14-10 win: A mid-term exam with mixed grades

Cleaning the notebook from Win No. 2 in the John Garrett era.

The Lafayette football team hit the halfway point of Coach Garrett’s first season on Saturday, and it pretty much failed the "midterm" in one of the coach’s most fundamental classes: “Hard to Beat 101.”

But at the same time, it came up with an A+ in “Fourth Quarter 110.”

“Hard to Beat,” Coach Garrett told us on Tuesday, is the mantra with which he challenged his team from the very beginning. It consists of a lot of factors that can end in victory or defeat. The mid-term exam came at the beginning of the second quarter of Lafayette’s Patriot League game against Fordham.

I thought it was going to be the start of a slide that would render all that good stuff from the Holy Cross game as an aberration.

The Leopards started a possession on their own 20 late in the first quarter, and on the final play of the quarter, Sean O’Malley took off on a scramble and ran 23 yards to the Fordham 7-yard line.

On the first play of the second quarter, a shuffle pass gained nothing and a hurried second-down pass was incomplete (an illegal formation penalty against the ‘Pards, a no-no in “Hard to Beat” class, was declined by the Rams.)  On third-and-5, a delay of game penalty (another no-no in HtoB 101) put the ball on the 12.

After an incomplete pass on third down, Garrett sent Jeffrey Kordenbrock out for a 29-yard field goal. The kick was a beauty, but before any points could be put on the board, the Leopards were whistled for holding, a 10-yard penalty and points off the board are definitely not part of the HtoB curriculum.

The ball was moved back 10 yards and Kordenbrock kicked again. This time, the kick was blocked by Fordham’s Michael Ware and the ball was scooped up by Bryce Petty and returned 54 yards to the Lafayette 17.

Chase Edmonds gained 15 yards on first down to the 2, where, on the next play, as Edmonds went into the end zone, Fordham was whistled for holding. A break for the Leopards? Uh, uh. On the next play, Kevin Anderson hit Austin Longi for a 12-yard Fordham touchdown.

So, instead of having a 3-0 lead, Lafayette trailed 7-0. And in the process, the Leopards made it too easy for the Rams.

That segment of the game was not what Garrett means when he talks about being Hard to Beat.

I’m sure there will be some remedial work done to solve the problems associated with the series.

Fortunately, however, the rest of the game belonged to the Lafayette defense, despite its continuing to allow lots of yardage. Fordham wound up with 415 yards of offense and more than 33 minutes of possession, running a total of 86 offensive plays to Lafayette’s 58.

But Lafayette almost doubled its sacks total for the season – it got four on Saturday after having just five in the first five games.

The league will probably find a way to give someone else the defensive player of the week honor when the awards are announced on Monday, but Brandon Bryant’s 13 solo tackles should be pieced together and distributed to every Lafayette defensive recruit as an example of how Leopards defensive players are to perform. He was amazing.

Cornerbacks Phil Parham and Eric Mitchell with nine and seven tackles, and Yasir Thomas and Michael Root with six each were outstanding, too. Bryant, Beau Bosch, Tymir Jones and Anthony Giudice had the sacks, and Jerry Powe made a couple of textbook solo tackles.

Not much to be said about the offense. C.J. Amill was the only running back with positive yards for the game (11). He had five carries and also six pass receptions and 51 yards on a p-air of kickoff returns. Rocco Palumbo had nine catches, 129 yards and two TDs. The 23-yard run by QB Sean O’Malley is worth watching again. 

I’m wondering if we may see more O’Malley runs as time progresses. He looked good on that one.

The drive for the first Leopards' touchdown was important because the offensive unit had been sitting for a long time while Fordham drove 86 yards on 18 plays, using 9:01 to do it. But the Rams didn't get to put the ball in the end zone. The Lafayette defense came up large and forced a field goal. So instead of trailing 14-0, it was just 10-0.

Lafayette then drove 81 yards on 11 plays and scored on an O'Malley to Palumbo four-yard pass. That pumped new life into the home team, for sure. 

Now, it’s on to Harvard, always a difficult task for Lafayette. But the Leopards will go to Massachusetts riding on a good wave. Can they keep it rolling?