What if I told you that as of this morning, Bloomingdale is 2-0? It’s true, I’m not telling lies, the Bulls have eclipsed their win total from 2015 by defeating rival Newsome and the Gaither Cowboys. But the thing is, they’re one of only a few teams to be 2-0 at the moment. Thanks to Hurricane (now post-tropical cyclone) Hermine, the Bay Area only got to play just over a quarter of the games that were scheduled from Week Two.
What we did see in the few games of Week Two was that Zephyrhills has a quarterback that can run the offense, and run it well. We saw Charles Harrison III run for a 49 yard and 79 yard touchdowns as the Bulldogs stunned Sunlake on Saturday. In the same game, Sunlake put up 410 total yards of offense. We’ll talk about the Zephyrhills defense tomorrow.
Plant City’s Treshaun Ward continues to run over defenses, he’ll get a shot against Brandon this week, but his 169 yards against Armwood has given the Raiders hope that their running game will be efficient. Speaking of efficient running backs, Brandon’s Larry Anderson looked like a bulldozer at times against East Bay with 119 yards and a pair of touchdowns coming on Friday.
Durant’s Brandon Myers has already caught ten catches for 170 yards in 2016, and he’s already halfway to increasing his receiving yardage from last year. Myers had 130 against Hillsborough last week, and he had 40 against Spoto, this time, grabbing two touchdowns from QB Carlton Potter.
Going south, Manatee put up 56 points and 637 yards of total offense, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Hewitt-Trussville Huskies of Alabama. They’ll continue their season against Palmetto tonight at 6 p.m. Let’s see if it’s like last year’s battle, where the Hurricanes just barely got the win in a 36-35 nailbiter. I don’t know if the Manatee coaching staff can take another game like that.
Clearwater Central Catholic was the lone team in Pinellas County to play football on Friday night. In that, they put another 40-plus points on the board, this time 49 against Indian Rocks Christian. Jervon Newton hd 146 yards and three touchdowns on the evening for the Marauders, according to Colby Cole of the Tampa Bay Times. Combine that with his 112 yards in 2015, and you’ve got a running back that may be competing for the top spot in Pinellas County by the end of the year.
At Tampa Bay Tech, it wasn’t exactly what we expected, but Levi Jackson had a big game against Jefferson in Week One. He had 123 of Michael Penix Jr.’s 233 yards against the Dragons, and we’ll see what he can do against Wharton this week.
The big story out of Polk? Well, it’s not exactly a surprise, but we’ve seen James Robinson and AJ Davis have had big games for Lakeland in the past week, Robinson had 106 receiving yards and Davis had 106 rushing yards, according to Michael Akins of The Ledger, in their 34-0 win over Auburndale. How about this for a statistic: with Head Coach Bill Castle’s win over Jacksonville Ed White, Castle has won 400 games in his time at Lakeland. Castle is in his 41st year as the Dreadnaught Head Coach. 10 wins a year? Maybe that’s why his longevity has kept Lakeland in the mix for so long.
We’ve seen a ton of great offensive performances from around the Bay Area in the first two weeks of football, and there’s a lot more to come. Watch this week for two teams with offensive firepower, as our game of the week will be between Wiregrass Ranch and Sunlake, Friday night at 7:30.