Players, coach reflect on key play

It’s fourth-and-6.
Your team is trailing by one.
With more than six minutes left, there’s a good chance you’ll get the ball again. But there might not be much time left. Or, worse, if the defense doesn’t hold, you could be facing an insurmountable deficit.
Coach calls a dig route.
“With the fourth-and-6, I was trying to find something that I felt like obviously would get us the yardage,” said Jay County High School coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team faced that exact situation in its homecoming game Friday against South Adams. “I felt like it was something that would give us the first down and enable us to continue the drive …”
A “dig” calls for the receiver to run straight up the field and then make a 90-degree cut toward the middle. It’s a quick hitter, designed to negate any pass rush and get just enough yardage to keep the chains moving.
You look at the coverage. The cornerback is tight to the line of scrimmage. He’s shading you to the inside, taking away the cut you’ve been asked to make.
You realize the play won’t work.
“All I’m thinking is, ‘I roasted this guy earlier,’” said JCHS senior wide receiver Bryan Stancliffe. “And he’s lined up, like, head-up on the inside. I’ve got to run a fade no matter what.”
You’ve been coached about what to do in this situation.
You make a signal to the quarterback, letting him know you’re changing the route. Instead of running a dig for first-down yardage, you’re going for the home-run ball.
It’s an audible on the field, between receiver and quarterback. The coach is now out of the equation.
“It’s just what we’d been planning on doing,” said Patriot junior quarterback Holton Hill, noting how often he and his teammates practice for just such an instance. “When we saw it, we were ready to hit it.”
Hill takes the snap and executes a quick three-step drop, just as he would have for the dig. But instead of firing pass inside, he lofts the ball deep down the left sideline.
He lets it go before he even has a chance to know if Stancliffe will come open or not. It’s all about timing.
The receiver gets the clean break, just as the defensive alignment indicated he would.
“As soon as I got off the ball, I was like, ‘I’ve got it,’” said Stancliffe. “Seeing that ball going through the air … it felt like I was wide open out there.
“That pass might have been as close to perfect as anything. It had just the right height, floated up in the air right over the defense. He didn’t throw it too short that I had to stop. It was just in stride. Perfect.”
Stancliffe hauls in the pass around the 10-yard line, well beyond the cornerback and clear of the safety desperately rushing to try to give his teammate help. He trots into the end zone for a 35-yard touchdown.
“The adrenaline was pumping,” said Stancliffe. “I did this little dance that when I looked at the film I was like, ‘I look like an idiot.’ … It was probably the biggest moment of my whole high school career honestly.”
“Just seeing Bryan breaking away from the corner, getting open, catching the ball and walking into the end zone, it just makes me feel great,” added Hill. “It was a big touchdown, and eventually the winning one.”
A two-point conversion pass made the score 29-22, and, eventually, a stop on a South Adams two-point try in the waning moments would secure a 29-28 victory.
In a back-and-forth game with many key plays, one of the biggest was changed on the field. Some coaches, from pee wee to the pros, would prefer that a play be run as called. Understandably so.
From Millspaugh’s perspective, giving the players the go-ahead to change a play on their own is about creating the best opportunity for victory. If the defense is aligned in such a way that a play is doomed, there’s no reason to run it.
“I respect him for that,” said Stancliffe.
“It makes us all feel a lot more confident knowing that he backs us fully in all of our decisions,” said Hill. “It really helps us a lot.”
On fourth down, trailing, with the game potentially on the line, it takes confidence to change a play — a coach’s confidence in his players to make the right call and players’ confidence that they’ve been coached to make the right read.
That confidence was there Friday night at Harold E. Schutz Memorial Stadium.
So was the play.
So was the throw.
So was the win.