Michigan high school football: Walled Lake Western's offense too much for Lakeland, 52-7

You have to pick your poison when trying to defend Walled Lake Western’s dynamic duo of running back Darius Taylor and quarterback Drew Viotto.

White Lake Lakeland found out both poisons were fatal as the Minnesota commits spearheaded a 52-7 win in the Lakes Valley Conference matchup on Friday in White Lake.

Taylor, who plays offense, defense and returns kicks, ran for 284 yards on 26 carries and two touchdowns, while Viotto threw three TD passes as the Warriors (No. 6, Division 3) improved to 3-0 overall and in the LVC.

“Darius had a great game ... man it didn’t even feel like 284 (yards rushing), but that’s what you get when you get a kid that good,” Western coach Kory Cioroch said. “And Drew had a great game today, too. Really carried our offense. We were balanced and that’s where we want to be.”

After leading 21-7 at halftime, Western exploded in the third quarter scoring 17 unanswered points to put the game out of reach.

The Warriors scored on their first possession of the third on a 20-yard field goal by Max Kirk. Darrell Jones Jr. returned the kickoff 47 yards and on a key fourth-and-5 play on the series, Viotto wormed his way out of a sack and threw a shovel pass to Taylor for a 26-yard gain and a first down to lead to the field goal.

“They brought two linebackers on a blitz and one of them didn’t get picked up, so I had to make them miss, and then as I was being tackled I saw Darius at the last second and I just flipped it to him,” Viotto said. “That was kind of like playing backyard football out there.”

Taylor, who has run for nearly 800 yards in his first three games, then scored on a 3-yard TD run with 5:26 to go in the third to give and the rout was on as the 6-foot-4 Viotto followed a 16-yard scoring pass to Ryan Boyce to make it 38-7 after Joey Hawkins pounced on a pooch kick that stayed inbounds at the Eagles’ 32.

“We really just wanted to have time and we knew what had to do the second half,” Taylor said. “We just came out strong and I came out ready to run. I can run anywhere, but our scheme this week was to run it between the tackles. That was the bread and butter for this week.”

Donovan Triplett added a 1-yard TD run in the fourth quarter to start the running clock. Backup QB Jaxon Lippert then scored on a 36-yard TD run.

“I felt pretty good and let the younger guys play,” Taylor said. “But it was a good opportunity to let them grow and get better.

Viotto finished the game 9 of 19 passing for 184 yards, but may have had a higher percentage had it not been for four drops.

“We were definitely clicking on all cylinders I felt offensively,” the he said. “And Darius rushes the ball like that every game, he’s a really good running back ... our receivers stepped up today and they did last week and they stepped it up today and played great. We were balanced.”

During the first quarter, Taylor carried most of the load with five carries for 51 yards, but it was Viotto tossing a 31-yard TD pass to a wide-open Lippert over the middle to give the Warriors a 7-0 lead with 1:47 left.

While Lakeland (2-1, 2-1 LVC) was stymied by a pair of big negative losses, along with a dropped pass, the Warriors increased their lead to 14-0 with 6:09 left in the half on a Viotto 20-yard TD pass to Michael Bailey. The key play 13-play drive came when the Warriors converted a fourth-and-4 pass to Bailey for a first down.

The Eagles finally showed some offensive life when Braxton Godin returned the ensuing kickoff 87 yards down to the Western 3 and Mike Mahaney III carried it in to cut the deficit to 14-7 with 5:07 left in the second period.

But just 17 seconds later, Taylor ripped through the heart of the Lakeland defense for a 68-yard TD run to put the Warriors back up by two possessions.

Sean Latham’s 50-yard pass and a Western late hit put the Eagles inside the 10 just before halftime, but the Warriors stopped the threat when Bailey hit the Lakeland QB from the blindside and recovered the fumble at the 12.

Two costly first-half turnovers and giving up over 400 total yards rushing led to Lakeland’s demise.

“Halftime conversation was pretty clear, we shot ourselves in the foot the first half,” Lakeland coach Jim Calhoun said. “We did compete for the first half, but then the better team won. It was pretty obvious. They got away. They kept going and kept executing and we got to grow up and we’ve got to get it together.”

And Taylor was just too much in the overall scheme of things.

“Darius is a player,” Cioroch said. “I’m not sure what the stats were, but we executed on all pieces of our offense today, throwing the ball, running the ball. And we really played well on defense. Outside of that long kick return and touchdown, we were shutting people down.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MHSAA football: Walled Lake Western hammers Lakeland, 52-7