Silver Foxes blank Falcons for a 48-0 win

By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer

While it was a night of horrors for one, it was a splendid sight for the other.

Adding another chapter to its cross-county rivalry, the Lamar Silver Foxes dominated the Darlington Falcons in every facet of the game, winning 48-0 Friday night in Lamar.

“We stunk it up,” Darlington head coach Raymond Jennings said. “We weren’t there — the body language, I didn’t see it in their eyes. From the get-go, people in place, but not making plays, we (were) in position.

“When you go out there on offense, your job is to move the chains and score; defensively your job is to stop people; we didn’t do either one, man, and (it) wasn’t that we just didn’t do it tonight, I didn’t see what I needed to see.”

From the start it was obvious that this was going to be a good night for Lamar and a long night for Darlington.

The Silver Foxes started with the ball to open the game and proceeded to eat up over six minutes on the clock before punching the ball in the end zone to score. Up 8-0 after converting the two-point conversion, Lamar forced Darlington to a three and out on its first offensive possession and this is where things started to go down in a hurry for the Falcons.

Darlington successfully got its first punt attempt off, but an illegal procedure by the Falcons forced them to do it again and Lamar made them pay, blocking the second attempt and returning it for the touchdown.

With a 16-0 lead after the blocked punt, Lamar kept putting it Darlington, scoring 16 more points in the second quarter and another 16 in the fourth quarter with a steady diet of running the football with multiple backs.

“We got a lot of good players that touch the ball,” Lamar head coach Chad Wilkes said. “Last year they focused on just two guys a little bit more, but going into it we knew we wanted to be balanced.”

The Silver Foxes were held scoreless in the third, but did thwart the Falcons’ only scoring opportunity of the game in that quarter, forcing a turnover on downs on the Lamar seven-yard line after Darlington got the ball all the way down to the four before losing yardage.

Outside of that one drive, Darlington was never able to get anything going offensively as it ran plays out of the I formation, the double-wing formation and the Wildcat formation just like it did against West Florence the week before to see if something would help provide a spark.

In the first three games of this young season, the offense has been a struggle for the Falcons, who have scored just 6 points all year. To make matters even worse, the defense is giving up 41 points a game on average over these first three games.

All, however, was not completely perfect for Lamar. While the offense was explosive and the defense was stifling, discipline was an issue as the Silver Foxes were flagged numerous times for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“I may be happy with some of the stuff that was on the field, but the penalties against some stiffer competition is going to come back to bite us so we have to get a whole lot better on that,” Wilkes said. “It doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says against certain teams when you’re losing focus, losing discipline, all of that stuff. Right now I’m not real happy.”

Darlington drops to 0-3 overall, while Lamar improves to 2-1. The Falcons are off this week before coming back home to play the Crestwood Knights. The Silver Foxes on the road this week to take on the North Central Knights.

Author: Stephan Drew

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