Fenwick’s Woods evaluates Swampscott-Arlington Catholic matchup

If you want a perspective on how the big game’s going to go, ask someone whose team has played both.So, with that in mind, Bishop Fenwick coach Dave Woods was the go-to person. His Crusaders were in a nip-and-tuck battle with the Big Blue that Swampscott won by pulling away at the end.Fenwick’s game against Arlington Catholic was a totally different affair, with the Cougars winning at home, 42-26, in a game that wasn’t as close as the score would indicate ? and one that left Woods – normally a gregarious person – absolutely speechless afterward.Swampscott and AC play each other tonight (7) at Arlington High in the first round of the Eastern Mass. Division 3 playoffs. The winner goes on to the Super Bowl Saturday (9:30) at Gillette Stadium against the winner of tonight’s Abington-Medfield game.What did Woods come away with?”They’re both athletic teams,” said Woods. “But where Arlington Catholic has most of its athletes on the offensive side of the ball, Swampscott has a lot of athletes on defense. They can really shut you down.”Woods said that even though the Crusaders played both teams, it’s difficult to compare the two games and come to any kind of a consensus.”Two totally different games,” Woods said. “Against Swampscott, we tried to keep their offense off the field by playing ball control, and we did it (running back Bobby Tarr had just over 200 yards in that game).”We did something totally different against Arlington Catholic,” he said. “So it’s tough to make any judgments based on the two games.”However, Woods said that anyone deceived by AC’s seemingly mediocre 7-4 record had better not be lulled into any sense of false security.”They lost their first two games by a point, and at the last minute,” said Woods, whose Crusaders play in the same league as AC, and finished as the Catholic Central/Large runner-up with a 3-1 mark. “Then, they beat Arlington, which was huge for them.”Actually,” he said, “that was a bad omen for us. Every time they beat Arlington, they go on to win the league.”Woods says the Cougars’ 0-4 start is equally deceiving because running back Derek Harmon, who finished the season with 760 yards on the ground, was out for the first four games.”They had a lot of injuries early and got healthier as the season went on,” he said. “They got better and better each week.”Woods says if there is an X-factor, it’s the Swampscott defense.”It’ll be interesting to see how they react to having the field spread on them,” Woods said. “They play the spread offense, but they don’t have to play against it.”But they have the athletes,” he said.On offense, Woods said, the two teams are practically mirror images of each other. Both quarterbacks (Peter Kinchley for Swampscott; and Corey Spencer for AC) can be bull’s-eye accurate, and when they employ the empty backfield, they can be tough to defend.But he stopped short of predicting a winner.”I’ll tell you afterward,” he said.