Tyler Johnson and the East Syracuse-Minoa football team made sure that, if Jamesville-DeWitt was going to gain respect and credibility, it wasn’t going to do so at the Spartans’ expense.
Accounting for six touchdowns – five throwing, one on the ground – Johnson set a torrid pace, and the rest of his ESM teammates followed, ripping the Red Rams 48-6.
By winning, the Spartans clinched the Class A American division regular-season championship and a top seed for the upcoming Section III playoffs. It also sent off a loud message to every other Class A contender about its intentions.
“They’re all on the same page, and it’s paying off,” said head coach Kevin DeParde.
In particular, Johnson is in top form. The senior completed 12 of 18 passes for 245 yards and those five scoring passes – three of them to Bobby Campese, who had six catches for 135 yards. And all of this was done in three quarters of play.
DeParde said that, exceptional as this effort was, it was consistent with what Johnson and his teammates have been doing all season to build a 6-0 mark.
J-D arrived at this contest with a 4-1 record, having already topped its 2010 win total. But it hardly saw the ball in the first quarter, only running three offensive plays as the Spartans raced out to a 14-0 lead.
With the opening kickoff, ESM marched 63 yards, nearly half of them on Jordan Barton’s 31-yard run up the middle. From the Rams’ 19, with his receivers covered, Johnson waited and found a wide-open Mike Gorney up the middle for the game’s first touchdown.
Quickly, the Spartans got the ball back and spent the rest of the first quarter on an 86-yard march that covered nearly seven minutes. Twice, Johnson converted fourth downs, once with a sneak, the other a fourth-and-12 where he found Jeff McDuffie for a 23-yard gain. Naturally, Johnson finished the drive with a three-yard TD run.
Johnson’s virtuoso effort continued early in the second period. From J-D’s 26 on third down, Johnson had to run down a bad snap 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage. With a horde of Rams defenders bearing down, Johnson still threw deep to the end zone, where Campese was waiting to catch it for yet another six points.
Only a J-D stand at its own five-yard line in the waning moments of the half kept the game at 21-0 at the break. Aside from his pass-catching, Campese was also three-for-three on extra points.
Early in the third period, Johnson and Campese again got a TD off a rollout pass, this one covering 49 yards. Down 28-0, the Rams finally got on the board when quarterback Eric Thompson broke loose on a 54-yard option run down the left sideline.
In response, ESM put together two more scoring drives, each capped by Johnson scoring passes. First, he executed a perfect play-action fake, allowing Gorney to break open again for his second TD completion of the night, from 27 yards out. Then it was Johnson to Campese one more time, 19 yards on a crossing pattern.
As J-D determines its playoff seeding next Friday at Cortland, ESM returns home to close the regular season against Fulton. Despite the Spartans’ hot run, Johnson said his team can’t afford to let up.
“We’ve got to get our heads straight and not get cocky,” he said.
