Fort Loramie Suffers Blowout … How Will Redskins Respond?

Lima Central Catholic’s athletic and hard-running team was too much for Fort Loramie, but head coach Spencer Wells reminded his players after the game they have goals they can still reach.

Fort Loramie, OH – Spencer Wells joined his team in the locker room Friday night after a difficult 48 minutes of football. He entered with a clear-headed goal.

Maybe the players – still encumbered by shoulder pads and tape, wanting to shed their uniforms, ready to join their friends – expected the worst. Maybe they didn’t.

As a group of players and coaches, they were fresh of witnessing four quarters of watching unbeaten Lima Central Catholic do almost everything it wanted on offense and defense. Meanwhile, almost every advantage the Redskins attempted to gain fizzled at the worst times.

Wells didn’t yell and scream. He didn’t want to do damage to his young team’s confidence. After a 42-7 loss and some fourth-quarter running clock, these few minutes couldn’t be wasted. These few minutes needed to lift the chins of the Redskins and get them to look forward.

So Wells set a tone for the night, for Saturday and for the week ahead to prepare for winless Spencerville and get back on the winning track.

“In the locker room, I just said in my early coaching days I would really be overreacting right now,” Wells said. “We’re 4-2 and we’ve got a lot of goals that we can still accomplish ahead of us. And the best teams, the message I told the team, you win or you learn, and we just have to learn from this.”

The Redskins (4-2, 2-1 Northwest Conference) entered the night No. 4 in the Division VII, Region 28 playoff race. They will probably be no worse than No. 5 this week. The goal is to finish strong and maybe earn a first-round bye. That won’t be easy, though, with the final three games against Columbus Grove, Bluffton and Allen East. Those teams have only three losses between them.

“I told them my confidence in this team has not been shook at all,” Wells said. “They’re an outstanding group, and they will respond.”

The Redskins’ offensive problems were a direct result of LCC’s strategy to not let junior quarterback Tanner Heckman beat them by throwing to his favorite target Tanner Eilerman, who entered the game with 29 catches and eight touchdowns.

The Thunderbirds (6-0, 3-0) double- and triple-teamed the sophomore Eilerman the entire game. Heckman looked for Eilerman but only threw his direction a handful of times. Eilerman’s only catch was for six yards on the Redskins’ fourth-quarter touchdown drive.

Second-year LCC head coach Collin Stolly praised his defensive staff for developing a game plan to keep Eilerman from hurting them with big plays.

“He’s a really good football player, one of the best receivers that we’re going to face all year, and obviously Tanner’s a really good quarterback as well,” Stolly said. “Those guys are pretty dynamic, and we wanted some of the other guys to have to beat us.”

The big-play opportunities taken away, Heckman spread the ball around to four others, most notably sophomore Jayden Luthman. He caught eight passes for 72 yards and a 6-yard touchdown with 7:21 left.

Heckman relied on the short-passing game and completed 19 of 24 passes for 156 yards and completed 13 in a row at one point. But the big plays down the field and in the red zone that Eilerman provides were nixed again and again by a cornerback Jordan Neal and help from his safeties and linebackers.

“Even in some of the different looks, they just kind of said screw it, we are gonna double team him no matter what,” Wells said. “You got to get them out of that, and we got to hurt them elsewhere in the things that they are giving you. We were not able to do that. Another thing that we got to look at and continue to improve at.”

Wells liked how Heckman competed in the face of not being able to throw to Eilerman. He also threw most of his passes on the run as the big and athletic Thunderbirds chased him toward the sidelines.

“He battled his butt off – I love Tanner Heckman,” Wells said. “He’s our quarterback that we know can do a lot of positive things. They were able to double, sometimes triple team, our best guy, and then get away with it. So we’ve got to make sure that we don’t allow anyone to get away with that moving forward.”

The Redskins also struggled to run the football, gaining 53 of their 103 yards on a final drive as time ran out against LCC’s backups.

“They were giving us a light box at times, and we got to be able to run it,” Wells said. “Their defensive line was very stout and made some plays. They’re a very, very good defense, and we just have to watch the film and get better.”

Loramie’s defense struggled to slow LCC’s passing and running attack. Brady Parker threw for first downs on the first three plays of the game. Then Eddie White ran the ball three times, the final time from the 6, and the Thunderbirds led 7-0.

Loramie punted after three plays without gaining a yard.

Three players later Parker threw short to his favorite target, Michael Quatman, who burst through the defense for a 46-yard touchdown on third-and-10. A two-point pass put the lead at 15-0 and LCC was on its way.

“We wanted to get off to a fast start, and we were able to do that, which helped us out,” Stolly said. “The pass game early was good, and it opened up some of that run game.”

Parker finished 10 of 13 for 172 yards and two touchdowns. But the running of the 210-pound White and the 205-pound Carter Lester, a pair of juniors, dominated the rest of the game.

White carried 11 times for 81 yards and the opening touchdown. Lester didn’t get his first carry until LCC’s third possession, and he just kept coming. Lester finished with 111 yards on seven carries and scored touchdowns of 19, 12 and 53 yards in the second half.

“We got two really good running backs in Carter Lester and Eddie White,” Stolly said. “They’re both just really hard runners and tough to tackle. And when you got guys on the edge where you got to defend from sideline to sideline, that stuff in the middle feels pretty good.”

Down 15-0, Loramie had a chance to keep the score close in the first half. They traveled 79 yards to the LCC one mixing six runs with nine straight Heckman completions. The last one to Tyson Lehmkuhl for nine yards set up first and goal at the one.

But Heckman was thrown for a loss of four on the next play and was forced to throw the ball away on second down. He tried to hit Elierman in the back of the end zone on third down but Jaxon White broke up the pass.

Then Eilerman tried a receiver pass on fourth down and was intercepted. LCC responded with a touchdown drive and took a 22-0 lead into halftime.

“Credit to LCC, they’re really well coached, got a lot of respect for Coach Stolly, and they played a really clean football game,” Wells said. “They got athletes, and they’re gonna have a heck of a year.

“We can’t let one game get us down. We’re a good football team that kind of ran into a buzzsaw tonight. So we’ve got to learn from this and respond.”

Starting with postgame talk.