Blue Death Returns: Total Domination

Craig Turner
Bluedeathvalley.com
Sept. 6, 2009


When Head Coach Alonzo Lee said in his preseason interviews that the A&T defense would “bring the pain” in 2009 he wasn’t just talking the talk. He was walking the walk.

“We want to go out and intimidate people from the get go,” Lee said. “We plan on knocking some snot bubbles out of our opponents.”

Winston Salem State can now unequivocally attest to that fact as the Blue Death defense swarmed, battered, and just plain manhandled the Rams huge offensive line all evening for a 19-10 win at Bowman Gray Stadium Saturday night. It was Lee’s debut as a first time head coach and A&T’s first “official win” of the season.

To be honest, despite the low scoring affair, this game just really wasn’t even that close.

A&T generally moved the ball between the 20’s pretty well, mixing the run and pass effectively against a veteran and stingy WSSU defense.

Lee went exclusively with his two freshmen running backs, Mike Mayhew and Donta Payne, who dashed and darted behind a new offensive line comprised mostly of sophomores and one junior.

Like most first games, the new offense under co-coordinators Chennis Berry and Mike Morand had many good moments and showed potentially what it may be capable of doing later this season. However, first game jitters and some missed assignments kept the Rams within striking distance on the scoreboard until midway into the fourth quarter of in a game that easily could have been out of reach by halftime.

Timing issues and the fact that Aggies perhaps rushed themselves really kept the scoring in check as A&T got deep into the red zone an amazing eight times against a very good WSSU defense.

Senior quarterback Carlton Fears was the game’s offensive MVP completing 17-31 passes for 130 yards and rushed for another 78 yards on ten carries and a touchdown.

Although he did not complete any touchdown passes, he generally made good decisions and the offense had zero turnovers. The fact that the Aggies won its opening game against one of their biggest arch rivals without a single turnover speaks volumes as to how far the Aggies have matured in the off season.

True freshman kickers Pat Courtney and Alex Grubb did a fair job in their first collegiate experience. Grubb consistently got great hang time and placement on his punts which allowed A&T to bottle up WSSU on their end of the field for most of the night.

Courtney, who is recovering from a hernia, was 1-of-2 on PATs and 2-of-4 on his field goals. He connected on a big 25 yarder with 7:35 left that gave the Aggies the lead for good at 13-10.

With one exception, the A&T special teams were on point in wrapping up on returns and blocked exceptionally well on kickoffs and punt returns for freshmen Quay Long and Mayhew who had 81 yards between them in return yardage.

Despite A&T’s receivers dropping two sure touchdowns, they kept the chains moving with the short outs and comeback routes spread. Six different players finished with two or more catches, led by sophomore Wallace Miles.

The Aggie Nation also got its first glance at blue chip freshman receiver Larry Raper who was simply electrifying on his three catches and will probably get a lot more touches in the weeks ahead.

In the statistical battle, A&T found balance in its offense by rushing for 159 yards on 45 carries and putting up another 130 through the air for a total of 289 yards and won the time of possession battle with over 34 minutes for the contest.

The offense has a lot of work to do on its timing as well as the placekicking teams but all in all, there is some serious talent in place and so now proper execution needs to be stepped up this week in practice.

Defensively, not much to say except it was simply suffocating. A&T gave up a mere 90 yards in total offense for the game. They stuffed the running game of WSSU Coach Kermit Blount’s spread attack allowing just 33 yards on 35 attempts, less than a yard per rush.

Yes, that’s right, less than a yard per rush.
The Rams weren’t much better with the pass, completing only 7-of-22 for 57 yards. As it was noted in earlier last week as one of the keys to the game, if WSSU had to throw 20 times or more, A&T would dominate and the stats bear that out as the deciding factor.

Lee’s defensive prowess, which has always been his trademark, was in full force as the A&T secondary intimidated any receivers crossing the middle or on out routes while the A&T front seven generated a fierce and often brutalizing pass rush that sent starting quarterback Jarrett Dunston to the sidelines for good early in the second half.

Going in, Lee knew his top eleven on defense are as good as any in the league, but he did not hesitate to go to bench and use his young second line personnel in the trenches like freshmen Jamal Wardlaw, Chris Neal, Darius Hall, or Brandon Young to name a few. There is definitely a youth movement afoot with this football team.

The defense created two fumbles, a blocked field goal and return, and forced four bad snaps. One of those bad snaps came late in the game that put A&T in position to turn the lights out for good on the Rams as Fears took over with his running ability capped by a 1-yard TD run by Mayhew with less than 2 minutes remaining.

So to sum up last night's game, A&T is light years ahead of what it has been the last three years as a football team. The offense and kicking game is still a work in progress and the competition will be getting stiffer from this point on with Norfolk State coming into Greensboro next Saturday night.

But as far as the defense is concerned, the physicality and intensity appears to be at mid season level. Whether it is at a championship level or not will be tested by a much more talented Spartan offense.

But at least for this opening week, some major issues were answered in very favorable terms of depth, speed, and the intimidation factor.

The Aggies will just need to keep flying under the radar, improve each week on offense, the kicking game, and continue to play with the swagger and the attitude of inflicting it's will through defensive dominance and rest should take care of itself.

Blue Death has made things mighty quiet over in east Winston for yet another year.

And so it goes.