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Ground game pushes Monticello past Powhatan

By Drew Goodman / Scrimmageplay.com contributor

 

One week after suffering its first loss of the season against Louisa, Monticello stumbled out of the gate in Friday night’s home tilt against Powahtan.

 

The Mustangs’ first two possessions resulted in a pair of three-and-outs and did not resemble the high-octane attack that MHS fans had grown accustomed to.

 

After starting with not-so-great field position on its opening two drives, Dylan Booth delivered a game-changing punt block to give Monticello the ball at its own 43 yard-line early in the first quarter.

 

Following the block, tailback Jerrick Ayers sprinted 44 yards for the Mustangs’ biggest offensive play of the evening to that point. Then, quarterback Kevin Jarrell ran eight yards and delivered a highlight-reel-worthy stiff-arm in the process. Jarrell’s exciting play set up a five-yard run to pay dirt from Ayers, and the Mustangs rolled from there.

 

The deadly combination of Ayers and Jarrell combined for all but three of Monticello’s 364 rushing yards as the Mustangs cruised to a 49-7 win over visiting Powhatan.

 

How Monticello responded after its first two offensive drives set the tone for the remainder of the contest. The Mustangs’ first six plays resulted in a net-gain of 10 yards and a pair of punts. But in its next six plays, Monticello gained 166 yards and scored a trio of touchdowns.

 

“Last week [against Louisa] left a really bad taste. We got physically beat up last week and we didn’t handle it well, but the kids responded,” Monticello head coach Jeff Lloyd said. “We started slow tonight and then after the blocked punt we kind of picked it up.”

 

Ayers rushed 12 times for 189 yards and three touchdowns, while Jarrell needed just six touches to record 172 yards and three scores of his own.

 

Outside of Ayers’ short touchdown and an unintentional fumblerooski executed by a combination Trenton Johnson and Jacoby Jackson, Monticello’s remaining four touchdowns stemmed from plays longer than 50 yards.

 

The Mustangs piled up 350 yards and 28 points in the first two quarters thanks to a pair of short scoring drives that took just seven plays combined. One week after failing to set the edge against a tough, physical Louisa defense, the combination of Jarrell and Ayers had no problems running around and through the visitors from Powhatan on Friday night.

 

“We worked really hard. We made a schematic change and one or two personnel changes and it looked good out there tonight,” Lloyd said.

 

One of the personnel adjustments that Lloyd was referring to was tight end Matt Allen moving to the guard position. Allen slid to the front five due to injuries to several starters in Wednesday’s practice, and two days later, the senior helped pave the way for yet another dominating performance on the ground by the Mustangs.

 

“We were much more physical up front then last week,” Jarrell said. “We had a great game plan going in and [Allen] had to step up at guard and did a great job tonight. It was the next-man-up mentality, and he had seniors next to him helping him out and it was great to see.”

 

Allen and the revamped offensive line helped keep Jarrell’s jersey clean for the bulk of the contest, as Monticello ran just one running play for negative yardage all night. The Mustangs possessed the ball for just 14:13 and spent the majority of the fourth quarter simply running out the clock with their reserves.

 

While the offense took some time to wake up, the Monticello defense was dialed in all night. Monticello limited the high-powered Indian offense to just 126 yards on the ground and Powhatan earned roughly half of its 178 passing yards on two long plays scattered throughout the contest.

 

Outside of a 64-yard touchdown catch-and-run by Brenden McMullin in the second quarter, the Indians seldom did anything of note offensively, or even snapped the ball in the Mustangs’ territory.

 

After a somewhat promising drive in the third quarter when the running clock had already begun, a series of penalties and a couple of heads-up plays by the Monticello defense forced Powahtan into a rare fourth down-and-62 situation.

 

Friday night’s game marked Powhatan’s fewest points scored since losing 8-7 to Louisa back on October 9, 2015. The defensive performance comes one week after Powhatan Jim Woodson became the all-time winningest coach in the Richmond area and just seven days after a night that the MHS defense won’t soon forget against Louisa.

 

“We were definitely motivated… We knew that Louisa was just a bump in the road and we had to get back to it on our home turf, and that’s what we did tonight,” senior linebacker Garrett Porterfield said. “We worked all week for this, and myself, I told the guys that we had to make a statement, and that’s what we did.”

 

Ayers capped off the scoring with a 56-yard touchdown run following the fourth down punt.

 

Powhatan will return home to face Albemarle next week, while the Mustangs will look to keep their revenge tour rolling. Having already avenged three of their losses from the 2016 season, Monticello will host an Orange team that hung 56 points on it last year at Porterfield Park.

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