Marlboro too much for Darlington in first half, cruise to victory
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
The Darlington Falcons early season struggles continued this past Thursday against the Marlboro County Bulldogs.
In its first game home game of the year, not to mention a televised game on CW-21, Darlington got behind the eight ball quick and was never able to recover or get any type of rhythm whether it was offense or defense as the Bulldogs cruised to a 40-7 victory.
“We have to make plays,” Darlington head coach John Jones said. “We tell them all the time that if you want to be a good football then you have to make plays. Over and over and over people talk about our youth and the number of injuries we have right now. We’ve told our team all week you have to be the next man up, you have to stop making excuses, excuses don’t win football games. We continue to want to make an excuse here and there and we can’t do it. We have to grow up and play the game.”
The game was basically a tale of one half as the Bulldogs dominated their way to 40-0 lead by halftime and put the game in cruise control in the second half.
Marlboro had seven offensive possessions in the first half and scored a touchdown on its first six before running out of time on the seventh and final possession of the half. Five out of the six touchdowns were for 18 yards or more and with three going for 39 yards or more.
It started on the first drive of the game. After having a 34-yard touchdown nullified due to a holding and block in the back penalty, the Bulldogs struck gold on their next play, hitting a 45-yard strike for the opening score of the game.
Three minutes later Marlboro found the end zone again, this time with the Bulldogs quarterback executing a perfect zone and fooling the entire Falcons defense for a 42-yard touchdown run.
Following the run the Bulldogs went back to their aerial assault hitting a 26-yard touchdown pass, a 39-yard touchdown pass on a trick play and 18-yard touchdown pass that had followed another nullified touchdown play due to a holding penalty by Marlboro.
With a 34-0 lead after the three straight touchdown passes, Marlboro went back to the ground on its next drive, ending it with a three-yard touchdown run at the 3:36 to go up 40-0.
The second half was filled with little excitement as Marlboro basically went into a conservative, clock running mode and Darlington was still unable to do anything offensively.
Overall, while Marlboro may have had more experience to go along with a bigger, faster and stronger team it was the numerous mistakes and missed assignments both on offense and defense that truly crippled the Falcons.
“Tonight was an example of just too many mental mistakes and too many plays not executed correctly,” Jones said. “At the end of the day it still falls on me as a football coach to get that fixed, but sooner than later we have to grow up and start running our plays and playing the game the way we are supposed to.”
Defensively, two glaring examples of these mistakes happen on the zone read touchdown and on the trick play that resulted in a touchdown.
On the zone read the Falcons completely forgot about containment and on the trick play the defensive back bit on the on the run to the outside and allowed the receiver to release wide open for the easy touchdown.
Offensively the miscues have to started and ended with turnovers. Darlington threw two interceptions, the first by quarterback Silas Barr and the other by Brian Robinson.
The Falcons also had fumbling issues Javorius Williams fumbled twice, including one on a fourth down attempt. There was also a bad snap on the another fourth down attempt that ruined any chance of keeping the drive alive.
Darlington’s lone score came with 29.7 seconds left in the game as Williams ran in from two yards out.
The loss drops Darlington to 0-4 on the year. The Falcons are at home this week once again as they prepare to take on the Lake City Panthers.