Dade County shuts down Northwest

Published 12:18 am Saturday, September 19, 2015

TUNNEL HILL — With Northwest Whitfield High School starting quarterback Luke Shiflett out with a shoulder injury, Dade County’s plan was simply that the Bruins weren’t going to be able to beat them with the run.

Simple plan. Simply executed.

Dade County held Northwest’s rushing attack to negative yardage, and the Bruins couldn’t counter with an effective passing attack to keep the Wolverines from putting eight and nine players in the box. It all equaled a 21-7 win for Dade and an utterly frustrating night for the Northwest coaching staff and players.

“We couldn’t get anything going offensively. Nothing,” said coach Josh Robinson.

The best Northwest’s faithful could say coming out of the game was at least it wasn’t a Region 7-4A game.

A week ago in a 21-12 loss to Southeast Whitfield, the Bruins (2-2) gave up a touchdown when a snap sailed past Shiflett and the Raiders recovered for a score. Shiflett was injured on the play, and the same bad snaps from the Bruins’ shotgun set hurt again against the Wolverines.

“The same thing that killed us against Southeast happened again and again,” Robinson said. “Then we get the ball to start the second half and the exact same thing. The most frustrating thing is we put them in pressure situations in practice and those sort of things don’t happen.”

Not only did the Bruins lose their No. 1 quarterback when Shiflett injured his shoulder in the loss to Southeast, but they also lost their most explosive receiving threat with Will Blanchard moving from receiver.

Blanchard had just three positive rushing plays, as sacks and bad snaps played havoc with the Bruins’ rushing statistics which ended the night with negative-9 yards. Northwest’s leading rusher was Devonte Dunn, who finished with 41 yards on 13 carries. And while Dade may have scored 21 points, it was the defense that was the star of the show.

“We talked about this week and Northwest losing their quarterback, and we thought what would we do if we were in that situation,” said Dade coach Bradley Warren as his team moved to 3-1 on the year. “Our defense did a good job of taking away what Northwest was going to rely on.”

The Bruins’ passing game fared better but was less than effective with an offense facing third-and-longs for most of the night. Through the air, Blanchard was 9 of 18 with two interceptions and 131 yards. His lone scoring pass was a short toss to Jay Jones, who used a couple of well-timed cuts to find the end zone from 19 yards out.

Even though the Wolverines controlled the game, they didn’t overwhelm the Northwest defense, which was put in bad field position spots by its offense most of the night. Dade had less than 200 yards of total offense.

But the Wolverines made enough big plays to get the job done.

“The defense had a good game overall, but we have to make the plays when they matter,” Robinson said. “We had a few critical plays where we were where we needed to be and just didn’t make the plays. We have to figure it out — the coaches and the players.”