Most high school coaches will tell you that winning football games comes down to making plays late in games, with the exception being when one team very clearly outclasses another. Sure, all 48 minutes matter, and some holes if dug too deep early–like trailing 30 or more points at halftime in particular– cannot be overcome regardless of how well a team executes in the final 24 minutes.
At the risk of over simplifying the Blue Devils season to date, this aspect alone has largely defined 2022, especially in Northern Lakes League play. It did again in week eight, this time in a good way as the team executed on both sides of the ball in the fourth quarter to emerge with a 38-20 win over the host Maumee Panthers.
“I thought we really dialed in and made some really good adjustments defensively and offensively late in the game to put it away,” Head Coach Jerry Bell said.
It was the final meeting between the two schools as NLL foes, with Maumee departing next year for the Northern Buckeye Conference. The two have been playing annually since Springfield joined in 1962. Maumee was a charter member, helping found the conference in 1956.
Bell said with that in mind, and the fact that the Panthers have not won a game since the 2019 season against Southview, they would prove quite the test for a Blue Devils team that came in with sophomore quarterback Kaiden Taylor making his first career varsity start.
“I warned our guys all week and in pregame about Maumee being a potential sleeper team,” he said. “They play extremely hard and I told our guys they weren’t going to lay down for us. We were going to have to earn it and we were going to have to grind it out.”
They proved to be just that for the Blue Devils through the first two-and-a-half quarters. Though undermanned–their roster lists only 37 players on varsity–the Panthers feature an athletic and experienced quarterback in senior Kyle Arndt, and he proved troublesome to stop on many occasions.
“Their quarterback, for one, I think he’s highly underrated,” said Bell. “I was worried about him going into the game all week with watching him on film. He’s a good quarterback and he makes plays with his feet. We put some pressure on him and he was able to escape and make plays. Where we were blitzing from, he was able to hit the receiver sitting in the hole.
“He did a tremendous job and played extremely well.”
Not having junior Will Scott due to a hand injury did not help matters for the Blue Devil offense. While Taylor has many of the same traits as Scott, his first start under the Friday night lights coming in week eight against a desperate foe was not ideal.
The coaching staff did their best to scheme around that inexperience early on, but save for one scoring drive, things were stagnant in the opening 24 minutes.
“As the week progressed, there were some things with the pressure I thought he handled well but he was sailing the ball,” Bell explained. “He was dropping his elbow down. I didn’t know if the nerves were building or what because his mechanics started to change a little bit. So, we went in and tried to scale some things back and not necessarily put everything on his shoulders.
“We came in with some packages that we thought would help him read the field and get into the game without putting a ton of pressure on him. We used Taylen right away a little bit at quarterback and we moved the ball right down the field on the first drive, and then on Kaiden Taylor’s first pass he threw a pick at I think the five-yard-line.”
The end result was a 7-7 tie at halftime and a Maumee team that came out of intermission with perhaps even more confidence than they did going in. The Panthers took two separate leads in the third quarter of seven and six points, respectively.
Springfield answered both scores, the first on a 92-yard kickoff return touchdown from junior tailback Taylen Miller who, particularly in the second half, looked unfazed by a foot injury that’s nagged him throughout NLL play.
“He hit the seam that he should’ve hit and it was wide,” said Bell. “He hit that seam and he was gone. He just had that extra burst that was reminiscent of a healthy Taylen.”
Miller’s short touchdown run late in the third quarter gave the Blue Devils a 21-20 advantage, and from then they dominated on both sides of the ball. Bell and his staff made some adjustments in the running game and the execution improved tremendously in the second half.
“They were blitzing us inside quite a bit and we felt that potentially they had our signals,” the coach said. “We ended up huddling midway through the third and running the play in and made some adjustments on the edge with our receivers and they executed their blocking assignments extremely well. We were able to attack the edge a little bit better than what we did in the first half and I thought that was a huge difference in the game.”
The end result was a 240yard rushing performance for the offense, most of which came on the legs of Miller. The senior accounted for all five Blue Devil touchdowns on the night.
“I think it built his confidence,” said Bell. “He ran extremely hard in the second half. We challenged him to finish his runs. The one score that he had, there really wasn’t much there and he pretty much made something out of nothing and carried guys into the end zone. It finally clicked for him. He’s banged up, but he mentally overcame that and just had a tremendous game.
“You know, he’s quietly rushed for almost 1,200 yards on the season with really no attention on him outside of our program. We’re proud of what he did during the game.”
As critical as the offense coming to life was, the defense getting a hold of Arndt and the Panther offense. The answer to that, Bell said, was getting in the quarterback’s face as often as possible.
When it did not work, he took advantage, but the approach proved very effective particularly in the fourth quarter as the Blue Devils’ speed on the edge overwhelmed the Panthers. “We got out of our base defense [because] we weren’t quite getting enough pressure on him,” said the coach. “We ended up putting in our other package that we have that gives us some speed edge rushers that we’ve had success on to be able to control and shut him down. They hit us on some big plays and that’s the gamble you take. When we didn’t get there, he was able to make plays.
“Thank goodness that we were finally able to settle in midway through the third after they put two touchdowns on the board,” he continued. “We were able to settle in and we starting to get home on our blitzes, getting where we need to and hitting the correct gaps. We ended up finishing the game with 10 sacks. It was some subtle adjustments but the big thing was getting the rush on him, being able to contain him where he couldn’t break contain and then getting the blitz up the middle to seal the deal.”
