Crippling effect

Giving up big plays has been an issue for the Patriots this year.

Turnovers have plagued the offense recently as well.

Both were crippling in the final home game of the regular season.

The Jay County High School football team allowed a dozen plays of 15 or more yards and turned the ball over four times in a 43-15 loss to the Lapel Bulldogs on Friday in the final regular season home game at Harold E. Schutz Memorial Stadium.

“We have got to be better at making tackles, understanding down and distance and knowing where to attack,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh, whose team dips to 0-8 for the second straight season and does not yet have an opponent for Friday (see related story). “And we have got to do a better job of taking care of the football.”

Lapel, which had 538 yards of total offense and improves to 6-2, did most of its damage through the air. Tim Miller, the Bulldogs’ coach, said it was his plan coming in not to do anything too complex as he was without a couple starters on offense.

“We were just kind of keeping it vanilla,” he said. “We had some offensive line starters out. Run the ball, throw the ball when we could, kind of what we do every week.”

They hardly had difficulty moving it, either.

The Bulldogs started a string of 36 consecutive points when junior quarterback Brennan Stow threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to Tanner Mroz in the first quarter.

Stow continued to carve through Jay County’s defense, finding Hayden LeClerc for a 15-yard TD late in the second quarter — the possession started with the Patriots being unable to handle a low kickoff at their front line — and connected with LeClerc for a 13-yard score in the third quarter. LeClerc’s second score put Lapel ahead 36-0.

On what turned out to be the game’s final play, Stow threw a screen pass to Tyler Dollar and the sophomore speedster went through the middle of the field for a 55-yard touchdown.

Stow completed 14 of his 23 pass attempts for a career-high 304 yards, and tied his career-high of four TD passes.

“I thought he had one of his better games this season finding the people that were open, you know, taking what the defense was giving him,” Miller said. “I was real happy with his performance.

“I thought our receivers had some of their better games as far as route running.”

Mroz caught four of Stow’s passes for 139 yards.

Dollar also ran through the Patriot defense to the tune of 176 yards on 16 touches, including a 52-yard run in the first quarter and five total carries of 15 or more yards.

Two Jay County turnovers — Brock Harper’s first of two interceptions of Sam Dunlavy and a Caleb Hale fumble — resulted in points for the Bulldogs. Dollar’s TD followed the interception, and LeClerc’s quick slant over the middle for his first score came after the fumble.

Jay County’s offense showed a glimpse of success late, rejuvenating a crowd and a team that hasn’t had much to cheer about this season.

Lapel lost a fumble deep in its own territory and the Patriots took over at the 21. Two plays later, Quinn Faulkner took a pitch around the right end of the offensive line, saw a crease the other way and cut left en route to an 18-yard touchdown.

Christian Runkle jumped on the ensuing squib kick at the Lapel 42, and Faulkner covered 53 yards on the first play from scrimmage mimicking the effort on his TD run. He got the Patriots down to the Bulldogs’ 5, and Bailey Cox covered the remainder of the distance to the end zone on the next play. 

Faulkner ran in the 2-point conversion on a broken point-after attempt to make it 36-15 with 7:16 remaining in the game.

“He’s a hard runner, there’s no question,” Millspaugh said of Faulkner, who finished with 79 yards on six carries. Cox chipped in 76 hard-earned yards on 16 touches a week after missing his senior homecoming game.

“(Faulkner has) got good vision,” Millspaugh continued. “He’s a great football player and he’s a hard worker.”