For two long weeks, Jamesville-DeWitt football quarterback Joe Daddario stood on the sidelines, watching his team go through the full gamut of emotions.
One week, the Red Rams were inept and ineffective in a 24-0 loss to Oswego. The next week, it reversed as J-D saved its season by beating Fowler 20-12 behind Lonza Williams’ three-touchdown performance.
Even with that win, everyone associated with the J-D program knew that, to have any kind of long-term success, it needed to have Daddario on the field, something that wasn’t true since the concussion that knocked him out of the Sept. 5 opener against Fulton.
On a gloomy Saturday night in Mexico, Daddario made his long-awaited return — and that seemed to lift everyone, as J-D took the winless Tigers apart and recorded a 23-0 victory to improve to 2-2 on the season.
Daddario threw just eight passes, but completed seven of them for 152 yards. He also ran for 62 yards on nine carries as Williams added 80 rushing yards. J-D compiled 373 yards of total offense.
When Daddario was out, the Rams had mostly stuck to the ground game, not willing to put its backups in any dangerous situation.
Now it was all different — and that manifested itself right away in Mexico. From the Tigers’ 40-yard line, Daddario threw deep, and found wide receiver Demetrius Mitchell for the game’s first touchdown.
Fired up on its end, J-D’s defense hit hard on Mexico at every turn, not letting the Tigers’ running attack get established and batting down the passes, too, whenever they came up.
J-D built its margin to 17-0 in the second quarter with a pair of scoring drives. One led to a field goal, while Daddario finished off the other march by rambling 10 yards for his first running touchdown of the season.
As the second half dragged on, J-D’s margin was quite safe — but with Ken Schunck and Pete Anderson leading the way, the defense preserved a shutout and helped the Rams win the field-position battle. Anderson had 15 tackles, with Schunck adding 13 tackles.
Mitchell, with a 20-yard TD run in the fourth quarter, provided the final margin.
J-D, with its back-to-back wins, has strengthened its case to be in the Section III Class A playoffs, but it now heads out of league play on Friday when it hosts New Hartford at 6:30.
The Spartans, who reached the Class A finals a year ago before falling to Carthage, are also 2-2, coming off a 21-7 win over Watertown. J-D’s defense will be honing in on junior running back Joey Carcone, who is at the heart of New Hartford’s offensive push.
