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Back for its 12th season, the popular Intelligencer/Bucks County Courier Times ‘Let’s Talk Football’ features football beat writer Drew Markol. To stay on top of the high school football news in the area, visit the Intelligencer (http://www.theintell.com/sports/high-school/) and Courier Times (http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/sports/high-school/) web sites.
Join Jeff Nolan and Kevin Cooney for the WPHT High School Football Scoreboard Show as they recap the night of high school football on Friday 10 p.m. to midnight on 1210AM/WPHT and the Audacy app.
SuburbanOneSports.com: North Penn fell to Ridley 56-55 in overtime in a classic district battle. Your comments.
Drew Markol: “I’ve been covering North Penn football for over a quarter century, and I have to go back 20 years or before that to Parkland’s Austin Scott, who went on to play at Penn State, to see a running back run the way Ridley’s Tahir Mills did against the North Penn defense. He came in – he had over 357 yards rushing 
against Conestoga in Ridley’s first round district game, and you thought, ‘Okay, this is a whole different animal with North Penn.’ He ran around, he ran through, he jumped over a North Penn defense that had been a little spotty all season. It wasn’t a vintage North Penn defense, but still, North Penn was undefeated, and he put up around 340 yards rushing and was unstoppable. In a bit of irony, he caught the winning touchdown pass in overtime because once he was seen without the ball and the quarterback dropped back – I think the defense forgot about him for a second. They threw it to him, and he just walked into the end zone. Ridley was able to make the extra point and win 56-55 in just a crazy game. The scoring just came at will. The joke was – the first team to 60 will win, and it almost came true.
“North Penn coach Dick Beck said – there were a couple of mental lapses that just really, really hurt his team, and two of them came at the worst possible time in overtime. The first one was when North Penn went to kick the extra point to go up 56-49, their kicker had made every extra point – seven of them, and they looked routine, but the Ridley defensive end was able to come in and easily block this one. If he didn’t somehow block it, it looked like there were two other Ridley defenders who would have who had also broken through the line. I don’t know if Ridley did anything different than they hadn’t done on earlier ones. That didn’t seem to be the case. Talking to Dick Beck after the game, it was just a mental error. Sure enough, they block that – talk about a momentum swing – Ridley gets the ball on the 10-yard line, and on third-and-nine- they flip it to Mills, who was forgotten about, and he goes into the end zone. They make the extra point, they win, and they go to the semifinals.
In high school overtime, which you don’t see often, the ball is put on the 10-yard line. You get four plays to do what you can do. No first downs. It’s first-and-goal from the 10. North Penn had stuffed Ridley twice. To their credit, they fake to Mills, and then they go back to him. Give the ball to your best player. They just gave it to him in a different way, and it worked.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Quakertown is making believers out of its critics, going to fourth-seeded Downingtown East and thumping the Cougars with a big second half. Your thoughts.
Drew Markol: “I was over at Quakertown’s practice the other day talking to head coach George Banas and senior quarterback Will Steich. George Banas has been around the program for a very long time. He played at Quakertown and was a star running back. His father played at Quakertown. I asked him – how does this team rank as far as all-time Quakertown teams. He said, ‘The 1954 was undefeated, and the 1956 team had just one tie.’ Those are always considered the best teams, but he said, ‘This team – we have a school record for wins, we won a second round district playoff game, which we’d never done before. We’re 12-0.’ He called it, without question, the greatest Quakertown team of all time, and it’s hard to argue. Back in 1954, there was the Bux-Mont championship. There were no playoffs. Now they’ve gone out they beat Souderton in the first round. They go all the way to Downingtown East and lay it on them. Downingtown East was the fourth seed, and they just put them away in the second half and beat them by three touchdowns.
“All season, they’ve played great defensively, they’re allowing less than 10 points a game. The defense gets overshadowed because their offense can do a lot of things with (Tyler) Woodman and (John) Eatherton, the running backs, (Zach) Fondl at receiver, and you have a three-year quarterback, Will Steich. We’ve talked about this many times before – to do well in the playoffs, you need to be able to have a plan B, and they do. It’s hard for high school defenses to stop a team that can run and throw. That’s what Quakertown can do. George Banas said he wondered how things would have gone last year because he expected a better season that didn’t happen. With the COVID-19 pandemic and everything, you basically had to be undefeated in a shortened season to get into the playoffs, and they had lost to Souderton in week one last year. Souderton would go on to win the district title. I think that gave a little more incentive to this core group from Quakertown that said, ‘Okay, we didn’t do what we probably could have done last year, and we get one more shot this year.’ They’re making the most of it.
“Now they get to play the top seed in Garnet Valley, and that’s not easy either. Garnet Valley seemingly scores at will. George Banas said, ‘Look at the film against West. West was hanging in there with them for a while.’ We’ll see. Another interesting note – we’re down to four teams in 6A with Coatesville and Ridley being in the other semifinal. With Garnet Valley and Quakertown, you have two of the smallest enrollment schools in the district in 6A in the semifinals, which says something. That’s just good coaching, a little bit of luck – maybe injuries haven’t been as bad. There are some schools almost twice the size of Garnet Valley and Quakertown that are home for the season, so that’s just a credit to both of those programs.
SuburbanOneSports.com: Upper Dublin/Plymouth Whitemarsh was another overtime classic. Your comments.
Drew Markol: “As crazy as the North Penn/Ridley game was in 6A, Upper Dublin and Plymouth Whitemarsh in the 5A quarterfinal was also crazy. Plymouth Whitemarsh ends up winning it 42-36 in overtime, but they led by a touchdown entering the fourth quarter. Upper Dublin scores 22 points in the fourth and forced Plymouth Whitemarsh – which had fumbled to allow Upper Dublin to go up 36-28 and finally gets the ball with less than two minutes to play – to go 63 yards. They converted a couple of fourth-and-longs. Aiden O’Brien, the junior quarterback, made a couple of big throws to Tommy Hannon, and O’Brien had a huge eight-yard run on fourth-and-seven. Hannon scored from six yards, and they have to go for two. O’Brien converted the two-point play to tie it and force the overtime. Then they stop Upper Dublin on four downs from the 10, they get the ball, Hannon scores to win 42-36, so take your pick between the two games, which is the crazier one. You can’t even keep these things straight with all the scoring. It just kind of mirrors the college game in a lot of ways where the last team with the ball wins the game. It’s kind of engrained in our heads that defense wins in the playoffs. Those two games when you have close to 200 points scored sort of kills that notion.
“Now Plymouth Whitemarsh has to make the long trip down to West Chester Rustin, the top seed. It’s the same thing Quakertown is doing, going down to play Garnet Valley. Those are two programs that in recent history have really turned things into a positive. I heard from a coach that next year Garnet Valley – because of enrollment – is going to be a 5A team. He said it wasn’t set in stone, but that’s the heavy rumor that they’ll be 5A. Talk about an unwelcome guest for the 5A group – that would be Garnet Valley.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Central Bucks West saw its season come to an end at the hands of top-seeded Garnet Valley. Your thoughts.
Drew Markol: “If you look at CB West – what a really great season they had. They win a playoff game, beating a pretty good Pennridge team for the second time. Last week, they lost 41-13 to Garnet Valley, but their three losses were to North Penn, Garnet Valley and Coatesville. Those were teams that have two total losses between them and about 30 wins. You play who you play, but that West team is young. Their skill players – Eli Boehm, a running back, is a junior. Their quarterback, Ganz Cooper, is a sophomore. Conor McFadden, the wide receiver that really came on late, is a sophomore. They’re on the uptick. I talk to a lot of different coaches all the time, and to a man, they all say that Rob Rowan, the coach over at West, gets as much out of his kids as anybody and how good of a coach he is, and he’s proven it.”
SuburbanOneSports.com: Looking at this weekend’s games, what are your predictions?
Drew Markol: “Garnet Valley is 12-0, the number one seed in 6A, and they put 60-plus points on Ridley, the same team that beat North Penn. I expect another shootout between Quakertown and Garnet Valley, which means it will end up being 6-3. As much as I rail on the district playoffs sometimes and wish they would go back to a more local importance, it is pretty good. It’s good for the fans. The fans turned out for Quakertown all the way down to Downingtown. This week, I’m going to go with Garnet Valley 28-16. In the other semifinal, I think Coatesville is a little too seasoned, and for Ridley, it’s hard to keep that momentum with such enthusiasm and everything from beating North Penn.
“In 5A, I’m going to say Rustin 26-16, and I’ll take Academy Park over Strath Haven in the other semifinal.”
Drew Markol’s picks (Winner in bold)
Quakertown at Garnet Valley
Ridley at Coatesville
Plymouth Whitemarsh at West Chester Rustin
Academy Park at Strath Haven