by One of the more intriguing matchups of this young football season occurs Friday when North Ridgeville hosts Olmsted Falls. Just a few of the reasons:
· Both teams are 3-0 and on a roll. The Rangers have outscored their opponents, 128-13, while Olmsted Falls has a 78-22 scoring advantage.
· It is the opener of Southwestern Conference play for both teams. Both are considered candidates to break the stranglehold that Avon has had on SWC titles.
· The coaches, Bryan Morgan of North Ridgeville and Tom DeLuca of Olmsted Falls, are good friends and went to college together at Baldwin Wallace University.
· Both teams are extremely physical and feature a brand of power running. Olmsted Falls employs a triple option offense, led by three-year starter at quarterback Jimmy Rosol. North Ridgeville is a bit more conventional with its offense, but the Rangers have a lot of size on the offensive line and feature several outstanding ball carriers.
But while what appears to be a very close matchup implies there are a lot of similarities between the teams, that’s not entirely the case. It is ironic that while Olmsted Falls is the more established program with 20 playoff appearances compared to five for North Ridgeville, it is the Rangers that actually have the more veteran lineup.
This is Morgan’s fourth year at the helm, and each year the program has gotten incrementally better, going from three wins to five to eight last year. A big part of that is the current senior class, many of whom have been playing on the varsity level since the 10th grade.
“We’ve had the good fortune of having a really good class come through,” Morgan said. “Our guys have really progressed over the last three years.”
Contrast that with the Bulldogs, which had to replace 18 starters last year and 17 starters this year. But Olmsted Falls has made nine consecutive playoff appearances and could be primed for a tenth.
“Prior to the season, we had a lot of questions,” DeLuca said. “We have 17 new starters this year. Our offensive line didn’t have any varsity experience. I feel like the kids have progressed very well. We’re getting better every week. We still have some growing pains here and there, but our kids are playing really, really hard. So, I’m pleased with where we are right now, but we have to keep getting better.”
A factor in this game could be that North Ridgeville came out of nowhere last year to defeat the Bulldogs in their conference opener, 10-3. The Rangers were coming off of a 5-6 season that included a playoff appearance, but during last year’s preseason they were involved in a four-team scrimmage that let them know that they still had a ways to go.
“Until we are consistent, people are going to say that we snuck up on teams,” Morgan said. “Last year we won eight games and the year before that I think people were saying we snuck up on people. We actually went to a scrimmage and thought we did pretty well, and the three other teams all got written about and we didn’t. That’s when we touted ourselves The Nobodies. The guys really took to that and it became us against everybody.”
However, DeLuca will have none of this talk about North Ridgeville taking his team by surprise last year.
“I don’t think they caught us off-guard,” he said. “They beat us. They came to our place and beat us fair and square. We have no excuses within our program. We weren’t the better team that night and that’s it. They have a couple of really good classes, they’re well-coached, and they were ready to go. They were the more physical team that night. Give them credit for that. They were better than us.”
When talking to these two coaches, the word physical comes up often. It is likely to be the determining factor in this game.
Morgan said, “It’s going to be who’s more physical. They run right at you, and we’re a running football team. Who’s going to control from tackle to tackle is going to be the team that wins the game. I know Tommy. He’s a guy that’s going to try to out physical us. He’s going to come out and try to hit us harder than we hit them. I think that’s the reason we won last year. We matched their physicality. Our defense kind of smacked them a little bit and I don’t think they were used to it.”
DeLuca said much the same about the Bulldogs, especially on offense.
“Offensively, their physicality is a concern,” he said. “They’re really big up front and they have a number of really good running backs. Their quarterback (Cole Miler) is sharp with his reads, and he puts them in good position all the time. With his play-action, he’s capable of putting your lights out with one play. They have it all on offense, in my opinion.”
It’s the Olmsted Falls offense that could be the key to this one. The Bulldogs run the triple option out of a single wing set, which is somewhat unique. Having Rosol under center only makes it more dangerous.
“The hardest thing with Olmsted Falls is trying to figure out how to mimic them in practice,” Morgan said. “Jimmy Rosol has been running that offense for four years. He knows when to pull it, when to pitch it, when to run it. You’re not going to get that look consistently in practice every day. The biggest thing is to teach the guys how to execute the defensive game plan because we’re going against on offense that we won’t ever see again.”
Which gets us to the key to the game according to DeLuca.
“Execution is going to be the key on our end,” he said. “We have to make sure that we are putting ourselves in good position to be successful each play. We can’t get out-gapped on defense. We have to make our proper reads on offense. We want to hit our run scheme early on offense and not give up the big play on defense. If we just play solid football and we’re sound and we execute the right way, then we will have an opportunity to be successful.”
Magill’s pick: North Ridgeville. DeLuca downplayed the revenge angle, saying that teams that focus on revenge often get distracted from what they are trying to accomplish. It just seems that the Rangers are a team that has been building to this point over a four-year period and now is the time for it to come to fruition. Expect a hard-fought, close battle that isn’t decided until the fourth quarter, with the hosts coming out on top.
