It was one fell swoop of momentum. Powhatan went into the half down by two touchdowns, but between the Indians stepping up on both sides of the ball and Albemarle losing J’quan Anderson to injury in the third quarter and the Patriots struggling to adjust afterwards, things took a dramatic swing. Powhatan reeled off four unanswered touchdowns before Albemarle put together a late fourth quarter response. The 28-20 loss to the Indians spoiled an otherwise perfect October for the Patriots, and potentially cost them a home playoff game in two weeks.
“There are certain things you have to do to win football games and even when we were winning, we weren’t doing them,” said Albemarle coach Brandon Isaiah. “We weren’t exectuting, we had an injury and then the game started to change and Powhatan started playing the football we know they can play. They line up and run downhill. Jim Woodson’s a great coach and we knew their record didn’t matter, they were going to come out and play. And they did.”
While the first half was obviously much better for the Patriots, it was also one that saw the visitors get off to a bit of a slow start. Albemarle got on the board on the last play of the first quarter when Na’il Arnold scooped up a fumble and ran it back 43 yards for a touchdown. The Patriots offense got on the board midway through the second quarter when Anderson, who spent much of the day scrambling trying to make things happen downfield in the passing game, took a run for himself for 66 yards to make it 14-0.
“He’s just an unbelievable athlete,” said Powhatan coach Jim Woodson. “He’s so hard to tackle.”
That score would hold until the break, but midway through the third, Anderson went down on a hit out of bounds that sent him through concussion protocol. He would not return. From there, Powhatan started its comeback with a 23-yard TD pass from Noah Dowdy to Gabe Satterwhite to make it a 14-7 game.
The Indians answered quickly to tie things up on their next possession after a Jared Somerville punt return set up a short field. That allowed Jacob Taylor to move the chains before he ran in a 2-yard touchdown to lock things up at 14-14 with 1:43 to play in the third.
Another solid punt return gave the Indians another short field and once again, Taylor got rolling and punched in a 15-yard rush to put Powhatan up 21-14 to start the fourth quarter. After another stalled drive from Albemarle, the Indians put together a long drive of their own that was capped by a 3-yard run for Dowdy with 4:22 to left in the game.
“We did a better job of executing (in the second half),” Woodson said. “It was the old saying, ‘We’ve seen the enemy and the enemy is us.’ That’s what’s been happening to us most of the year with penalties and mistakes, missed blocking assignments and poor tackling. We’ve done it all this year so I’m really proud of our seniors on senior night to leave this field as victors against a pretty good football team. We came through when we needed to.”
After a quiet first half, Taylor finished with 172 yards on 31 carries while Dowdy went 13-for-23 passing with 111 yards and managed 50 rushing yards on his 11 touches.
Albemarle stopped the bleeding and made things interesting on its next drive when DaQuandre Taylor hit Joshua Biedler for a 36-yard touchdown. But after some confusion on the extra point that led to a failed 2-pt convert, the score was 28-20 with 3:30 to go. Albemarle tried an onside kick to no avail. Powhatan was able to run out the clock after a pair of first downs.
“We’ll go home and lick our wounds and try and get ready for a rivalry game next week,” Isaiah said. “Really, it’s just hats off to Powhatan they played a great football and deserved the win.”
On the night for Albemarle, Anderson finished 6-for-19 passing with 38 yards and had 94 yards rushing on 13 carries. Taylor was 3-for-9 passing with 58 yards, had four carries for 11 yards and three catches for 36 yards.
Albemarle (4-5) will host Western Albemarle (2-7) on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
