Blue Devils’ running game dominates Bluejays in ITCL Blue matchup

By ERIC FORTUNE

sports@vindy.com

McDONALD

McDonald football coach Dan Williams talked about keeping it simple.

There was nothing flashy.

It was just three yards and a cloud of dust as the Blue Devils scored on their first five drives of the game en route to a comfortable 35-7 victory over the Jackson-Milton Blue Jays in an Inter-Tri County, Blue Tier matchup.

“Our kids saw on film that they were stemming a lot and moving guys to different gaps so we figured we could do a lot of kicking the last guy out on the line of scrimmage and just get north, south,” Williams said.

“We told our backs early with the field conditions that we just needed to go north, south. Joe Celli and Alex Cintron just got what they could get. We didn’t want to do anything special — let’s just live the next down.”

Cintron finished with 114 yards rushing on 19 carries with a touchdown and Celli added 87 yards on 16 carries with a touchdown. Mike Zarbaugh opened alleys for both backs on kick-backblocks.

“Zarbaugh is a good blocker,” Williams said. “We changed his role from fullback to wingback where we get a lot of blocking out of that position. Celli is more of a north, south kid, and Cintron is just the fastest kid on our team. Those two have been getting better as a tandem over the last three weeks. What I like about those guys is that they put their foot in the ground and don’t monkey around. They find an alley and run through it.”

The Blue Devils (3-3, 1-0) controlled the time of possession 17:59 to 6:01 in the first half running nearly triple the amount of plays 37 to 14 with a total yard advantage of 230 to 22.

Celli and Cintron touched the ball 25 out of those 37 plays.

“Early on we just grinded it out,” Williams said. “I thought after that first drive we took control of the ballgame. A lot of games are lost up front and our offensive gained control. That’s what we like do, but I was happy to see Dylan [Portolese] throw the way he did in these conditions tonight. We try to sprinkle a little bit of that in to keep them on their toes defensively. I think it helped us run the ball as effective as we did.”

The Bluejays (4-2, 0-1) put seven to eight in the box in the first half.

McDonald didn’t flinch with time-consuming drives of nine, eight, and 16 plays to build a 21-0 advantage before a Jackson-Milton turnover on the ensuing kickoff gave the Blue Devils the ball at the Bluejays’ 43.

The Blue Devils scored in just three plays when Portolese found Joe Sudol behind the Jackson-Milton secondary to push the lead to 28-0 right before halftime

Jackson-Milton struggled getting anything going throughout the first half with a punt on their opening possession, then an interception, a punt, and then a fumble after McDonald took their 21-0 lead on Portolese’s 1-yard sneak.

“They are a great team, great coaching staff, and a wonderful program,” Jackson-Milton coach Mark Assion said. “They executed and did what they were supposed to do tonight. We felt we had a pretty solid game plan but unfortunately we weren’t able to execute as well as wanted to.

“It was on us to do what we were supposed to do and we just didn’t do that tonight.”