By Drew Goodman / Scrimmageplaycva.com Contributor
Despite entering the locker room with a 10-point lead at intermission, the William Monroe football team had firmly taken its foot off the gas pedal late in the first half against Warren County.
The Greene Dragons scored both of their touchdowns in the game’s opening five minutes, but had not done anything of note offensively since.
With the Wildcats receiving the second half kickoff, the Dragons needed to make a play to return the momentum to the home sideline.
Enter sophomore Jason Collins.
During Warren County’s kickoff return, fellow sophomore Jaekwon Wayne stripped the ball loose, allowing an unsuspecting Collins to pick up the fumble and race 26 yards for a William Monroe touchdown.
Before many fans had returned to their seats for the start of the third quarter, Collins, with help from Wayne, accomplished in 14 seconds what the Dragons had not been able to do in over 17 minutes; score a touchdown.
Monroe fed off of Collins’ first career touchdown with two more TDs in the third quarter to cruise to a 35-10 triumph over visiting Warren County.
The Greene Dragons (3-3) will visit archrival Madison County next Friday night.
While Warren County entered the third quarter with plenty of momentum after stuffing William Monroe’s ground game for the final 17 minutes and change of the first half, all it took was one big play from Wayne and Collins to erase all of the Wildcats’ good vibes.
Following a decent return, Wayne emerged through a wall of green and white jersey to strip the ball and cause a fumble. Then, Collins, who was simply a spectator during Wayne’s strip, made the heads up play to scoop up the loose ball. Once he secured the ball, Collins saw nothing but green in front of him, and raced 26 yards for the game-changing touchdown.
“It was crazy because I was just watching the play; I was just running down and watching the play, and I just see the ball come out of his hands, and my reaction was to pick the ball up and run with it,” said Collins of the special teams’ touchdown. “[Wayne] stripped the ball and allowed me to do that. I always like playing with him and having him on the field with me.”
Wayne made a number of big plays on both defense and special team in the Dragons’ win.
The sophomore returned the opening kickoff all the way the Warren County 46-yard line, which helped set up the first of Greg Sizemore’s two touchdowns.
While the offense was hit-or-miss all night, the William Monroe special teams were consistent throughout the victory. Outside of a missed extra point early and having a long field goal blocked, the special teams helped keep the Dragons ahead when the offense was not clicking.
In addition to Wayne’s two big plays on the kick return units, punter Jose Bonilla was instrumental in flipping the field, highlighted by a 51-yard boot in the second quarter.
Monroe may have missed its first extra point of the evening, but the unit redeemed itself with a beautifully-executed fake field goal for a two-point conversion following Collins’ scoop-and-score.
“Special teams were awesome; [Collins’ kick return] was the catalyst in the second half,” said William Monroe head coach Jon Rocha. “It pumped us up. I don’t want to say that it deflated [Warren County], but it changed the whole aspect to go up by three scores there.”
“The fake on the field goal, all of that, we planned all week long for this. We knew what we wanted to do after watching [Warren] and breaking it down where we were going to kick the ball, and they went out and performed excellently.”
The William Monroe offense spread its four touchdowns evenly between the first and third quarters. Sizemore, who rushed for 92 yards on just ten carries found the end zone twice in the game’s first six minutes.
After the Dragons seized the momentum back in the second half, senior quarterback Malique Shackelford went to work. Shackelford, who finished the game with 68 yards rushing, scored on two quarterback keepers from 41 and 11 yards out respectively.
Sophomore running back Jalen Mckinnie was the workhorse, carrying the ball 22 times for 120 yards.
Defensively, William Monroe limited Warren County to just 229 yards of total offense.
The Dragons appeared to have their hands full with speedy quarterback Cameron Ford, but the home team bottled up the mobile QB for just 59 net rushing yards.
The Wildcats threatened to find the end zone twice in the first half and attempted to go for a pair of fourth down situations in the second, but the Dragons stood tall on each occasion.
Warren County did not score a touchdown until the final 2:29 of Friday night’s contest. The defensive outing marked a striking difference from last week’s title against Clarke, in which the Eagles jumped out to a 21-0 in the game’s first five minutes.
Though it was a different opponent in a different venue, Rocha is proud of the strides that his defense made against Warren County.
“We spent a little extra time and changed up our Thursday practice so we could get more field time this week so that we could recognize [Warren’s] formations, because they have a ton of them,” said Rocha. “The kids knew exactly what was going on out there and it showed. They knew everything because of their preparation and their practice this week.”
