bspahr@dailylocal.com
DOWNINGTOWN - There wasn’t a fireworks show scheduled for Saturday afternoon at Jack Mancini Field, but one broke out anyway, and the home fans of the Bishop Shanahan High School football team enjoyed every minute of it.
The Eagles put on quite a display, an offensive explosion of sorts, in which they did virtually anything they wanted in clobbering winless Avon Grove by a score of 57-14 in the Ches-Mont League National Division opener for both teams.
Bishop Shanahan (1-0 National, 2-1 overall) put up 442 total yards of offense, had four separate touchdowns of 35 yards or longer, and then called off the dogs down the stretch as the mercy-rule kicked into effect midway through the third quarter.
Senior quarterback Justin Cook wasn’t asked to throw often on a picture-perfect afternoon, but he certainly made the most of his few opportunities. Cook finished 5-of-6 through the air for 170 yards and four touchdowns.
His favorite target was senior receiver Jack Oakes, who had a monster day, with all three of his catches going for touchdowns, totalling 130 yards in receiving.
Oh yeah, and the Eagles ran the ball plenty as well, amassing 272 yards on the ground. Sophomore Pat Corcoran led the way with an outstanding performance that included a near school-record 190 yards on 18 carries to go along with a pair of touchdowns. Freshman running back Braden Harper added 38 rushing yards and a pair of scores as well.
“We ran, we passed, we basically did anything we wanted,” said Cook, the Eagles signal caller who attended Avon Grove as a freshman before transferring to Shanahan. “We were in some kind of a rhythm today and it felt great.
“Our offensive line did an amazing job, and it was just a total team effort. We played hard from start to finish, and we believed in ourselves.”
Avon Grove (0-1, 0-4) has now been out-scored by a combined margin of 159-49 in what has been an extremely rough start to the season for them. Things went bad for the Red Devils right from the start on Saturday. They went three-and-out on the opening possession of the game, and then in attempting to punt the ball away from deep in their own end, saw the snap sail over the punter’s head and out of the end zone for a safety.
The Red Devils got a 52-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Tanner Peck to Ryan Amanto in the first quarter, and a 77-yard touchdown run by Cody Davis in the third quarter, but besides those two plays they were only able to muster 127 yards of offense in the contest.
“I don’t have anything positive to say after this one,” said first-year Avon Grove coach Doug Langley. “We had been improving each and every week, but today we took a giant step backwards. We started hanging our heads right away when things started going bad, and that’s not good. Hopefully we can put this behind us and get back to practice and try to keep moving forward.”
Bishop Shanahan has been trying to move forward ever since suspending eight players, including five starters, prior to the start of the season. And they’ve done a terrific job up to this point, and are just one close loss against Chichester away from being undefeated.
The Eagles defense, although overshadowed by the 57-point offensive performance, was equally good on Saturday. They forced three turnovers, and had six sacks, led by two from Collin Kearns.
“It was a tough loss last week for us but the kids never missed a beat in practice,” said Bishop Shanahan coach Paul Meyers. “I’m really proud of them. It’s a great group of guys and they are giving me everything they have.”
The Eagles stormed out to a 22-8 lead after the first quarter. Oakes hauled in two of his three touchdown receptions in the opening 12 minutes, the first for 85 yards and the second for 2 yards. Corcoran also scored on a 17-yard run in the period.
Corcoran then busted one 75 yards to the house late in the second quarter, as the Eagles took a 29-8 lead into the locker room at halftime.
Shanahan put 28 more points on the board in the third quarter. Cody Smith made a nice 35-yard touchdown catch from Cook on the first drive after halftime. Cook later found Oakes again midway through the third, this time on a 43-yard scoring play. Harper added a pair or rushing touchdowns in the last six minutes of the quarter to close out the scoring.
“Coming in here today we thought we would really be able to run the ball,” said Meyers. “We went a lot of off-balance and that was our game plan.
“It really started up front on both sides of the ball. Our two front lines were dominant.”
Bishop Shanahan 57,
Avon Grove 14
Avon Grove 8 0 6 0 -- 14
Bishop Shanahan 22 7 28 0 -- 57
Scoring
BS-Safety
BS-Oakes 85 pass from Cook (Run failed)
AG-Amanto 52 pass from Peck (Radecki run)
BS-Corcoran 17 run (Johnson kick)
BS-Oakes 2 pass from Cook (Johnson kick)
BS-Corcoran 75 run (Johnson kick)
BS-C. Smith 35 pass from Cook (Johnson kick)
AG-Davis 77 run (Run failed)
BS-Oakes 43 pass from Cook (Johnson kick)
BS-Harper 10 run (Johnson kick)
BS-Harper 1 run (Johnson kick)
Team Totals
AG BS
First downs 6 7
Yards rushing 122 272
Yards passing 134 170
Total yards 256 442
Passing 7-16-1 5-6-0
Fumbles-Lost 3-2 0-0
Penalties 5-40 7-65
Punts-Avg. 5-30.2 3-19.6
Individual Statistics
RUSHING - Avon Grove: Davis 8-87, TD; Kush 5-24; Kim 8-22; Amanto 1-6; Peck 6-(-17). Bishop Shanahan: Corcoran 18-190, 2TDs; Harper 8-38, 2TDs; Angelini 4-27; Cook 3-10; Stine 2-6; Ruggieri 1-1; Lindstrom 2-0.
PASSING - Avon Grove: Peck 7-16, 134 yds, TD, INT. Bishop Shanahan: Cook 5-6, 170 yds, 4TDs.
RECEIVING - Avon Grove: Davis 3-25; Amanto 1-52, TD; Braxton 1-32; Lawrence 1-20; Kush 1-5. Bishop Shanahan: Oakes 3-130, 3TDs; C. Smith 2-40, TD.
SACKS - Avon Grove: Lytle. Bishop Shanahan: Kearns 2, Zebrowski, Evans, Judd, Gormley.
INTERCEPTIONS - Avon Grove: none. Bishop Shanahan: Oakes.
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