NEWFANE — Midway through the second quarter Newfane appeared to be in trouble, hanging on to a 16-12 lead after giving up 12 unanswered points.
It had to respond and respond in a big way if it wanted to improve to 3-1 on the season and climb up the Class D standings.
Over the last 4:54 of the second quarter, Newfane did just that, scoring 16 points to go up 30-12 and that made the difference in a 40-18 win over Franklinville/Ellicottville Friday at Newfane High School.
“We just came back physical,” senior Jake Morello said. “(We) just kept our heads up and stayed in the game. We knew it wasn’t over. We just trust in our coach, (Defensive coordinator) Coach (John) Vos (Vosburgh), he schemes it up great on defense. Nothing too crazy, nothing too complicated and kept our heads up and got it done.”
After scoring a touchdown on its first drive of the game in a traditional offense, Newfane decided to go to a wildcat offense — with running back Jake Morello taking snaps — starting on their second drive. Outside of a fumble and a punt, the move worked wonders for the hosts who were able to head into the half up 32-12.
This game is the second consecutive game that Newfane has been able to score over 30 points in a half after scoring 34 points in the opening frame of last week’s win over Silver Creek/Forrestville.
This contest was not the first time that Newfane has run the wildcat this season as the team has run it in every game this season with head coach Chuck Nagel estimating that it has made up 10% of their offense.
“Anytime I feel like we’re getting a little stagnant or maybe the defense is doing a good job stopping our base run plays we’ll switch it up,” Nagel said. “Jake’s an electric player. We want to get the ball in his hands. … So anytime you’re in a pickle, you want to get the ball to kids like Nasir (Spencer) and Jake and (Camryn) Stover and Mikey (Henning) on the outside. So it was really clicking for Jake tonight.”
The wildcat quarterback for the Panthers was Jake Morello who scored twice in the opening half and had multiple big runs. Morello finished the day with 182 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. He also had 24 yards receiving and two passes for 41 yards and a touchdown.
“I just trusted in my (offensive) line, found the gap, find the flow of the play, find the cutback and get into the endzone,” Morello said.
On Newfane’s first drive of the second half, it went away from the wildcat and went back to playing quarterback Jesse Hughey in the shotgun. Despite that, the result stayed the same with Newfane scoring to extend the lead out to 40-12.
The move to a more traditional offense came to try to hide some looks from future opponents. The touchdown was the only one that Newfane scored in the second half but it did not slow down the offense who finished with 421 total yards of offense.
“We had a pretty good lead,” Nagel said. “… I’m always a guy that wants to run our base stuff, just like Coach Vosburgh likes to run his base stuff. That’s our bread and butter. We know the wildcat was there if we needed it. (It) felt like at the time we didn’t. We had a good lead, defense was playing pretty solid defense at that time and let’s get the regular offense cooking.”
The Panthers will be looking to continue the ground attack at 7:30 p.m. Friday, when it goes to Southwestern/Frewsburg.