Anoint the Knights
JEFFERSON TWP — The seeds of the Knoch football team's offensive success were sown on a tennis court in April.
That's when members of the Knights' offense, a unit that has rolled up yards and points in bunches this season, did walkthroughs of the new offense on the hard, dry surface usually reserved for serves and volleys, not handoffs and option plays.
The new offense, one based out of a shotgun instead of a power-I, was at it again, holding serve at home in a 38-love, er, 38-0 win over Fox Chapel (1-3).
“That helped out a crazy amount,” said Knoch running Andrew Rumburg-Goodlin of those spring days on the tennis court. “What we needed was reps in this new offense.”
Rumburg-Goodlin got plenty of reps — and touchdowns — against the Foxes, who played four different players at quarterback in trying to adequately replace starter Noel Wilson, who was still out with an injury.
Rumburg-Goodlin started slowly with just 24 yards on his first eight carries, but still ended up with 128 yards and touchdown runs of 4, 23 and 35.
“If you look at one-back attacks ... you plug away, plug away, plug away — it's not always going to be there,” said Knoch coach Mike King. “And then you get a little bit of a crease. I'm happy he's having success in our new schemes because he was an I tailback with a fullback blocking in front of him 100 percent of the time last year. Now, it's different.”
But the results have been the same,
Quarterback Ky Kenyon gained 60 yards rushing himself out of shotgun keepers for Knoch (4-0) and also completed three passes for 32 yards, including a 6-yard hookup with Ben Tackett for the game's first touchdown on the Knights' first drive of the game.
“You want to put pressure on a defense as many ways as you can,” King said. “You can throw it, spread people out. But when you have a tailback and a running back who can both run the ball, that puts so much pressure on a defense.”
Kenyon likes the new-look attack and it showed with a slew of nifty runs and fakes that allowed him to squirt through holes for big yardage early.
“It's a lot of fun,” Kenyon said. “This game here, they keyed on me because I had a big game against Valley last week, and Andrew had a heck of a game today. It's going to be tough because when defenses look at us, they're not going to know who to key on.”
Knoch also took advantage of Fox Chapel mistakes in building a 24-0 lead at the half.
As good as the Knights' offense was, the defense was just as good.
Throw out a 29-yard completion early in the game on a deflected pass and a 42-yard run late, the Knights held the Foxes to a mere 42 yards of total offense.
Fox Chapel finished with 1 yard rushing.
“What we have to do is be quick to the football and be aggressive,” King said. “They love playing it. You have to love a team that loves all aspects of the game. You don't always get that, guys who just want to fly around. I'm a lucky coach.”
