What will they do for an encore?
The 5-1 Bedford High School football team performed like a highly-tuned precision machine Friday, defeating Cambridge Ridge & Latin School, 42-6 under the lights at Russell Field.
And it wasn’t that close.
Junior tailback Eric Miles scored four times for the second consecutive week, and now has 16 touchdowns in six games. He carried the ball just 11 times for 190 yards before leaving with the other offensive starters midway through the third quarter and the game well in hand.
Senior quarterback Jake Morrison completed six passes for 167 yards and ran for 41 more. His classmate Charlie Naylor made three catches – one a sensational one-handed grab – totaling 99 yards. Naylor’s second reception was at the one-yard line, setting up Miles’s fourth TD.
Bedford has now won four straight football games, three of them on the road. The Bucs travel to Weston next Friday.
The first-half statistics tell a big part of the story of the rout at Russell. How about these: five touchdowns, 377 offensive yards, and only eight minutes and 48 seconds of possession time. That means the Bucs averaged about 42 yards per minute.
But it wasn’t just what they did, but how they did it. The team radiated confidence and enthusiasm. The tempo offense was precise and kept the Falcons on their heels from the opening drive. The Bucs had no penalties on offense and no punts.
Bedford controlled both lines of scrimmage and the defense corralled speedy Falcon ball-carriers and effectively pressured quarterback Benjamin Berinsky with linebacker blitzes.
The message was loud and clear after one quarter. The visitors scored in less than three minutes, with Morrison completing a fourth-down pass to Nick Tatarczuk to sustain the drive.
Cambridge moved from its 35 to the Bedford 20, but lost yardage on the next three running plays, culminating with a nine-yard sack on fourth down engineered by Miles, Aiden Pompi, and Ryan Cohen.
The Bucs took over on their 36 and Miles exploded 60 yards to the endzone on the second play. And after a Cambridge punt, Morrison handed off to Miles at the Bedford 28. The junior exploded around the right end, then cut back and broke four tackles as he raced almost entirely across the field and through most of the defenders en route to a 72-yard score, his third TD.
Tatarczuk tallied the fifth Bedford TD on the last offensive play of the first half. Morrison rolled to the right from the 32 and then turned and found him on the left side inside the 10. There wasn’t a defender within 20 yards. Senior Mike DeLia raced 30 yards to the endzone in the third quarter. Tatarczuk converted six extra points.
Cambridge’s touchdown was on a fourth-down, 26-yard pass from Berinsyk to Ezana Zemene in the second period. The field position was set up by a long recovery of a fumble by Miles as he fought for extra yardage deep in Falcon territory. It was about the only Bedford mistake of the game.
Mike Rosenberg can be reached at [email protected], or 781-983-1763
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