LYNN – The Rams lost to the Tanners at home 35-8. Classical won the toss to receive the ball from Peabody at the start of the first quarter. Only to fumble, the ball, and the Tanners, sophomore offensive lineman Alex Jackson recovered the fumble putting Peabody on their 24-yard line.
“I thought our O-line did a phenomenal job today, giving Shea (Lynch) time and not having to spread out of the pocket. It was plenty of running around for him (Shea Lynch) with the combination routes that we were running. But no one is really spying Shea (Lynch) yet, and we are going to use that to our advantage. As the year goes on, they are going to see Shea’s ability to hurt them with his legs,” said Peabody’s head coach Mark Bettencourt. “They (Classical) didn’t throw the ball once in their first possession. So we made our adjustments, and we stood our defensive line out there to stop them.”
Peabody’s senior wide receiver Danny Barrett made an incredible grab from the senior quarterback Shea Lynch to take the lead for the Tanners, bringing the score to 7-0. However, the Rams answered with a nine-minute drive down the field ending with a touchdown by senior wide receiver Matt Carrillo allowing Classical to take the lead 8-7 after his two-point run was good. Yet, in the process of scoring, junior quarterback R.J. Faessler of Lynn Classical came out of the game with an ankle injury.
“That hurt, that hurt a lot. That was one of the big things that happened during the game. He’s already our second quarterback, and now we’re down to our third and fourth quarterbacks that we kind of hybrid between. And when we get into that situation, we are really limited in our offense and what we can call on our call sheet.” said Lynn Classical’s head coach Brian Vaughan. “ Our offense wasn’t able to sustain drives, and we just kept giving them more opportunities, and they capitalized on them.”
Junior running back Alex Silva of Peabody ran it in for a touchdown, and junior Dominic Scalese’s extra kick led to the score of 14-8 in the second quarter. Lynch on the quarterback keep for the touchdown bringing the score to 21-8 to end the half.
“We combated what they were doing to us in that first series, and we were able to pretty much control the line of scrimmage from that point on. The key thing for us is to make sure that we are paying attention as well as to practice. We have our alignments and those that we have to make if we are not aligning properly,” said Bettencourt. “The fact that these kids are paying attention and practicing and getting their alignments with proper formations is incredible. Jimmy Festa played really well, and so did Sam Merrill. And then there was also Donnie Cavanaugh as well, and Alex Silva was there too.”
The Lynch and junior wide receiver Eli Batista combo stormed down the field with the help of Scalese. Lynch then ran it in for the touchdown advancing the score to 27 and with Scalese’s kick making the score 28-8 in the third quarter.
Carrillo takes the ball from Ram’s 27-yard to Tanner’s 45-yard, only to turn the ball over on downs. Senior running back Alan Paulino shows his strength by adding another touchdown to Peabody’s lead, and the extra point good the score now stands at 35-8 at the end of the third quarter.
“They were getting us off the field on offense, and our defense was on the field too much. At any level, when your defense is on the field too much, they get worn down, and I think that happened to us a little bit. There are games you are going to win, and there are games that you won’t, and unfortunately, we came out on the wrong side tonight.” said Vaughan
Carrillo, senior running back Nick Costa, and Junior wide receiver John Nasky all stepped up in the fourth quarter for the Rams; however, it was not enough to get them back in the game, with the final score being 35-8 in favor of the Tanners.
Classical will take on Somerville next week, while Peabody will move on to Beverly. “We’ll try to put together a game plan based off of what they did tonight. I know they’re (Somerville) really big and athletic, but we changed our identity like I’ve mentioned before. But we will watch the film, and we’ll figure out a game plan,” said Vaughan.
“Each week, we build off of everything, we will watch the film, and we’ll see what Beverly is going to see. Then we’ll make adjustments off of that. It is always a chess match, trying to figure out what your opponent is going to do, but all we can do is correct things to get us back rolling again,” said Bettencourt.
