Grizzlies enjoy big win at home, crush Upton

Enjoying some home cooking for the first time since the zero week game, the Rocky Mountain Grizzlies delighted their home fans on a perfect, sunny afternoon by clobbering the Upton Bobcats 47-0 Friday.

Combining a prolific offense, big play special teams play and an opportunistic defense, the Grizzlies rolled over the non-conference foe, though having just 23 plays on offense.

“That’s kind of becoming a little bit of our identity,” head coach Jessee Wilson said. “We’re going to have some explosive plays, and I love it. I think it’s great. That just shows you what kind of athletes we have. They can take a regular old play and make a guy miss and turn it into something big. Any time you can score on all three phases of the game, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to win the game.

“We had a punt return. We had a kick return and a pick six. That’s pretty awesome. Boring for me as a play caller, though, especially that kickoff return. I was like, ‘Dang it!’ I wanted us to put together a good drive, to kind of put the second half to bed. But I’m not ever going to be mad at a kid for running a kickoff back.”

The Grizzlies kicked off and held Upton to three plays and a punt. The punt carried to the Rocky 25, where junior Cooper Ward snared it and sprinted the distance to the end zone. Mason Moss booted the PAT, and the Grizz led 7-0.

“That was a great play by Cooper, corralling the ball, and then he just found a seam down the sideline,” Wilson said. “Cooper saw a crease on the left and just decided to outrun everybody.”

Upton went for it on fourth down on the ensuing series and failed, giving the Grizz a relatively short field at the Upton 47. They score in seven plays including four runs by senior Sam Loyning, a 15-yard pass from Moss to Jaxx May and a three-yard touchdown run by Loyning – 14-0.

The visitors gained one first down on the following series, then punted to the Rocky 16, this time a long field. But no matter. Moss found Ward slanting over the middle, and the speedster took it from there to pay dirt and a 21-0 lead with a minute left in the quarter.

“I thought they played pretty good rush defense,” Wilson noted. “They were committing seven guys to the box, so I think their plan was to try to take away the run game. I thought our execution on the line was much better this week, because a lot of times the safety was the guy that was making the tackle. He was just playing so far up field, and we don’t generally account for the safety in our run (scheme). … I was really excited about that as far as the way that we block things, but once we figured out their safety was making all their tackles, that’s what led to our next touchdown.

“So Cooper was out in the slot, and their safety was making all those plays in the run game, so we just ran a little play action and then threw a seam right over the top of it because their safety was so downhill. I just thought it’s like, if we get a good throw and a good pass, Cooper’s fast enough that he’s going to outrun that guy. He just gave the run fake initially to get that safety coming forward, and then we just dumped it over their head.”

Pouring it on

Things went from bad to worse for the Bobcats. They drove to their own 47, but Loyning intercepted a Keanu Duarte pass and at the Grizzly 42 and returned the pick 52 yards for a touchdown. The PAT was blocked, but Rocky led 27-0.

A fumble ended the next Rocky Mountain offensive series, but following an Upton punt, the Grizz scored in two plays, a 53-yard burst around left end by Moss and a five-yard keeper by the Grizzly signal caller. Rocky led 34-0 and carried that lead into halftime.

“Mason did a really good job of just being an athlete,” Wilson said. “He made a guy miss initially at the line of scrimmage, and then another guy miss, and Cashe (Thompson) came down and escorted him down the sideline. It was Mason’s turn to show off his speed there a little bit and his playmaking ability, which was cool.”

Second half

The Grizz reached the 45-point running clock mercy rule early in the second half. Ward ran the second-half kickoff back 92 yards for a touchdown (PAT blocked, 40-0), batting the ball, corralling it and dashing the distance. And after an Upton three-and-out, the Grizzlies drove 55 yards to score their seventh touchdown. Moss hit Thompson for 19 yards, and Loyning carried for 12. A facemask penalty moved the ball to the 13, and Moss finished the drive with a touchdown pass to Thompson (PAT good) to make the score 47-0 midway through the third.

“Cache made a nice play on that first catch, and then he had a nice adjustment to catch the touchdown,” Wilson said. “The ball was actually behind him, and he came back and wrangled it in, so it was a good catch by him.”

Wilson began substituting liberally, and the Grizz continued to dominate on defense but didn’t reach the end zone again.

The Grizzlies rushed for 128 yards, unofficially, and passed for 146 while holding Upton to 1 yard rushing on 30 attempts and 73 passing. Moss gained 58 yards on two carries, Loyning 44 yards on six carries. Benson Jolley carried twice for 21 yards, Brooks Brost once for 3 yards and Ward once for 2 yards but 167 yards on kick returns.

Moss completed six of eight passes for 140 yards, May two of three for 6. May caught three passes for 24 yards, Thompson two for 32, Ward one for 84, Evin Clendenen one for 4 and Cooper Winland one for 2.

Wyoming Indian

The Wyoming Indian Chiefs come to town Friday for a conference game with kickoff slated for 6 p.m. Wyoming Indian is 0-5 on the season, 0-3 in the 1A 9-man West, and Wilson is worried about getting quality reps for his players with tough games against Saratoga and Greybull coming up.

“A real problem that we’re having is that our varsity has not played a full game yet, and so our conditioning is not there yet,” Wilson said. “Even in Big Piney toward the end we started subbing guys. So our varsity guys (Friday) will play the first quarter maybe, depending on how things go. But we’ve got to continue to get reps and just work on ourselves. I think that’s the biggest thing. Same thing with this week in practice. We need to just try to get better, because we’ve got two big weeks coming up after that. With Saratoga coming to town, that’s going to be a huge, huge game.

“I tell our guys this every week: it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, we’re just focused on being better than we were the week before. So with Wyoming Indian, I just hope that we can go out and just play our best game of the year. That’s the goal every week. Let’s just come out and play our best game of the year. If it happens to be for half a game, then it’s half a game.”