LYNN — This one will haunt English coach Chris Carroll for a while.
English’s 22-18 Division 3 North final loss to Tewksbury Saturday, Carroll was left to contemplate two plays on which his team did everything right, but ended up costing it bigtime.
Both big plays — busted big plays, actually — went onto produce touchdowns.
In fact, three of the six touchdowns scored in Saturday’s game came either on a big play or a gadget play. That’s how even the teams were, and that’s how fierce the defenses played.
Do you want to compare? English, 9-1, which lost its first game of the season, had 316 total yards to Tewksbury’s 262. The Redmen, who will go on to play North Attleborough Saturday (11) in Weymouth in the Division 3 state semifinal, resorted to a halfback option play to score a touchdown — as did English. The Bulldogs set up the Redmen beautifully on their first touchdown, passing three straight times before sending Ski Gaston up the middle, where he blew past the initial thrust and ran 75 yards untouched for the score.
But it was two plays, one in the third quarter and one in the fourth, that helped turn the game Tewksbury’s way.
The first came late in the third period with Tewksbury at midfield facing a third-and-7. English looked as if it would sack quarterback James Connolly for a big loss (it looks a lot like the play against the New York Giants when the Patriots had Eli Manning sacked before he escaped and found David Tyree).
It wasn’t that bad, but receiver Masyn Lorick had the presence of mind to double back to take a shuffle pass and then run 31 yards to the English 30. Three plays later, Brandon Winn connected on a halfback option pass to Braden Hiltz for a 17-yard scoring pass that made it 15-6 heading into the fourth quarter and setting the stage for the late-game heroics that gave the Redmen the win.
“This game is going to stay with me for quite a while,” said Carroll. “Quite a while. But still, I’m so proud of my guys. Everybody played well. There are so many kids I could mention that if I tried, I’d leave someone out.”
After falling behind by nine points, English used a little razzle-dazzle of its own, with Severance pitching it to Mathias Fowler, who proceeded to hit Juan Avelino with a 47-yard pass early in the fourth quarter, and now it was 15-12.
Quarterback Matt Severance kept the pressure on all afternoon. He ran for 62 yards and passed for another 96. And with 3:30 to go, he scored English’s go-ahead touchdown on a 3-yard run that gave the Bulldogs and 18-15 lead and hope that after a day-long struggle, they might prevail.
“He played with the heart of a lion,” said Carroll. “We had our best receiver (Prince Brown) with a cast on his arm (broken). He was out there, but there was only so much he could do.”
Yet with all that, it took a last-minute touchdown by Tewksbury to win. And once again, the Redmen benefitted from a desperation pass to get them close enough to score. After Severance’s score, Tewksbury started out at its own 42. Once again, Connolly was chased by three English defenders toward the sideline. Before he was smothered, he was able to get rid of the ball, this time getting it to senior Shane Darrigo — who had hooked up with Connolly for Tewksbury’s first score late in the first half to give the Redmen an 8-0 lead. Darrigo ended up running 29 yards to the English 29. Winn, who finished with 88 yards, ran four of the next five plays, including the final yard, for the touchdown with 1:42 to go.
English had one final gasp after that, but after Severance brought the ball to midfield with a 13-yard run, his pass to Brown got hung up in the wind, and Tewksbury’s Shane Aylward was able to pick it off, killing the Bulldogs’ last chance.
“This feels like the world,” said Winn, who says his team was motivated by last year’s 9-8 loss to Beverly in this game. “We weren’t going to let that happen again.”
