Week 2: Colerain

R

ReLoad

Moderator
The Bombers (1-0) travel to the Cage this Friday night to give first year Cardinal head coach Shawn Cutright a decisive first career loss.
The teams first played each other in 1984 and StX leads the series 22-16.
Since Specht has been head coach (2004) the teams are even at 11-11

The Bombers have dropped the last 3 contests against the Cards losing in the 2017 region 4 final 21-14 at Mason's Dwier Field, last season's home opener 14-12 and last season's first round playoff game 35-9.

The Cards opened this season with a 28-19 win at Huber Heights Wayne scoring a TD in each quarter.
 
 
Colerain Offense
#1 QB - Freddie Johnson Jr. 5'11" 170lb
#78 LG - Dalon Peart Sr. 5'10" 285lb
#14 TE - Hamzah Abdul-Waheed Sr. 5’6"” 175lb
#52 C - Elijah Malek Sr. 6'0" 265lb
#79 RG - Cameron Carnes Sr. 6’2” 265lb
#57 LT - Kweisi Jones Jr. 6'0" 225lb
#4 TE - Brandon Sinclair Jr. 6’1” 180lb
#2 WR - Jaylen Thomas Sr. 6’0” 190lb
#9 FB - MJ Flowers So. 6’1” 185lb
#3 TB - DeShawn Pace Sr. 6'3" 210lb
#23 TB - Brian Beavers Sr. 6’1” 220lb
#17 WR Lawson Sandusky So. 5’11” 170lb
 
Colerain Defense
#40 DL - LT Johnson Sr. 5’11” 220lb
#49 DL - Donovan Owens Sr. 6’2” 230lb
#5 DL - Michael Bess Jr. 6’1" 245lb
#33 LB - Levert Jarmon So. 5’10” 168lb
#12 LB - Kaleb Amofa Sr. 5'11" 175lb
#11 LB - Elijah Ford Sr. 6’3” 215lb
#8 LB - Xander Kendall Sr. 5'11" 220lb
#3 DB - Deshawn Pace Sr. 6'3" 210lb
#10 DB - Sean Williamson Jr. 6'0” 160lb
#2 DB - Jaylen Thomas Sr. 6’0” 190lb
#4 DB - Brandon Sinclair Jr. 6’1” 180lb
#22 DB - Davonte Kiner Jr. 5’8” 160lb
 
By Colerain standards this is an anemic offense.
In week 1 southpaw Freddie Johnson chucked it 4 times connecting twice for 37 yards and a score to DeShawn Pace a seriously ugly pass play
The 45 rushing attempts netted 188 yards between Johnson, Flowers and Abdul-Waheed
Defensively the Cards were strong limiting the Warriors to 59 rushing yards and recording 7 QB sacks
They were led by two way player Jaylen Thomas (11 tackles, 1.5 sacks and 3 carries)
The problem for Colerain is that the Bomber Coverdale offense is too sophisticated and explosive for any defense on this year's schedule.

X 35
Colerain 10
 
It was fun watching the St X offense open it up under Coverdale against Brownsburg. X has a ton of weapons to utilize offensively - TEs, WRs, and RBs. When players cramped up or were hurt, it was next man up without missing a beat! The young line was effective, led by Sr’s Kirby and Uhl, protecting Rueve and opening up holes for the RBs.

At the same time, the Defense and ST’s were very opportunistic and hard-hitting. Led by O’Malley, Hundley, Taylor, and Dubois, they set the tone for the rest of the defense with hard hits, knocked-down passes, blocked punts and pick-6s.

The game started out tentatively for the Offense, but when Rueve got into the groove, he completed a bunch of deep passes to Lang, Smith, Clifford, etc. The RBs, Vrsansky and Newman were explosive as well, getting crucial yards/TDS and salting the game away at the end.

Eventually, both sides of the X lines wore down the Brownsburg line (which went both ways), creating high shotgun snaps and turnovers.

Nice win against the 2nd best team in Indiana.

On to Colerain for some redemption from last year’s blowout!
 
ReLoad said:
The problem for Colerain is that the Bomber Coverdale offense is too sophisticated and explosive for any defense on this year's schedule.

X 35
Colerain 10
Click to expand...
Just want to keep this one for posterity sakes.

X is clearly the favorite in this game, no doubt about it. But I would be shocked, no...SHOCKED if X scored 35 points at The Cage against this defense.

We're not the farm boys you feasted on in week 1 at home.

See you there!

tsunami

-CardinalsFan
 
CardinalsFan said:
Just want to keep this one for posterity sakes.

X is clearly the favorite in this game, no doubt about it. But I would be shocked, no...SHOCKED if X scored 35 points at The Cage against this defense.

We're not the farm boys you feasted on in week 1 at home.

See you there!

tsunami

-CardinalsFan
Click to expand...

As (I try to be) an objective fan, I always give due credit to Colerain for being one of the very few public schools with the stones and the ability to play, hang with, and often beat the GCL schools. It’s good for Cincinnati football (and us) to have local public schools with the ability to do that without us having to travel all over the Tri-State to get competitive games. It’s too bad that the other larger local public schools haven’t been able to come up to the level that Colerain has in the past. And I’m not here to give more gas to the public vs private fire that many here get consumed with.

Having said that, as a St X fan, I am cautiously optimistic that our new offense will do really well against a very tough Colerain D. I think we have the players and the scheme to confuse and exploit the Cards. I can see us putting up 35 points on anyone this year, seeing them do it against Brownsburg (no slouch) last week.

I haven’t heard a ton of overwhelming things about the Colerain Offense, but I’ll be interested to see how they do after graduating such a talented group of playmakers from last year.

Either way, I’m sure it will be another great game, setting up for another rematch at some point in the playoffs - as always! Enjoy these games, the season is young and it’s a great chance for both teams to develop for the year. But Go Bombers!
 
BombersFan said:
As (I try to be) an objective fan, I always give due credit to Colerain for being one of the very few public schools with the stones and the ability to play, hang with, and often beat the GCL schools. It’s good for Cincinnati football (and us) to have local public schools with the ability to do that without us having to travel all over the Tri-State to get competitive games. It’s too bad that the other larger local public schools haven’t been able to come up to the level that Colerain has in the past. And I’m not here to give more gas to the public vs private fire that many here get consumed with.

Having said that, as a St X fan, I am cautiously optimistic that our new offense will do really well against a very tough Colerain D. I think we have the players and the scheme to confuse and exploit the Cards. I can see us putting up 35 points on anyone this year, seeing them do it against Brownsburg (no slouch) last week.

I haven’t heard a ton of overwhelming things about the Colerain Offense, but I’ll be interested to see how they do after graduating such a talented group of playmakers from last year.

Either way, I’m sure it will be another great game, setting up for another rematch at some point in the playoffs - as always! Enjoy these games, the season is young and it’s a great chance for both teams to develop for the year. But Go Bombers!
Click to expand...
I appreciate both your honesty and optimism. Let's be honest, it's been over a decade since a St. X fan could call themselves "excited" about the Bomber offense. It has been fairly stagnant since Darius Ashley hung up his cleats after the '07 season. So trust me, I get it. Your fan base is starving for something, ANYTHING it can get on offense. I mean, my God, you had 2 current Big 10 QB's on your roster and the offense was never anything to get excited about.

That being said, let's slow the train down just a second and take a closer look at last week against, Brownsburg, was it?

To start with, your OFFENSE didn't score 38 points. There was both a fumble return and punt return which netted them 15 points in the second half. That puts their total offense at 23 points...which is on par for a GOOD St. Xavier team.

Secondly, up until 8:35 to go in the game, the rushing stats for the Bombers were pretty abysmal. The stats say the Bombers averaged 4.0 yards/rush but, take away Vrsanksy's 47 yard scamper to pile on a 31-17 score and the team averaged 2.4 yards/rush. As "bad" as Colerain was last week against Wayne, breaking in a COMPLETELY NEW QB, backfield and receivers, they averaged 4.2 yards/rush. And if you adjust it down for OUR longest run of the game, we still averaged 3.3 yards/rush. ?‍♂️

Finally, these games are generally never blowouts. In fact, going back to the beginning of Specht's reign as HC at St. X (2005), there are only 3 instances out of 22 where the margin of victory was greater than 20 points (as your 25 point spread suggests above):
> 2012: Colerain 35 - X 14
> 2015: Colerain 42 - X 14
> 2019: Colerain 35 - X 9

See a trend here? It's not St. Xavier's offense that has been the problem, it's been the Colerain defense stifling the Bombers while the Cardinal offense ran all over them. During St. X's 11 wins over Colerain since 2005, their average margin of victory is 8.5 points, with their biggest being 19 back in 2014. Colerain's avg. margin of victory in their 11 wins...11.8 points, about a FG better.

What does all this mean? Not much come tomorrow night! LOL ?

As I said, St. Xavier is the favorite, no doubt about that. I think their defense, combined with an unusually green Cardinal offense, is what is going to carry them to victory. If the Bomber offense does manage to score 28+ points, I will be thoroughly impressed. I felt after last year that the Bombers would return to the top of R4 this year and last week's performance did nothing to shake that feeling.

We've won 3 of the past 4 regional titles...time for someone else to step up. ;)

-CardinalsFan
 
CardinalsFan said:
I appreciate both your honesty and optimism. Let's be honest, it's been over a decade since a St. X fan could call themselves "excited" about the Bomber offense. It has been fairly stagnant since Darius Ashley hung up his cleats after the '07 season. So trust me, I get it. Your fan base is starving for something, ANYTHING it can get on offense. I mean, my God, you had 2 current Big 10 QB's on your roster and the offense was never anything to get excited about.

That being said, let's slow the train down just a second and take a closer look at last week against, Brownsburg, was it?

To start with, your OFFENSE didn't score 38 points. There was both a fumble return and punt return which netted them 15 points in the second half. That puts their total offense at 23 points...which is on par for a GOOD St. Xavier team.

Secondly, up until 8:35 to go in the game, the rushing stats for the Bombers were pretty abysmal. The stats say the Bombers averaged 4.0 yards/rush but, take away Vrsanksy's 47 yard scamper to pile on a 31-17 score and the team averaged 2.4 yards/rush. As "bad" as Colerain was last week against Wayne, breaking in a COMPLETELY NEW QB, backfield and receivers, they averaged 4.2 yards/rush. And if you adjust it down for OUR longest run of the game, we still averaged 3.3 yards/rush. ?‍♂️

Finally, these games are generally never blowouts. In fact, going back to the beginning of Specht's reign as HC at St. X (2005), there are only 3 instances out of 22 where the margin of victory was greater than 20 points (as your 25 point spread suggests above):
> 2012: Colerain 35 - X 14
> 2015: Colerain 42 - X 14
> 2019: Colerain 35 - X 9

See a trend here? It's not St. Xavier's offense that has been the problem, it's been the Colerain defense stifling the Bombers while the Cardinal offense ran all over them. During St. X's 11 wins over Colerain since 2005, their average margin of victory is 8.5 points, with their biggest being 19 back in 2014. Colerain's avg. margin of victory in their 11 wins...11.8 points, about a FG better.

What does all this mean? Not much come tomorrow night! LOL ?

As I said, St. Xavier is the favorite, no doubt about that. I think their defense, combined with an unusually green Cardinal offense, is what is going to carry them to victory. If the Bomber offense does manage to score 28+ points, I will be thoroughly impressed. I felt after last year that the Bombers would return to the top of R4 this year and last week's performance did nothing to shake that feeling.

We've won 3 of the past 4 regional titles...time for someone else to step up. ;)

-CardinalsFan
Click to expand...

I picked the Cards to win by 7. X's offensive line just not up to run-blocking consistently yet. Don't think that Colerain's defense will have the backside breakdowns that Brownsburg did leading to receivers running free. I expect a relatively low scoring game - Colerain 17 - Bombers 10.
 
ReLoad said:
After CF's insightful post I am going to adjust my prediction

X 42
Cards 0
Click to expand...
Hell....anything's possible I guess! I'm just glad that Coach Cutright didn't take the change in leadership as an opportunity to back out of this series. He absolutely could have given it was built off the relationship between Tommy and Steve. Win or lose, I always enjoy this game.

-CardinalsFan
 
Cards Fan, is Ace E. hurt? Didn't see him on the list above and think he is a really good center, probably Cards best lineman and perhaps one of best centers in Cincy. I'm a homer, try not to be, but suspect this is typical close battle due to the all the emotions with the rivalry. But Would love to see Reload be right on his score prediction.
Lastly, the new QB doesn't seem to throw as well as the last couple at Colerain, so score can also be predicated on if X gets a lead and forces to Cards to throw more than desired.
 
CardinalsFan said:
I appreciate both your honesty and optimism. Let's be honest, it's been over a decade since a St. X fan could call themselves "excited" about the Bomber offense. It has been fairly stagnant since Darius Ashley hung up his cleats after the '07 season. So trust me, I get it. Your fan base is starving for something, ANYTHING it can get on offense. I mean, my God, you had 2 current Big 10 QB's on your roster and the offense was never anything to get excited about.

That being said, let's slow the train down just a second and take a closer look at last week against, Brownsburg, was it?

To start with, your OFFENSE didn't score 38 points. There was both a fumble return and punt return which netted them 15 points in the second half. That puts their total offense at 23 points...which is on par for a GOOD St. Xavier team.

Secondly, up until 8:35 to go in the game, the rushing stats for the Bombers were pretty abysmal. The stats say the Bombers averaged 4.0 yards/rush but, take away Vrsanksy's 47 yard scamper to pile on a 31-17 score and the team averaged 2.4 yards/rush. As "bad" as Colerain was last week against Wayne, breaking in a COMPLETELY NEW QB, backfield and receivers, they averaged 4.2 yards/rush. And if you adjust it down for OUR longest run of the game, we still averaged 3.3 yards/rush. ?‍♂️

Finally, these games are generally never blowouts. In fact, going back to the beginning of Specht's reign as HC at St. X (2005), there are only 3 instances out of 22 where the margin of victory was greater than 20 points (as your 25 point spread suggests above):
> 2012: Colerain 35 - X 14
> 2015: Colerain 42 - X 14
> 2019: Colerain 35 - X 9

See a trend here? It's not St. Xavier's offense that has been the problem, it's been the Colerain defense stifling the Bombers while the Cardinal offense ran all over them. During St. X's 11 wins over Colerain since 2005, their average margin of victory is 8.5 points, with their biggest being 19 back in 2014. Colerain's avg. margin of victory in their 11 wins...11.8 points, about a FG better.

What does all this mean? Not much come tomorrow night! LOL ?

As I said, St. Xavier is the favorite, no doubt about that. I think their defense, combined with an unusually green Cardinal offense, is what is going to carry them to victory. If the Bomber offense does manage to score 28+ points, I will be thoroughly impressed. I felt after last year that the Bombers would return to the top of R4 this year and last week's performance did nothing to shake that feeling.

We've won 3 of the past 4 regional titles...time for someone else to step up. ;)

-CardinalsFan
Click to expand...

Wow, that was quite a barrage of statistics being thrown my way after what I thought was a pretty complimentary take on Colerain’s status in Cincinnati football.

So allow me to retort:

1) Why disparage our excitement level in our past Offensive ability? I thought the recent years with Clifford and Wolf as our QB’s were plenty exciting (especially 2016) - but why does that matter?

2) Why disparage last week’s opponent, in your wording “Brownsburg, was it?” At the time #2 in the state of Indiana, still highly ranked.

3) Do 2 scores by our D take away from our offense in how well they played? Think of the loss of time of possession that our offense didn’t have due to Brownsburg getting possession back after our defensive scores. Maybe if we had that extra time, our O would’ve scored 35 pts, but our D helped out - good for us!

4). Why are we cherry-picking rushing stats? Where does that come from? How is any of that even germane to the discussion?

5) I never said that your offense was “bad” just that I was interested to see how they do after graduating last year’s studs.

6) You cite past years’ margins of victory. Each year is a new group of young men playing and margin of victory doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things and past history isn’t a good indicator of the present. A win is a win, a loss is a loss.

I think you’re getting hung up on me agreeing that I thought we could score 35 on any team with this new offense. I was really talking about the capability to scheme guys open and score quickly - much more imaginative than in the past (like Zac Taylor vs Marvin, hopefully, for the Bengals). So this wasn’t meant as a slam on your team’s defense, which has always been great. These are always hard fought battles (except last year where we laid an egg against Pace and the boys), and it is so early in the year, that both teams develop dramatically over the season. I expect both to be contenders come the playoffs.

Looking forward to an entertaining game!
Good luck tomorrow, (but not too much!)
 
Bomber Offense
I know Specht likes to turn it over to the defense when X has a 2 score lead in the second half but the Coverdale offense needs the gas pedal, not the brake pedal.
Rueve needs to get the ball deep to Clifford when he gets behind the secondary, he under threw him at least twice.
He also needs to run it when there is wide open field in front of him.
He could have run for 50+ yards and helped the abysmal rushing stats
If Clifford is going to lineup in the wildcat can they at least run a play?
Is Patterson hurt? He showed a ton of promise in the preseason.
He didn’t play at all and he played very little in the opener. Zero catches on the season.
Colerain’s rush defense is good but X has to do a better job of running the football.
Lang and Clifford: a combined 17 catches for 187 yards and 3 TDs
In the opener vs Brownsburg they had 14 catches for 165 yards and 1 TD
X hasn't had a WR/TE combination like this since Michael Larkin and Eric Arling in 1999
I expect these numbers to increase each game.
 
Bomber Defense
The defense is a lot better than I originally thought
Tucker Hundley played a tremendous game…..blocked punt and 11 tackles with nearly half of those occurring in the Cardinal backfield.
Gio was blowing it up in the middle all night…..the blubber butts Colerain calls linemen took some cheap shots at him from behind.
I underestimated how good the linebackers are….Taylor, O’Malley and Devine are really good.
Danny Kirk and Jack Kemper got a lot of snaps as Specht often times had 4 linebackers in the game.
How bad is Dolle’s injury?
The 2 sophomores (Anderson and Nolan) that rotate opposite him were both in the remainder of the game after he went down in the second quarter.
They are green and did ok but against a QB that can actually throw the football they will need to have tighter coverage
 
Special Teams
If not for the field goal kicking this phase of the game would have been lights out.
Specht gave up on the PK after the missed 27 yard FG attempt in the first quarter.
There were another 2 opportunities for FG attempts that would have made it a 3 possession lead but he opted not to.
Can Klare or Taylor kick FGs? Someone else?
Clifford (kickoff returns) and Vrsansky (punt returns) are threats to take it to the house and Vrsansky is great at fielding punts.
Taylor was lights out punting the ball……his final punt downed at the 1 yard line with 2 minutes to play was a beauty.
For the game he punted 6 times for an average of 46.3 yards, 2 downed inside the 20 and a long of 60 yards.
The one he boomed that found the end zone was nearly downed inside the 5 yard line.
 
ReLoad said:
Rueve needs to get the ball deep to Clifford when he gets behind the secondary, he under threw him at least twice.
He also needs to run it when there is wide open field in front of him.
Click to expand...

Both accomplished vs. Penn

ReLoad said:
Is Patterson hurt? He showed a ton of promise in the preseason.
He didn’t play at all and he played very little in the opener. Zero catches on the season.
Click to expand...

4 catches for 39 yards vs Penn
 
ReLoad said:
Special Teams
If not for the field goal kicking this phase of the game would have been lights out.
Specht gave up on the PK after the missed 27 yard FG attempt in the first quarter.
There were another 2 opportunities for FG attempts that would have made it a 3 possession lead but he opted not to.
Can Klare or Taylor kick FGs? Someone else?
Click to expand...

The someone else is sophomore Mason Rohmiller
 
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