In the October 26th Worthy of the Jersey podcast, Coach Lombardo provided this very eye-opening perspective that caught my attention:
“I remember in 2018, I looked at Colerain. I guarantee you, if we play Cincinnati Colerain ten times, they’d beat us nine. We beat them the one time we had to. You take everyone’s best shot just that one time. They were steamrolling everybody. They were loaded. Five of those kids started on Cincinnati against Alabama in the playoffs a couple of years ago. That team was loaded and we caught ‘em.”
Along those lines, there is a Colerain audio broadcast of the 2018 championship game available on YouTube. (They got away with pointing their camera at the scoreboard which was showing live video action.) As the second half unfolded, the Colerain broadcasters began expressing shock about two things. First, that Colerain's potent triple-option offense was unable to break any big plays against the Eagles. Second, that the Cardinal’s coach stubbornly continued to try to pound their star running back, Ivan Pace, right up the middle; they kept venting their frustration by saying something like, “I appreciate what the coach is trying to do, but it isn’t working. We have to try something different.”
In case you’re interested, here is a link to that broadcast: