It's not that often a coach will laud his defense even though his team allowed 49 points. Last Thursday night was one of those times for Perryville coach Chris Johnson. The Panthers did a decent job of limiting Harford Tech's explosive running back Jalen Dangerfield, but four critical turnovers – two of them returned for touchdowns – led to Perryville's undoing and a 49-12 loss to the unbeaten Cobras on Homecoming. "Huge difference," Chris Johnson said of his squad's two fumbles and two interceptions. "Our defense, besides in the first half that one long catch, that great catch by Number 11 (Jordan Bright) which I think was well-defended by both our d-backs. They were there to make the play but the kid made a great play, great athletic play on the ball."
Perryville actually jumped out to a 6-0 lead when Caleb Robinson rumbled 66 yards after grabbing a screen pass from Dayvon Montz with 5:44 left in the first quarter. Tech went up 7-6 on a four-yard run by Dangerfield 11 seconds into the second quarter. Perryville fumbled on its next play and the Cobras capitalized on a seven-yard TD catch by Dangerfield with 9:56 left until halftime. Three minutes later, Tech's Shawaun White picked off a screen pass and returned it 54 for a score. Then came a colossal momentum shift. Trailing 21-6, Perryville (6-2) appeared poised to cut into the deficit two minutes before halftime. The Panthers had a 1st and goal from the six. But a poor snap got past the quarterback Montz. After a scramble for the ball, Tech's Jeremiah Minter scooped it up and raced 70 yards for a touchdown. Instead of making it a one-score game, the Panthers were in a 28-6 hole. "Maybe I got a little too greedy too soon," said Johnson. "I knew they were aggressive defensively so we had put in some different screens and one went for a touchdown for us, and one went for a touchdown for them. So I guess we'll break even on that one. But there were also some things I could've coached up a little better to make sure that was a positive play and not a touchdown and then the killer was being down by the goal line and that was a 14-point swing. We were getting ready to punch it in." Tech tacked on another touchdown with 6:04 left in the third quarter after Perryville could not convert a fake punt. The Panthers scored on a 27-yard pass from reserve quarterback Bailey Armour to Robinson before Tech capped off the scoring with a 68-yard scamper by Dangerfield and 45-yard jaunt by Charles Brown. Johnson managed to find some positives in the lopsided loss. "I thought we had a good defensive game plan that was really effective and worked well," he said. "Obviously, you look at the scoreboard and you think differently, but so many of those points were on short fields. The fumbled draw was on a short field. The See fake punt that [was] dropped gave them a short field. You can't do that against a good team. It's going to shoot you in the foot. ‘But again, we'll learn from it. What I'm also proud of, when things go wrong a lot of teams will yell at each other, get mad at each other, blame each other. None of that happened here [Thursday night], which made me really proud, that there was no finger-pointing. Everybody picked everybody up…That's what you want. You want guys who are going to stand beside you and support you. It's our job to coach them up. It's their job to support their teammates. They did that and that made me very happy." Comments are closed.
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