RIO LINDA >> You can’t really call it a simple epiphany. Even before the Woodland High School football team hit the road Friday night to take on Tri-County Conference rival Rio Linda, they were certain of at least one thing.
“We knew their receivers were a lot faster than us,” Wolves junior corner back Diego Villanueva said.
So late in the second quarter, when Knights wideout Stanley Jenkins raced behind the Woodland secondary, hauled in a long pass from his quarterback Jett Jones and proceeded to score a 70-yard touchdown, it was more like an animated version of the working title for a new sports magazine.
Epiphany Illustrated.
The Knights’ scoring strike left the Wolves with a 24-0 halftime deficit. That they ended up losing by just 31-16 is a testament not only to their own sticktoitiveness, but to the willingness of their head coach Chris Smith and his coaching staff to share some of the blame for the team’s bland start to what on paper seemed to be the most winnable game Woodland would contest in about a month.
“We took the responsibility,” Smith said after frankly stating the Wolves “stunk up the field” in the first half.
“A lot of people would expect us to go into the locker room (at halftime) yelling and screaming, ranting and raving. But we just said, hey, we’re doing a poor job of coaching, you’re doing a poor job of playing. We’re happy with the way they responded.”
Woodland’s response actually began with improved defense. After Jett was 10-for-13 passing for 228 yards and three touchdowns in the first half, the Wolves switched from their single-high safety alignment on defense to a more conservative Cover 2 look. In the final 24 minutes Jett attempted just four passes and didn’t complete any of them.
Woodland finally crawled out of its offensive bupkis hole with 2:43 left in the third quarter. Fullback A.T. Triana scored on a 2-yard run to cap a nine-play, 67-yard, ground-only possession. Midway through the fourth, quarterback Christian Stice immediately followed an eight-yard scramble on fourth-and-eight with a 7-yard score on a designed run play. Jonathan Tripp’s second two-point conversion run pulled the Wolves (3-5, 0-4 TCC) within 24-16 of the Knights (3-5, 1-3).
But the Rio Linda run game that coach Smith had been wary of reared its head. The Knights run a combination of shotgun spread and pistol-based wing-T; the latter helped them chew fourth-quarter clock and add a final touchdown, an 8-yard run by sophomore William Goebel with 2:04 remaining.
Unofficially Woodland was outgained from scrimmage 372-216, with wingback Oscar Sanchez accounting for 121 of the Wolves’ yards on 17 carries. Those came mostly from the double wing; on a few of the occasions Woodland used shotgun formation, it experienced a few errant snaps from center resulting in losses totaling nearly 50 yards.
