GREAT BARRINGTON -- The Mount Greylock football team had three specific goals as it prepared for Monument Mountain this week. Improve the offensive line play, start fast and throw the ball more.
Consider those goals accomplished. The Mounties didn’t have much trouble throwing or running their way to a 38-14 thrashing of the Spartans on Friday. The victory pushes Greylock’s winning streak to 28 games.
"I definitely think [Friday night] it was our line, they stepped up big," running back Ethan Ryan said. "We struggled a bit in Week 1, but they came out hard tonight. I think that’s what set the tone [Friday], our line coming out and popping guys."
The Mounties drove Monument Mountain backward on the first drive of the game, holding them to -4 yards, and then took care of business on the offensive side of the ball. On the first play from scrimmage, Hank Barrett faked the ball to Ryan and rolled to his right looking for a receiver. He found Brett McCormack in the back of the end zone for a 24-yard touchdown strike.
"We wanted to come out strong, that was the biggest thing," Barrett said. "Last week, we didn’t really come out strong and we had a couple of drives die. So we came out early, ran a little play action and I saw Brett get open behind the last line of the defense and put it up for him. I know he’s going to go up and get it."
A solid run game normally sets up play action,
"I felt like we should open it up and start off with a passing play," Greylock coach Shawn Flaherty said. "Really the challenge to a good play action is establishing a run, but I thought we should open the game with a pass."
It was the first of two passing touchdowns for Barrett in the quarter. His second came just five minutes later when he found Eric Leitch from 26 yards out, again on a play-action fake.
From there, the running game and the offensive line took over.
Ryan found the end zone from 2, 1 and 4 yards out in the second quarter. He ran for a total of 80 yards on 13 carries.
"Credit for all my runs is to [the offensive line]," he said. "I think that linemen win championships. Running backs and quarterbacks just get all of the credit."
Both Ryan and Flaherty pointed to the play of Tyler Picard, Andrew Leitch, Robbie Buffis and the rest of the line as game-changing.
"I challenged the line, I thought we were horrible with our line play last week," Flaherty said. "A lot of the guys we challenged had much better games."
The defensive line also starred for Mount Greylock. At the end of the first half, the Mounties had out-gained the Spartans 159 yards to 0. Monument’s Malik Wilbon, who ran for 101 yards last week, was held to -8 yards in the first half.
"[Monument] runs a little jet sweep with motion," Ryan said. "So what we were doing was stacking up the line and I was keying in on [Wilbon]. Anytime they made that motion, I was ready for him."
Monument scored late in the fourth quarter on a 38-yard run by Wilbon and again on a big 80-yard passing play in the final minute. Backup quarterback Austin Pectal found Terrance Powell wide open down the sideline and Powell did the rest.
Duxbury, who also brought a 27-game win streak into Week 2, had its game pushed back until 2 p.m. Saturday.
Font Resize
