The Archbishop Murphy football team has allowed an average of just 14.3 points per game this year, and to a man everyone involved points to one key reason: team speed.
“I think it kind of freaks people out,” senior Sam Shober said. “It really terrorizes people’s backfields. We get D linemen back there and we disrupt people’s run game. We blitz linebackers and disrupt the pass game. We have DBs locking down on receivers. When you have everybody doing that, there’s not much yardage to be gained.”
After the 2010 version of the Wildcats reached the 2A state finals with a senior-laden defensive front, some questioned how Murphy would replace the departures of three huge seniors, including 6-foot-1 280-pound Taniela Tupou, now on scholarship at the University of Washington.
Where some saw weakness, Wildcats coach Dave Ward and his staff saw opportunity.
“We changed our defense a bit, so we could get as much speed in there as possible and we’ve never done that before,” Ward said. “We realigned the front so that it was possible to put the fastest personnel we had on the field.”
That has meant that instead of Tupou, opposing offensive lines face the likes of Michael Pursley, who stands 5-10 and weighs 175 pounds.
The Wildcats (11-1) have faced plenty of doubters who underestimated their defensive front, and with the exception of Lakewood, each team has received a rude awakening.
“We’ve kind of used that as motivation all year,” Pursley said. “We might be small, but we’ve definitely worked on strength in the offseason and our speed and strength (have) been a lot for the bigger, slower offensive linemen to handle.”
Neither defending 2A state champ Tumwater nor Othello could handle the Wildcats’ defense in the first two rounds of the state tournament, scoring a combined six points.
A by-product of the Wildcats’ exceptional speed is versatility, which means defensive coordinator Jeff Schmidt can give teams fits by throwing different looks at each opponent. He’s even used alignments the Wildcats didn’t run during the regular season.
“Every week we can adjust our strengths to our opponent’s strengths, which I think creates no tendencies on defense,” said Schmidt, who has coached the Wildcats’ defense since 2001. “So they really can’t know where we are going to be half the time.”
One way Schmidt has changed things up has been to use Shober all over the field.
“I can move him to D line to linebacker, outside, inside,” Schmidt said of the senior captain. “Sometimes (Shober and Eneliko Tevaga, another versatile player) go out and cover wide receivers and sometimes they’re in the box stopping the run.”
The Wildcats likely will face more passes than runs today when they travel to Kennewick to take on Prosser (11-1). The last time the Wildcats traveled to the Tri-Cities for a playoff game in 2006 the Prosser quarterback was Kellen Moore, now a senior signal-caller for Boise State. Though the current quarterback isn’t as highly regarded, the Wildcats expect the same kind of aerial assault.
“This game coming up is going to be the best passing team that we’ve faced,” Ward said. “They are going to throw the ball as well as anybody we’ve seen, so it’s really going to be a time for coverage, a time for pressure.”
The Mustangs’ only loss came in the first game of the season to Kamiakin, an undefeated Class 3A school.
Thankfully for the Wildcats, they will see the return to the lineup of shutdown corner Morgan Masanda. The junior suffered a high ankle sprain in Murphy’s district playoff win over Mount Baker on Nov. 4 and has missed the past two weeks. Ward said Masanda has undergone physical therapy and been cleared by his doctor to play.
His return makes the speed of the defensive front that much more telling, because the blitzers will have more time to get to the quarterback.
“That’s the thing I’ve really noticed about this defense, we are really connected,” Shober said. “Everybody really knows what they are doing and they are really good at their job too.”
Shober, who is in the state semifinals for the fourth time, has been on good teams, but this one seems special, he said.
“I can’t really put my finger on it, but we all respect each other and know we are going to do what we are out here to do,” he said.
And that’s to make a case as the best 2A team in the state.
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