Despite second straight loss, Salem coach Carr sees signs of improvement and doesn’t have to dig for them
WJFL DIAMOND DIVISION
FRIDAY’S GAMES
Penns Grove 34, Deptford 0
Schalick 23, Cumberland 0
Woodstown 14, Delsea 13
SATURDAY’S GAME
Collingswood 14, Salem 7
Glassboro 22, Haddon Heights 12
Haddonfield 21, Woodbury 20
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
SALEM – The players on the Salem football team slowly and sullenly made the long walk back from the field to the locker room after their second straight loss to open the season. There wasn’t a lot to feel good about it.
The post-game conversation was likely to center on the things that haven’t gone right for the Rams in the first two games of the season. There was some of that, but instead of whipping up on the shortcoming of a 12-7 loss to Cinnaminson Saturday, Rams coach Kemp Carr started his post-mortem on something much more upbeat.
“We took a step forward,” he said. “Several degrees we took a step forward.”
And then, when prompted, he proceeded to list all the things the Rams did better in Game 2 than they did in their 35-0 season-opening loss to Willingboro a week ago.
* They scored.
* Gave up fewer points. And yards.
* Got off the field more times on third down, forcing the Pirates to punt five times.
* Had short-field situations in the second half that they didn’t have last week.
“It’s development; they’re all marginal things you can look at,” Carr said. “I don’t take moral victories. I’m not happy (with the loss). I’m far from satisfied … but you’ve got to make sure you give the guys something positive, so in the game you can find some things.”
Alas, there still are things the Rams need to fix. They didn’t execute in the short-field situations. They were 0-for-9 on third down, 0-for-4 on fourth. They gave up a long touchdown pass over the top in a prevent defense.
“They’re the things we need to fix,” Carr agreed. “We need to execute on offense a little better. We don’t want to be in second-and-long, third-and-long. We want to avoid those because probability-wise, according to anybody’s assessment, they’re not good positions to be in.
“You’re always tweaking. When you don’t execute there’s always things to tweak. We’ll watch the film. We’ll get better. There’s a whole lot of things to do to … make … us … bet-ter. But again we took strides. We just let it slip through our fingers.”
It did start good for the Rams. On the third snap of the game Pop Jackson broke those two waves of traffic close to the line, then bolted 62 yards for the Rams’ first touchdown of the season 65 seconds into the game.
“Everybody was excited, everybody was jumping up and down,” sophomore center Wyatt Irvine said about the early score. “You can see in the end zone, everybody was having a party.”
But that was basically the extent of Salem’s offense. The Rams had 80 yards of offense in the three-play series, but only 26 yards and zero first downs in their 33 plays that followed. In the second half, they had minus-5 yards of net offense, minus-19 rushing. Twenty of their total plays went for zero or negative yards.
Of course, it’s hard to generate much offense when you only have 15 plays in the half. Cinnaminson, while not the offensive juggernaut either, did manage to eat up big chunks of clock when it had the ball, moving it with dives and powers. The Pirates ran 26 offensive plays in the second half.
The Pirates answered Salem’s opening salvo with a 54-yard touchdown drive to tie the game, capping it with an 11-yard Dylan McAndrews TD pass to Jackson Machado. It remained 7-7 until McAndrews beat Salem’s prevent defense in the final minute of the first half with a 58-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Palladino on third-and-long.
Salem’s defense kept the Rams in the game. The unit recovered three fumbles, one in the end zone to keep it a 7-7 game and one by Irvine at the 40 with 2:29 to play to give the Rams one more shot at a game-tying score.
But they never moved the chains after any of the takeaways. They turned one of the possessions over downs, punted with another and with the last one took a 12-yard sack and had their final play fall incomplete.
“I was extremely happy (getting that final takeaway),” Irvine said. “I thought we had a big push there. I thought we had a lot of momentum going into that, but unfortunately it didn’t (pan out). Things just kind of fell apart, but next week we’ll fix that and we’ll get the W.”
The Rams open their Diamond Division schedule next week at Woodbury, a 21-20 loser to Haddonfield on Saturday.
Cinnaminson 14, Salem 7
| CINN (14) | SAL (7) | |
| 9 | 1st Downs | 2 |
| 40-79 | Rush-yards | 17-48 |
| 5-10-0 | Passing (C-A-I) | 7-18-1 |
| 134 | Passing yds | 58 |
| 4-3 | Fum-lost | 1-0 |
| 5-27.4 | Punts-avg | 5-35.0 |
| 3-10 | Pen-yds | 6-40 |
| Cinnaminson (1-1) | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0- | 14 |
| Salem (0-2) | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0- | 7 |
SCORING SUMMARY
S-Pop Jackson 62 run (Andrew May kick), 10:58 1Q
C-Jackson Machado 11 pass from Dylan McAndrews (Aedan Burk kick), 7:26 1Q
C-Tyler Palladino 58 pass from Dylan McAndrews (Aedan Burk kick), 0:51 2Q
| WJFL DIAMOND DIVISION | DIV | ALL |
|---|---|---|
| Glassboro | 0-0 | 1-0 |
| Penns Grove | 0-0 | 1-1 |
| Salem | 0-0 | 0-2 |
| Schalick | 0-0 | 1-1 |
| Woodbury | 0-0 | 0-1 |
| Woodstown | 0-0 | 1-0 |
NEXT WEEK’S SCHEDULE
FRIDAY GAMES
Schalick at Woodstown, 7 p.m.
SATURDAY GAMES
Salem at Woodbury, 10:30 a.m.
Glassboro at Penns Grove, noon
Riverview Sports News 