EVERETT — Jerry Jensen is an adamant believer in a timeless football strategy.
“‘Defense wins championships’ right? That’s the old adage. And it’s true,” the Archbishop Murphy football coach said. “Your offense can score as many points as you want but if you can’t stop the other team’s offense (you’re in trouble). Shootouts aren’t the way to go. So, our defense needs to continue to play well and I have faith that they will.”
If defense really does win championships, Jensen and his Wildcats are on the right path. The Archbishop Murphy defense is allowing just 4.7 points per game and has shut out opponents in half of its 10 contests.
The most points the Wildcats, who are 10-0 overall and ranked No. 4 in the final Associated Press high school football poll of the season, have allowed in a game is 14.
“We have defensive goals — each week there’s seven goals that we strive to reach,” Jensen said. “Holding our opponents under 10 points is one of those. The kids have really bought into the system and they take pride in their defense.”
The Wildcats’ defense expects to shut its opponents down.
“Those are our team goals: just trying to execute and shut down teams to give our offense opportunities to score and keep the score low,” senior receiver and safety Bailey Singh-Halpin said. “It’s our attitude as a defense, just to want to give our offense more opportunities and have them keep playing. It’s an attitude of we want to keep their offense off the field.”
“We all put our assignments and do our part to the defense and give it our all. 110 (percent),” senior offensive and defensive lineman Darion Joseph said. “It’s just going as hard as you can. Always. Beating the guy in front of you. We just come out and think about it as another reason to push us out and stopping them again. We just have to go out and play harder.”
For the Wildcats, every defender has a job on each play. And as long as they are able to execute that role, Archbishop Murphy’s defense is going to succeed.
“Doing our assignments to contribute to each and every win,” Singh-Halpin said. “If each of us take care of our individual assignments it contributes to the score as a whole. That’s what we focus on.”
Jensen says the defense, which boasts several upperclassmen including Singh-Halpin and Joseph, has the experience to know how to handle each play. He also credits the defensive coaches with having a good gameplan in place for the Wildcats.
“We have a lot of returning kids that have been on the field for two or three years and they know where they fit,” Jensen said. “They know their gap assignments and they’re playing fast. … Our kids study that so they know their opponent.”
The Archbishop Murphy defense looks forward to taking the field and playing aggressive.
“I like playing defense because you get to hit guys a lot more,” Joseph said. “… It really gets us going. And then our offense gets rolling and then we’re really playing good football.”
It’s unusual, but occasionally the defense is scored on. It can be a weird feeling for the Wildcats but is one that just propels them to get back on the field and keep their opponent from finding the end zone again.
“It is kind of rare,” Jensen said. “I don’t want to say that it’s a shock but the kids don’t expect teams to score on them. It doesn’t matter who that opponent is. They take great pride in that and they do circle the wagons when that happens and refocus a little bit.”
“It’s a bad sign for us to get points put on us, but we’ve responded to adversity pretty well,” Singh-Halpin said. “We’re ready to take on any adversity we’ll face in the playoffs.”
Archbishop Murphy’s next opponent is No. 9 Black Hills, a 9-1 squad from the 2A Evergreen league that is averaging about 37 points per game on offense.
The Wildcats’ defense will need to continue to be strong if Archbishop Murphy is going to win its 2A state opener against the Wolves and continue on in the state tournament.
“We know they’re a good team and we have to come out hard. We can’t take them lightly,” Joseph said. “We have to come out hard and make sure we smack them in the mouth.”
“Black Hills is a good football team and we’re ready to compete,” Singh-Halpin said. “We’re ready to face adversity and keep pushing and playing. No matter what happens, we’ll push through. We know that we don’t want our season to end and we’re going to do anything to keep winning.”
Singh-Halpin said while the Wildcats continue to take each week “game-by-game, we want to get to that championship.”
And the Wildcat defender echoed his coach when asked how it would get there.
“Our mentality is that defense wins championships,” Singh-Halpin said. “It starts on the defensive end, our attitude on the field. (It) starts there and that fuels our offense. Defense starts it for us.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
