Amesbury Leftovers

Most of the stories you have read or will read about the Pioneers' impressive 30-13 win will offer some variation of the theme that they overcame a shaky first half with a great second half burst to win going away. My game story in the Villager on Wednesday will definitely talk about the great second half comeback, but not much about a "poor" first half.

Why?

Well, yes the Pioneers scored only once and trailed at the half. And yes they had a few shaky plays and allowed Amesbury to move the ball, but don't lose sight of the fact that the Indians are a very good football team with a lot of weapons. Ian McLaughlin (24) is a battering ram and Stephan Deas (3) is quick and elusive. Quarterback Tyler Lay is big and strong, can throw and is a threat to run. Amesbury is going to be able to test a defense, even one as good as the Pioneers.

So all that said, you can actually make a case, and at the risk of being accused of looking through life through Blue and Gold colored glasses I will, that the Pioneers actually played pretty well in the first half considering the circumstances. Here goes.

- Exhibit 1: The Opening Drive. Pioneers = hot knife. Amesbury = butter. Enough said.

- Exhibit 2: Amesbury fourth and goal from the four. Lynnfield stuffed them. Turnover on downs. 55 yard drive. No points.

- Exhibit 3. Amesbury fourth and two from the Lynnfield 22. Mclaughlin thrown for a one yard loss. Turnover on downs. 40 yard return on fake punt intereption return. No points.

- Exhibit 4: Amesbury third and six from the Lynnfield 13. Incomplete pass. 31 yard field goal. 55 yard drive. Three points.

- Exhibit 5: Pioneer drive to end the half. 1:21 remaining in the second period. Jonathan Roberto recovers a fumble at the Amesbury 48. Pioneers hit with a personal foul penalty so drive starts at the Indian 34. Nine plays, five first downs, 55 yards. Cohee two carries 22 yards. A. J. Roberto three catches 26 yards. 28 yard field goal attempt hits the cross bar (thanks to the wrong placement of the ball. More on that later.)

- Summation: So with the Pioneers playing a "poor" first half, the Indians came up with only 11 points (the two points on the safety was a gift).

Lynnfield's biggest problem in the first half and the reason they couldn't seem to get untracked, was field position. They had no problem solving the Amesbury defense on their first three play drive, but after that they lost the field position battle.

"The first half was a field position nightmare for us," said Pioneer head coach Neal Weidman. "Once they made that drive down there and then got the safety, we didn't get the field position back until the second half. And they took advantage of it. That's how teams win a lot of games."

Indeed, looking at the numbers reveals how much of an edge the Indians had. Two of their five first half drives started in Lynnfield territory (41, 30). Their other three drives began on their own 46, 41 and 43. That is an average starting field position of the 50 yard line.

The six Pioneer drives all started on their own half of the field (25, 4, 31, 23, 29 and 34). That is an average starting field position of their own 25.

That's a 25 yard difference in field position, a huge edge in Amesbury's favor. But did they really take advantage?

After the safety, they did manage to put together a 54 play drive (aided by a 15 yard personal foul penalty) for their only touchdown.

For all their field position advantage, all Amesbury could muster was one touchdown and a field goal. Not nearly enough for the golden opportunities they had.

Just ask Amesbury head coach Thom Connors.

Connors was quoted in the Newburyport News game story by John Shimer on Saturday as saying "I thought we could have got ahead of them by a couple of touchdowns and we didn't. By not converting those first downs we let them hang around and they're way too good of a team to let hang around."

He was dead on. In the second half, the field tilted the other way as the Pioneers had an average starting position of their own 44 while Amesbury's average staring position was their own 28.

The result? The Pioneers DID take advantage with 23 points while it was the Indians who could never get untracked.

That was the big difference in this game. The Pioneers took advantage of their opportunites and they prevented the Indians from cashing in on theirs.

That's the kind of foundation on which you build a championship.

Jitters Bug
Not that the Pioneers didn't suffer some jitters in the first half created some of their problems such as the mixup on the snap that caused the safety and some other miscues on both sides of the ball..

"I think the guys may have been a little too worked up at the start," Weidman explained as a reason for what looked like a tentative start for the Pioneers. "It was our first league game since early in the year. They knew the importance of it and they came out and maybe were a little tense. Then I think in the second half they just said 'hey we're down. We have nothing to lose." Then they played a little more relaxed and took care of business."

And just because the Pioneers came out breathing fire in the second half, don't think they received a Knute Rockne type halftime pep talk.

"I told them on offense we just had to execute," Weidman explained. "The fake punt was wide open. We definitely should have converted on that. Then later we missed a guy wide open for a touchdown. That was just execution stuff. I knew that if we did execute we'd be in good shape. It wasn't a need for a game plan change. They ran what we thought they were going to run. We really just had to execute in the second half and I think our lack of execution in the first half was partially due to being a little hyped up."

Defensive Guru
The Pioneers did look more effective defensively in the second half and there was some work done on that at half time.

"We made a couple of minor adjustments defensively," Weidman said.

As I spoke to defensive coordinator Greg Haberland about what those adjustments were, Pioneer assistant John O'Brien burst in, hugged Haberland, and called him a "Defensive Guru."

The way the defense has performed all year, the moniker fits.

The Pioneer first defense has now given up 23 points in seven games (12 against Danvers and 11 against Amesbury). They completely shut down the Indians in the second half.

"We played a two gap the whole second half," Haberland said. "We didn't slant at all. And our guys were able to get off their blocks and get more pressure on the quarterback. I was worried about the quarterback bootlegs and sprintouts and I wanted to cover him instead of getting pressure on him. I thought we didn't do that in the first half so we went to the two gap in the second half and got more pressure."

The defense as a whole has given up only 58 points and a total of 942 yards of offense in seven games a remarkable 135 yards per game average. And that includes several games where the young JV's were playing against varsity units desperate to put something on the board in blowout losses.

Boffo Opening
Weidman dipped into his bag of tricks for the stunning opening play that saw co-captain Gino Cohee hand off to co-captain A. J. Roberto who fired down field to co-captain Steve Ullian for a 46 yard gain that set up Cohee's touchdown two plays later.

That one was very reminiscent of the play against North Reading last Thanksgiving Day. That time it was on the second play of the game and was Cohee to Chris Grassi to Michael Pescione which went for a 42 yard touchdown.

Ball of Confusion
The first half ended in a hail of confusion and when all was said and done, the officials still did not get it right.

It started with a second and six from the Amesbury 18 yard line with less than ten seconds to play. Cohee tried to hit Ullian sprinting into the endzone but Amesbury defender Delante Castle clearly hip-checked Ullian and the official correctly threw a flag. Then the meetings started.

At first, it looked like they might be considering calling the ball uncatchable, although Ullian looked like he got a hand on it.

Then they finally placed the ball on the two yard line where the Pioneers set up to try to punch it in.

Then more whistles and more huddles and more conversation. Finally the officials placed the ball on the 11 yard line. The Pioneers elected to go with a field goal try Ullian's 28 yard attempt grazed the crossbar and fell short.

So what was all the confusion about?


"They told me that if the starting line of scrimmage was outside the 25 it would have been on the two, but inside the 25 it was half the distance," Weidman said of the officials' explanation.

Since the original line of scrimmage was the 18, that should have put the ball on the nine, not the 11. But the officials obviously lost track of the original line of scrimmage and the chain gang had moved, as LMS chain gang veteran Brian Roberts alertly noted, so they marked it off from the 22. That was actually the spot where Cohee went out of bounds after making a first down two plays earlier. However, there was another play after that when Cohee hit Roberto down to the 18 and that should have been the spot.

Needless to say, Ullian only needed one of those two extra yard and the field goal would have been good.

"That yard was big because we hit the crossbar," Weidman said. "I can laugh about it now, but I wouldn't have been laughing about it if it meant something."

Stepping Up
The Pioneers suffered a big blow on the final play of the second period when co-captain Jeff Gannon hurt his knee on a defensive stop. The injury was huge on both sides of the ball, but a couple of Pioneers stepped up and helped key the comeback win.

Cohee stepped it up a couple of levels both on offense and he had to jump back in at linebacker on defense and the performance both ways was outstanding.

Once Gannon left the game, you could almost see the senior quarterback just take over and realize he had to make up for the loss of his fellow co-captain. In the 20 remaining Pioneer plays in the half following Gannon's exit from the game, Cohee was involved in 19 of them. He ran six times for 61 yards and completed six of nine passes for 33 yards.

"I think he knew he was going to have to step it up running the ball," Weidman said. "He hasn't had to run the ball a lot this year and he ran well tonight."

Cohee's 12 points brings his career total to 170 and lifts him into sole possession of fourth place on the all time Lynnfield scoring list. His six rushing TD's this year gives him 27 for his career, second most all time to Frank Berardino's 31.

Cohee got some help in the second half from running back Mike Thomas. The junior carried 10 times for 93 yards and a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns that blew the game open.

"We're very confident with Mike," Weidman said. "He's gotten a lot of reps this year so far. He's rushed for a lot of yards. He's going to have to continue to improve on some other parts of the game. He can run the ball but he's going to keep getting better with the whole game of running back."

That was a perfect illustration of the value of getting younger players playing time early in the year, especially against varsity defenses. Thomas came into the game with 314 yards on  47 carries (6.6 yard average) with three touchdowns, so it was not like he was thrown under the bright lights untested. That is the way to build a winning program.


Head Cheerleader?
As if  burning the Indians for 248 yards of offense and a pair of scores and playing a solid game at linebacker wasn't enough, Cohee also took on the role of cheerleader, exhorting the large Pioneer crowd at Landry Stadium to keep the volume up during the exciting contest.

He was pretty effective as the Lynnfield rooting section definitely won the Noise War, especially in the second half when the home team rooters were pretty much silenced by the play of the Pioneers on the field.

Making a Statement
So was the impressive Pioneer performance against a good Amesbury team an answer to the questions regarding the Pioneers' schedule as compared to the other CAL Small contenders?

"The second half was," answered Weidman. "They were definitely more tested than us. And they came in and we had to combat the speed and physicalness of the game because we haven't had that yet and they had."

But the win certainly made a statement that the Pioneer's performance this year was not simply a result of a "soft" schedule.

Amesbury can never be described as soft, yet the Pioneers rolled up 408 yards of offense (258 rushing, 150 passing) against them, their second best output of the year. Only the 421 yards they laid on Cathedral was better.

The Pioneers have piled up 2,443 yards of offense in seven games, a 349 per game average. That is impressive regardless of the opposition, and even a solid defensive unit like Amesbury could not slow them down.

Getting to 20
Lost in all the excitement of the big CAL Small win, was the fact that this was Weidman's 20th victory as head coach of the Pioneers. After two and a half seasons, he now stands at 20-13.

The 33 games it took is the third fastest of all Lynnfield coaches. Current co-athletic director Bill Adams got there the fastest. It only took him 23 games as he went 9-1 in his first year in 1985 and 9-2 in 1986 and then went 2-0 to start the 1987 campaign to hit the mark.

The first Pioneer head coach in school history, Steve Sobiek needed only 28 games to get there as he went 20-8 in 1958, 59 and into 1960. The dean of Lynnfield coaches Bill Rodan, the only Pioneer coach to win 100 games (101-52-2) took 31 games to get there going 20-11 from 1969 into the 1972 season.

Scott Brennan who went 15-37 from 1995 to 1999 and Garland Johnson who went 5-12 in 1967 and 1968 never reached the 20 win mark.

Notable:
- This was Lynnfield's second straight win over Amesbury. The Pioneers' overall record against the Indians is 22-15-1 with only a slim points advantage of 575-567.

- This was the 12th straight game in which the Pioneers have scored 20 or more points. That is the longest such streak in Lynnfield football history. The 1960 team had ten 20-plus games in a row before having the streak snapped in a 14-0 win over Weston. The last time the Pioneers did not score 20 points was in last year's 14-10 win over Amesbury.

- The Pioneers have now scored 252 points which is 6th best all time for season team scoring. Their 36 ppg average is second only to the 1960 team which put up 410 points in nine games.

Go Rams
Finally a quick shout out to Framingham State who kept hopes alive for a Bogan Division title in the New England Conference with a 48 27 win over Westfield State on Saturday. Former Pioneer captains Pat Lamusta and George Hennessey are freshmen teammates on the Rams (6-2, 4-1 Division) and are trying to mix it up on special teams. Hopefully their winning run can continue.

That's it for now. Check back Tuesday when I take a look around the league and don't forget to check out Fox25 High School Friday for previews of the the Pioneer-Clipper game to be featured this Friday night.