Ansonia running back Markell Dobbs runs for a touchdown against Seymour, in a 41-20 win for the Chargers, Friday, October 28, 2016, at Jarvis Stadium in Ansonia. (Catherine Avalone/New Haven Register)
ANSONIA – It looks like the Naugatuck Valley League will run through Ansonia.
Again.
The Chargers scored in a number of ways Friday night and rolled to a 41-20 victory over neighboring Seymour at Jarvis Field.
Ansonia (7-0) remained the only unbeaten team in the NVL, while Seymour fell to 5-2.
“This was a big win,” said Ansonia quarterback Bryson Cafaro, who ran for two touchdowns and passed for two more. “We came out with energy. That was the big thing the past two weeks with the bye last week.”
Despite the final margin, it took five minutes for Ansonia to get on the board. Cafaro (40 yards rushing and 140 passing) faked a handoff to Markell Dobbs and Seymour’s defense took the bait. Cafaro wasn’t touched as he raced 43 yards. With Cafaro’s extra point kick it was 7-0.
The next two Ansonia touchdowns were out of the ordinary.
Cafaro picked up a bad snap at his own 40-yard line and rolled to his left and found Dobbs wide open behind the Wildcats’ defense at the Seymour 20. Dobbs scooted into the end zone to make it 14-0 with 42 seconds remaining in the opening quarter.
“That was a big play because we just had a 50-yard touchdown called back,” Brockett said. “Bryson made a great play.”
“That was a broken play and we preach play to the whistle,” Seymour coach Tom Lennon said. “Just because the ball is on the ground, the play isn’t over. That put us in a hole.”
Ansonia made it 21-0 at halftime when Cafaro threw a backwards pass to Justin Lopez, who found Dobbs all alone at the Seymour 10-yard line, where he walked into the end zone untouched.
“We thought they were gambling a bit,” Brockett said. “We saw them diving at the ground early and for us it was a good sign that they were more worried about us offensively than we thought.”
Lennon wasn’t surprised that Ansonia pulled that play deep of the Charger playbook.
“They give us a different wrinkle every year and they’re not in that formation to run fullback trap,” Lennon said.
Dobbs, who rushed for 172 yards on 26 carries, scored his third touchdown in a row as Ansonia took the second half kickoff and marched 67 yards downfield. Cafaro connected with Dobbs for a 17-yard scoring strike over the middle with 6:47 left in the third quarter.
Seymour finally got on the board with 52 seconds to go in the third quarter when Jaylen Kelley connected with Alex Massie for a 35-yard touchdown pass.
Ansonia put things away on a Cafaro 2-yard run and a 72-yard fumble return by Malcolm Martin midway through the fourth quarter.
With the subs in the game on both sides, Seymour scored twice in a 17-second span late in the game. Tamar Coverson-Epps rushed for a 66-yard touchdown with 3:03 remaining. On Ansonia’s first play from scrimmage after that, the Chargers coughed up the football and Trae Lounsbury returned the fumble 38 yards.
Seymour’s Kelley was held to 65 yards rushing and 71 yards passing, most of them coming in the second half.
“We just didn’t come out and play well tonight,” Lennon said. “They did a great job of forcing us to make plays and we didn’t make them. They loaded the box and we just didn’t execute.”
