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Football: Marcus rally comes up short against Guyer
By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com
For the third consecutive Friday, Marcus' football team came up short on the scoreboard, falling at home to Denton Guyer, 27-14, to drop to 0-3.
This time, however, Marcus head coach Bryan Erwin had a different message to his team following the game.
Erwin spoke of pride. Proud of the effort. Proud of the intensity. Proud of the courage he saw.
"I'm so proud of these boys," he said. "They fought so hard. Defensively, we fought our rears off. Offensively, we did some good things, we just weren't very consistent. But our guys played good football. That was an outstanding offensive football team in Guyer. They have a great team and our guys went tooth and nail with them. We grew up a lot this week. We got tougher, we got better and we showed a lot of courage tonight."
Trailing, 17-7, midway through the third quarter, Marcus got within three points when quarterback Cade Erwin connected with receiver Logan Sepanek for a 33-yard touchdown despite a defender being draped over him and flagged for pass interference.
Later, on the final play of the third quarter and opening play of the fourth, the Marauders denied the Wildcats on consecutive plays from the 1-yard line forcing a turnover on downs. Cade then scrambled for a first down on the ensuing play to give the Marauders breathing room.
But the Guyer defense bowed up from there, forcing a punt before scoring a touchdown on the following possession when Richard Whitaker plunged in from 1 yard out. The score was set up by consecutive runs of 24 and 20 yards from quarterback Jerrod Heard and Whitaker, respectively.
Whitaker would finish the contest with 113 yards on 18 carries, while Heard recorded 88 yards on 13 attempts. D.J. Breedlove was effective out of the backfield as well, racking up 114 yards on 15 rushes to go with four receptions for 39 yards.
"That was a great goal-line stand we had there to keep it close and then later in the game we held them to a field goal in our zone," Erwin said. "Our defense played outstanding and really fought hard. That's a good offense they were going against."
Offensively, Marcus mixed it up a bit using both Erwin and Ryan Vaughn at the quarterback position.
Erwin completed 2-of-3 attempts for 50 yards and the score along with four receptions for 38 yards and 21 rushing yards with a touchdown. Vaughn converted 8-of-17 passes for 64 yards, while Sepanek finished with a team-high five catches for 63 yards.
"We are trying to get the best of both worlds where Cade can run as a quarterback and spread the field and at the same time take advantage of his receiving abilities," Erwin said, "and then having Ryan Vaughn throwing the ball around a little bit and utilizing our other receivers.
"But I liked what I saw tonight. [Vaughn] stepped in and did some good things. He made a couple of mistakes, too, but he's only going to get better. We did some good things out of that package and we're going to stick with it and stick with Ryan."
Cade, however, will still be the primary signal caller.
"Cade made some plays at receiver and we're going to keep getting better," Bryan said. "I think Cade probably played about 80 percent of the snaps at quarterback and that's probably how it is going to be. Ryan is in there for one package and Cade is running the other three or four. I think that's how it is going to continue."
While Marcus made progress, they are still having issues on special teams. This time it came on the punt return. Eight minutes into the contest with Guyer punting, the Marauders went for the block and appeared to have a chance but missed and were instead penalized for roughing the kicker. The penalty was declined, however, after the Marauders fumbled the punt giving the Wildcats possession at the Marcus 16-yard line.
Heard promptly converted on the turnover for Guyer, scoring from 16 yards out on the first play of the series.
The Marauders had their best drive of the first half in the second quarter when Erwin capped off a 14-play, 64-yard touchdown drive with a 7-yard scoring run.
Marcus looks to get its first win of the season at 7:30 p.m. Friday when it hosts Plano East.
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