Another good one is up in the National Conference where we’ll find out just how good Pennridge is. They go to Neshaminy. Pennridge is coming off scoring 35 points against CB West, and Neshaminy scored 35 against North Penn. Is Pennridge legit? If they go down to Heartbreak Ridge and beat Neshaminy, that would make you legit. I think we found out about Neshaminy with its win over North Penn, but those are three good ones on the schedule this week. If you look at the SOL schedule, those are the three games that jump out at you.”

Pick the winners

Drew Markol (picks in bold):

Central Bucks West @ Abington

Bensalem @ Upper Dublin

Central Bucks East @ Central Bucks South

Souderton @ Council Rock North

Council Rock South @ Quakertown

Wissahickon @ Hatboro-Horsham

Pennridge @ Neshaminy

New Hope-Solebury @ Springfield Township

Pennsbury @ North Penn

Muhlenberg @ Plymouth Whitemarsh

William Tennent @ Upper Moreland

Todd Thorpe