St. Michael's gets off to stormy start with win over Taos
Aug. 21—On a day where the real conversation starter was the weather, the 2022 high school football season got underway for St. Michael's on Saturday afternoon with a 20-8 win over visiting Taos.
The game, played under a low ceiling of thick, gray clouds and a constant drizzle, was hardly a masterpiece as the teams combined for half a dozen turnovers, six punts, an abundance of penalties and poor special teams play.
The conditions made the thick, green grass of the Christian Brothers Athletic Complex feel like a soggy blanket, which contributed to numerous errant throws and a handful of bad snaps.
Taos quarterback Daemon Ely, a 6-foot-8 senior who towered over every other player on the field, completed 4 of 20 pass attempts and was guilty of a crushing interception with the game within one possession in the fourth quarter.
"I wouldn't say this was even close to our best game, not at all," said St. Michael's coach Joey Fernandez. "We had a couple of good weeks in practice and then come out and play like this. I'm not sure what was going on, if the weather affected the kids or it was just all in their heads."
The Horsemen took a bend-but-don't-break approach on defense in the first half. Each of Taos' four possessions stalled on downs inside St. Michael's territory, with three stops in the red zone.
One of them had Tigers receiver Noah Washington appear to score on an eight-yard run but the points were taken off the board by a holding call on fullback Jerome Martinez. Those miscues were particularly rough on Ely, who threw 10 straight incompletions after starting the game with two connections for minimal yardage.
"I thought our defense stepped up and made plays when it had to," said St. Michael's defensive end Taven Lozada. "It's like coach said: We have things to work on, but I thought we did OK."
Fernandez laid into his team during the break between the third and fourth quarters. After calling the entire team into a huddle along the Horsemen sideline, he yelled for more than a minute, questioning what he'd been seeing all afternoon.
"I don't know if it helped," he said afterward.
His team didn't need it early on. St. Michael's scored on each of its first two drives, getting big plays to find the end zone. Running back Marcus Leyba broke through the Tigers' defense for a 66-yard touchdown run less than three minutes into the game to give the Horsemen a quick 6-0 lead.
The next Horsemen possession ended with Lozada rumbling down the right sideline on what started as a routine screen pass from quarterback Zack Martinez for a 67-yard touchdown. It made it 12-0 with four minutes left in the first quarter.
"I wish I could have gotten down that sideline a little faster, but I'll take it," Lozada said.
It stayed that way until early in the second half when Ely hit Favian Cordova on a 40-yard fly pattern down the Horsemen sideline. It was Ely's first completed pass since the Tigers' opening drive and was the only one he completed that went for more than two yards.
The Tigers were held to 134 yards of offense, nearly half of which came on one play when Ely broke loose for a 60-yard run in the first half.
"Defensively, we did some good things but, no, I'm not walking away feeling happy," Fernandez said.
Lozada ended the game with a sack of Ely as time expired, the defense's third of the day. The big play, however, came with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter when Horsemen defensive end Gage Bass picked off an Ely pass and got it down to the Tigers' 21. Leyba punched it in three plays later for what proved be the backbreaker.
"We'd been on [Ely] all day, and we knew he would sometimes look for those short passes," Bass said.
While most of Ely's pass attempts went at least 15 yards downfield, a few were short screens that tipped Bass off to what might come next. He read the play as the Taos QB was put under pressure and dumped a ball that only traveled a few feet before landing in Bass' grip.
Ely later fumbled to end any suspense. After breaking free from the pocket midway through the fourth quarter he lost his grip on the ball at the Tigers' 32. It went another seven yards before Horsemen defensive back Lucas Gurule recovered it.
With his team facing a road trip across town to face Capital (1-0) next Friday, Fernandez said a repeat of Saturday's performance might well end in a loss to the Jaguars.
NOTES
The Horsemen platooned quarterbacks in the second half as Martinez and Jacob Katko alternated possessions. Katko only attempted one pass and lost a fumble while Martinez finished his day 5-for-13 for 125 yards with a pick and a touchdown. ... St. Michael's was penalized 10 times for 105 yards. ... Leyba said one of his goals this season was to rush for 1,000 yards. He's off to a great start, going for 159 on 18 carries in Saturday's game. ... The Horsemen more than doubled Taos' offense, 299 yards to the Tigers' 134. ... Special teams weren't great for the Horsemen. Their only extra point attempt was a mess as late substitutions took the play clock down to 1 before the ball was snapped. When it was, new kicker Creed Chavez hit a ground ball that rolled through the linemen's legs and into the end zone. That goes along with bad snaps on two of the team's three punts.
