PAC Game of the Year - 2020 | Fairless (3-1, 3-1 PAC) at Northwest (4-0, 4-0 PAC) | Week 5 | September 25, 2020
This is the 22nd in an ongoing series, highlighting the PAC Game of the Year in each season, from 1999 through 2023, which will lead up to the start of the 2024 high school football season. For a look back at prior summaries, click here for
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2010,
2011,
2012,
2013,
2014,
2015,
2016,
2017,
2018 and
2019.
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The Prelude
The oddity that was the 2020 season saw the biggest win occur off the football field. Just ten days before the first scheduled games were set to take place,
Governor Mike DeWine gave the green light to fall contact sports, including football, whose seasons had been hanging in the balance amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Athletes had already lost winter sports championships and the entire spring sports season during the prior academic year, and all scheduled scrimmages with other schools had been put on hold. The gubernatorial blessing on fall sports came with a number of stipulations. Attendance was limited to 15% of stadium capacity. Players were supposed to stand six feet apart while wearing masks on their own sidelines. Officials would use an orange beanbag to spot the ball, but the umpire would not handle the ball. Instead, the offensive team center would spot the ball on the beanbag spot.
The regular season would be truncated to six games and all teams would be eligible to participate in the OHSAA playoffs, with an opportunity to schedule additional games - up to ten regular season contests - after elimination from playoff contention. Local officials were able to decide if they would play at all. And we learned about another oddity - Covid cancellations. Games could be canceled and also scheduled on a moment's notice.
Since spectators were limited, it brought about the onset of en masse live streaming for the first time. Some streams were done well. Others left some things to be desired. But after being couped up - literally, at least there was something to look forward to, even if you couldn't be there in person.
The PAC decided to play a six week round robin, starting with what originally would have been Week 5 of the regular season. Weeks 1-4 were scrapped, and just ten days after DeWine's press conference, the season was off and running, with one exception. Manchester officials originally decided not to play in the Fall of 2020. But they reversed course and the Panthers joined the fray in Week 3.
Based on the 2019 results, Orrville, Northwest and CVCA were expected to be the top teams, but given the limitations and restrictions on practice time, it was really anyone's guess.
Opening night came, and to add to the Covid oddities, it arrived with a massive storm front rolling through Northeast Ohio. Northwest was scheduled to visit Orrville in a matchup that pitted the Jordan Mick-led Indians against an Orrville squad that had won the 2018 Division 5 state championship and went three rounds deep in an 11-win season the year before and still had Marquael Parks. The game was suspended due to the storms in the third quarter, with Northwest leading big. It got worse for the Riders on Saturday. Orrville, who had 16 new starters from the 2019 team,
got blown out 42-7. It also unexpectedly turned out to be the final game in the the illustrious career of Parks, who was dismissed from the team a week later after incurring legal trouble.
Elsewhere on opening night, CVCA traveled to Fairless, and the teams slogged through three different lightning delays. Each time, Fairless would retreat to their locker room. CVCA, on the other had, waited out the delays on their buses as the visiting team was prohibited from using the school facilities due to Covid regulations. On the field, an 8-point game game was blown open on each side of the half, when Fairless returned a kickoff for a touchdown just before the half and then scored on the opening possession of the third quarter. The Falcons briefly put a running clock on the Royals in a game that ended well after midnight
with the Falcons winning 42-26. It was a surprising result, but it announced the arrival of the Falcons as a major player in the battle for conference superiority for the next several seasons.
The following week, CVCA was on the road again at Northwest. The Royals led at the half, and the teams combined for more than 1,000 yards of offense, but Mick and
the Indians pulled away with two fourth quarter scores to win 41-25.
Timing is everything and both Fairless and Northwest got the better of CVCA before the Royals got rolling with the most prolific offense in school history. The Falcons and Indians sat atop the conference standings after Week 2, after Fairless defeated Loudonville.
Week 3 saw Manchester start play, and up first was Fairless. It was the first game of the Jay Brophy era at Manchester, and
the Panthers celebrated with a 7-0 shutout victory against the Falcons. In retrospect, it turned out to be fools gold. Manchester managed just two more touchdowns in the entire regular season; they were outscored 160-56 and and finished 2-4 in six total games.
Fairless shutout Triway 38-0 in Week 4, while Northwest destroyed Manchester 49-7, which set up a de-facto PAC Championship Game at Northwest in Week 5.
The Game
Northwest entered the contest looking to go 5-0 for the first time in 13 seasons, having outscored opponents in the first month by a combined 163-47, and the Indians featured senior quarterback Jordan Mick, who clearly looked like the conference Player of the Year over the first month of games.
Fairless got the ball first, but went three-and-out on a keeper by quarterback Ethan Brindley, a Hunter Campbell run and an incomplete pass on third down.
The elder Mick had weapons to throw to, including his younger brother Braden, as well as Anthony Grossnickle and Nick Dinkins. In the backfield, sophomore Ethan Nickey was a load behind the big Northwest O-Line.
But it was a freshman who got the first two carries for Northwest on this night. Kyler Miraglia foreshadowed a big future with gains on the first two plays. But it was Nickey, who took the fourth play of the night for the Indians offense up the middle for a 25 yard touchdown score with 9:05 to go in the opening stanza.
Nickey drags two Fairless defenders into the endzone | Canton Repository Photo
The next Fairless drive ended in a Braden Mick interception of Brindley on a bomb attempt, and after an exchange of possessions, Northwest was driving, but the progression into Falcons red zone was halted by a Coltin Colucci sack of Mick. Sophomore Isaac LaFay followed with a 37-yard field goal to put the home team up 10-0.
The Northwest defense continued to put their imprint on the game on the next Fairless drive, which ended when Jason Greenfield and LaFay stopped Brindley on a 4th and long conversion attempt. It gave the ball back over to the Indians and Mick.
The senior quarterback then executed a perfect screen pass to Grossnickle, who did the rest with his legs. Sixty-one yards later, he was celebrating in the endzone. LaFay's extra point made it 17-0, and it appeared that the Indians were on their way to another lopsided victory.
Grossnickel outraces Fairless' Brandon Pumneo to put Northwest up 17-0 | Canton Repository Photo
One problem. Nobody told Fairless they were going to be on the losing end of a blowout. Northwest stopped Fairless again, and decided to keep their foot on the gas. With so many big leads, the Indians had not had occasion to run the two minute offense at any point in the season. With seconds to go in the half, Mick dropped back and found pressure from Falcons' Defensive End Seth Short. Mick flicked a pass forward, and Short snatched it out of the air and returned the ball down to the Northwest 7-yard line.
The Falcons had life, and Brindley followed with a 4-yard toss to Colucci with just 0:02 remaining in the half. LaFay blocked the PAT, but the Falcons closed to within 17-6 at the half, despite mustering only 70 yards of offense in the first 24 minutes.
The second half began with Northwest receiving the opening kick. But the Indians could not mirror their first half offensive production. Twice on fourth down, the Fairless defense came up with big stops. Short sacked Mick to halt one drive near midfield. But the Falcons offense continued to see its wings clipped by the stingy Indians defense.
Late in the third quarter, Fairless was forced to punt for the eighth time in the game, and they pinned Northwest deep. That's when the Falcons defense picked up the offense once again. Mick dropped back to pass and was looking for 6-5 receiver Billy Crookston. Instead, he found the other Fairless defensive end Reise Lanier, who snagged the ball and ran 15 yards untouched into the endzone for a Falcons touchdown. Northwest stopped the Fairless 2-point attempt, but suddenly it was a one score game with three minutes left in the third quarter at 17-12.
And that's how it stayed until late in the fourth quarter when the Fairless offense had one final chance to try and solve an Indians defense that had dominated all night. Down five points, they got the ball back late on their own 25 yard line and they needed to engineer a drive.
With just over two minutes left, the Falcons faced a 4th and 1 from near midfield. Head coach A.J. Sarbaugh called on his quarterback to keep the ball, and Brindley delivered. Moments later an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Northwest move the ball down to the Indians 21.
That's when 5-foot-8-inch Cooper Barnby made the play of his life.
From
the Steve Doerschuk story in
The Canton Repository:
Northwest took over and ran out the clock to survive.
Indeed there was. Northwest survived Fairless and took care of Loudonville the following week to emerge unscathed in the abbreviated six-game Covid season as PAC Champions.
The Postlude
Northwest carried the top seed in Division 4 Region 13 rankings, which earned them a bye in the first round of the playoffs. After the bye, they extended their win streak to 8 games, with a
52-29 win over Girard and then a 13-10 win over Shaw.
Barnby makes a tackle against Girard (L) and LaFay converts a field goal in Northwest's 13-10 win vs. Shaw | Canton Repository Photos
Meanwhile, CVCA ... remember them? The Royals finished the regular season with four straight wins, and averaged 52 points a game in those demolitions of Orrville, Tuslaw, Loudonville and Manchester. CVCA then opened the playoffs at home and administered a 55-21 dismantling of Edgewood. The next week, CVCA avenged playoff losses the previous two seasons with a 55-28 victory at Perry. The following week, you couldn't fault the Royals for looking ahead at halftime of their playoff game against Lake Catholic. They held a 21-7 lead and could envision a rematch with Northwest a week later in the Regional Semifinal. But Lake Catholic scored the game's final 28 points to win and end any chance of a PAC playoff rematch.
In Week 10, Lake Catholic ended the Northwest season in a 7-0 defensive struggle.
CVCA played two more games after being eliminated from the playoffs, defeating Salem and engineering the biggest comeback in program history, defeating West Branch 58-55, after being down 28 points twice late in the first half.
And Fairless? The promising season yielded a playoff opportunity. But the Falcons fell flat and dropped a first round playoff game 28-17 against previously winless VASJ. Still, the Falcons did schedule a pair of additional games as well, recording a 28-20 nonconference win over a quarterback named Jack Snyder at Canton South and finishing up with a 40-7 win Tusky Valley to end the year at 6-3.
The win over South was notable as the Wildcats were had also been defeated a week earlier by that same Lake Catholic team that ultimately came within a final play game-winning field goal of winning the the State Championship in Division 4.
Future PAC Player of the Year "Jack" Snyder awaits a snap against Lake Catholic | Canton Repository Photo