Aug. 25, 2017

WARDSVILLE, Mo. --- Blair Oaks faced 4th-and-23 from its own five in the second quarter Friday night.

The play call was obvious.

Swing pass.

Say again?

Swing pass.

Blame it on the eclipse. Or, you could call this no guts, no glory, I suppose.

Well, it turned into a 72-yard gain.

A brilliant play call, obviously.

For shock value alone, it was the play of the game, this pass from would-be-punter/quarterback Nolan Hair to Riley Lentz, who broke a tackle around the 10 and nearly took it the distance.

Even though it led to no points --- the Falcons turned it over two plays later --- it flipped the field, if nothing else, and eventually led to one of Hair's three touchdown passes in Blair Oaks' 46-7 thumping of the the Oak Grove Panthers at the Falcons Athletic Complex.

That play was the conversation starter --- and it's a good one. The end of this conversation was the rest of the game, which was a dominant effort by the Falcons.

Under third-year head coach Terry Walker --- who's now 20-0 in the regular season and 26-2 overall ---Blair Oaks has usually been better in the second half, than the first, for some reason. Not every game, but many of them.

When they get off to a good start, well, forget it. It ends up 46-7 ... or worse.

In an affair that featured a number of bone-crunching blocks and blows, the third-ranked Falcons (2-0) scored on the opening possession and were never headed.

The opening eight-play, 60-yard drive featured a key fourth-down conversion by Hair to the 25 of the Panthers (1-1), and Blair Oaks scored on the next play on a toss from Hair to Brandon Thomas.

On the first play of the second quarter, a 10-yard pass from Hair to Ethan Luebbering made it 14-0, and that was still the score when the Falcons were backed up with that 4th-and-23.

So at that point, it was still a game, which only added the the shock value. But it wasn't a game for much longer.

The lead grew to 22-0 when Hair --- who threw for 257 yards in the first half after passing 380 in last week's win at Kirksville (that's 637 yards in the first six quarters this season) --- threw to Thomas, who spun away from a defender at the 18 and went the distance on a 28-yard scoring play.

The half ended with the most sour moments of the night for Blair Oaks. The first came on a 74-yard scoring pass from the Panthers' Jaxon Althaus to Tyler Hunter a 72-yard that wiped out the shutout; the second came when Blair Oaks fumbled inside the Oak Grove 1 right before the break.

Other than that, smooth sailing.

Hair finished off his big night with his legs in the second half with touchdown runs of 33 and 71 yards, the former coming after an interception by Marcus Elder. Lentz recovered a Blair Oaks' fumble in the end zone for the other score in the 39-point win.

Blair Oaks is back in action next Friday at Versailles (1-1), which lost to Fulton 47-23 on Friday night. The Falcons have shut out the Tigers in three straight games, winning them by a combined 176-0.

In other words, a Versailles' win would have its own shock value.

In Falcons' 46-7 win, the night's
highlight was unlikley fake punt

Blair Oaks wide receiver Marcus Edler (88) eyes a pass from Nolan Hair during the first quarter of Friday night's game with Oak Grove in Wardsville.

Loeffler's Link