the following podcast is produced or sponsored by community member the constant views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or email  hours alongside belmont high school head football coach young human and of course for all of you who are listening or watching our fine program here every week as we've been doing throughout the football season just for you this is an interactive show you guys get to be a part very happy week for coach q is as i was trying to figure out if we had had you when you saying both having a race every moment that they rebuilt that final was sound went off you know it was the clock a triple zero well i saw you doing a when spread across the field which i think unfortunately got missed on our camera but i was it was classic i just saw you i mean i could you were just burning rubber you know my by run form probably little work and i'm getting up there in years and you know the knees don't work as well as they used to but it was a really exciting moment and it was kind of a forrest gump moment for me i just those kind of felt like running so  adle why not you guys were running all night running very well great team effort just fantastic when you guys are down fourteen points in the first half you came back twice in the game down fourteen nothing in the first half you down twenty one fourteen in the second half just a tremendous team effort you win your second middlesex league the liberty division game of the season first time you've done that and you're back to five hundred three and three home cooking at harris field is done you very well this year has three games three wins you know let's just talk a little bit about that and  secrets of the to the success of playing in front of the yeah i mean you know i think it's probably true for pretty much any football team and probably pretty much any sports team out there you know it's good to be at home and you get a special little bit of juice you know from playing in front of your town and playing in front your friends and and all of that and you've got you know you've got your home band to go in and all of that atmosphere you know definitely plays and wanting to make sure that we that we give everybody a good let's let's buckle down and keep working and give our home fans on the chair but yeah and it could have been even worse you could you guys could have been down you were down fourteen nothing you could have been down twenty one you have their wide receiver herb are in you know wide open in the end zone just drops an easy touchdown pets what was it was that just a breakdown in coverage will take somebody missed an assignment someplace yeah pretty much i mean we were a man cover on that particular play and the guy that ended up being the hero of the game defensively is the guy who had the bust in that that was dillon dillon got got picked up on and inside route and got a little bit confused and turned around and i just went straight up the scene there and fitzpatrick's a great quarterback and he put it right on the hands and i wasn't able to come up with it and so  obviously that was a big break for us but yeah it was just it was just coverage boston those are things that we got to shore up and we actually we was really the only coverage bust we had we had a couple of technique busts you know  the difference is that in a coverage bust a guy goes to the wrong place in a technique bost he goes to the right place but he kind of does the wrong thing on the way there and that gives the receiver an advantage over the d b in coverage so we got fix that up again you know you guys you know otherwise the young often slipped a little sluggish out to start your kind of a kind of a strange thing here in the two games on the road you guys score first and early and you know then obviously you don't win either of those games here you fell lot more about what was going on in the early going to you think winchester defense was kind of trying to key in on ben a little bit there maybe i mean i think we move the ball pretty effectively right out the gate we ran like an iso for seven or eight yards and then we came  another inside run i think we got a first down and then we tried to get a run to the outside and our right tackle didn't do the job and our fullback to go everything kind of pushed up on the play side in that change everybody's assignments and nobody did their job and you know we lost a good six or seven yards on that play and that kind of put us in a different office of mentality that's not you know second and long as in my mind second the long is the worst you know i'd rather have second and ten i'd rather second and nine i'd rather second and eight anything but second sixteen play stretched out in the four front side and was on blocked and literally pretty much out of free path to ben and no that put us in a tough position so for me that was you know it was really execution issue on the off chance a line in that took us out of kind of what it is that we wanted to do in that first series i probably didn't do the best jobs getting us back into that series and that leads to that leads to poor offense you know which which i think in our first series we definitely were and then in the second series where we three and outed you know we had a couple of good plays there we had it we had a bubble that would have gone for a lot of yards if if we had secured a block on the outside and then we had another ball went right back to it because it was wide open  and our tackle didn't cut supposed to cut that protection and get the defensive ends hands down defensive end we got a long range and out there put his hand up and just batted that thing right away and so that stalled are our second drive out so issues yeah and well ok so then the reason they're able to get off to the good start is william fitzpatrick you know you have to say this is probably the best quarterback that your defense has faced so far this season yeah i why i would say  think those two are probably the best q b is that we face and i probably give corey a little bit of an edge actually right now just because he's a senior probably a little bit better than liam but liam's a great quarterback and you know what we were able to do was and you know i think a lot of people probably didn't recognize that he's very good running quarterback and if you look at their game film from from games past they run a lot of quarterback driven run through him and a lot of what we did defensively scheme wise was geared towards denying them that saying ok if they're going to beat us let's make him throw the ball it's make him go over the top let's not allow him to beat us with his feet the result of that is a lot of guys in single coverage not as much safety support over the top we're not able to bracket coverage as much and so when guys don't execute and you're in single eye coverage or you're in zero coverage with nobody over the top and you're just playing straight man and somebody messes up you know he's going to have he's going to have a receiver downfield and we saw that happen a couple of times he's a good quarterback he's a calm quarterback a good athlete throws a great ball through a couple of really nice ball z i don't know about two hundred forty yards two hundred forty three yards or so like that he had a really good day throwing the ball and we got to we got to get ready to fix that up because we've got another guy who can kind of do it both with his feet and his run airfare let's do both of his feet and his arm coming up this week yeah and we'll get to that i was going to say liam fitzpatrick might be the perfect warmup for your  but so you know they're moving the ball very effectively in the first half that you know they have the ninety three yard drive that resulted in their first touchdown and then again some nice passing from fitzpatrick they're up fourteen nothing you guys finally after you know you punted on your first two possessions  you get a chance to see you know come back here you get the ball at five forty nine to go in the half and you know joan starts picking up some yards now and he had that big run that got all the way down inside the ten yard line yeah and again here we're here want to bring up but you know you mentioned dillon ferdinand he's got to be your unsung hero by far we can talk about the end of the game but how about the play in the first half because you guys are down fourteen jones breaks loose fumbles the ball and then ferdinand as i said johnny on the spot or but you know but yeah that's a that's a very key play because you guys you know you go in and yet the touchdown there otherwise you know if you turn the ball over i mean who knows how the rest of that first half or even the rest the game is going to play and yeah i mean that was a you know football games are filled with a lot of big moments and that was definitely a big moment you know we preach to our guys a lot especially our receivers about downfield blocking and playing hard downfield and being around the ball and being around the play and don't just did that and you know we were we got a good bounce you know ball popped out safety a nice job you know we talk about ball security all the time and i'm sure ben is kicking himself over that fall with sometimes you know defenders come in and put the hat right on the football and sports out and that's kind of what happened and we got a good forward bounce to it there were a couple winchester guys down there dillon was really one of the only you know maroon shirts around the ball and just did a great job hopping on and securing it at the sixty give us an opportunity to score it was a great play and really it seemed like the momentum changed with that because once you guys went and got that score now it's fourteen seven your defense holds them they they turn the ball back over and downs then the half runs out and then you guys get the ball to start the second half and you really put together a nice drive and at this point it does feel like now all  sudden bends picking up a little momentum running the ball the line i mean what's the what's the key on this drive it's a sixty eight yard scoring drive it ends with cal christopher taking it in himself but on that drive of jones ended up with six carries for sixty five yards talk about how the running game you know wen that first drive the second half kind of got things going yeah i mean i think that you know even at the end of the first half we saw that we could do some things i mean we threw a nice screen out there the first half got some good yardage and you know going in we made adjustments  as coaches we say kind of that's where we make our money you know half time half time is really where we make our money have times where we we've got to go in and we've got to say all right well clearly some things are not working here what are we going to do and so we we saw that they were really trying to crash hard and they were trying to take away the inside run a lot and that we weren't going to have is as much as we wanted out of two back sets and so we opened it up a little bit and threw the ball a little bit more in that in that drive and found some run plays for bend that were a little bit more effective against what it was that we were seeing try to go to the edge a little bit more when they were trying to bring everything down hard inside and got a couple good toss plays some good leads from our fullback caught some passes and open the field up a little bit for ben you know and that's something that we have to continue to do we've got to be willing to spread the field out a little bit in order to create some space for our for our workforce inside and cal was able to do that for us and ben did a great job carrying the rock so you know there weren't any magic plays but we definitely went to a couple of other things that are in our offensive scheme you know because what we had what we had anticipated working wasn't working and you know one of my favorite quotations is albert einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result you know we needed to make adjustment i'm proud of our coaches we made it and it was successful so you know at this point i mean you know really it's just like you say the momentum you could feel it started turning you guys made the right halftime adjustments and i think that's that's you know that rules a huge key i've got to tell you though if you like a high school football off your feet high school football coach the second half i mean just the fact you guys are going back into each other to score for score i mean you know so you get the touchdown but then they come right back with a sixty yard drive to go back ahead and then now you've got the ball late third quarter and again it's another good drive you guys are again pounding out the run to to tie up it's a type of game again talk about you know that  jones touchdown run yeah i mean we again we we saw at that point that i think our line it kind of clipped on a little bit you know we talk a lot about clocking in you know we set all the time clock and you know let's let's hit the punch card and grab your grab your heart out grab your lunchpail we call the hogs you know grab grab your grab your hard tack grab your lunch pail and clock in and let's go to work and they really clocked in the start to start that third quarter and so we knew that when we got the ball back at the end of the third quarter that we really want to keep it on the ground a little bit we wanted to take some clock out and we did a great job doing that often of wind really cute in and adam dece helps out a lot he had a big run on that drive to bring to bring ben within score he almost scored i mean he brought it down to the one and  you know i think you are was it about seven seconds at the bait on the on the sideline about the give adam the ball there you know and we decided against it because we figured well we just went inside on it and we've been running inside a little bit on this drive and they're probably going to pin hard and probably sense of interior pressure so we chucked the toss out there and that turned out to be the right call and it's court and then what a what a huge play then you know fourth quarter after winchester has the ball at the start of that quarter they're driving again looks like we're going to take the lead again and as we mentioned you know dillon ferdinand who i don't believe he didn't catch any passes in the game no correct so his only actual reception so to speak was but a huge one down at the fifteen yard line again it looked like you know fitzpatrick was going to bring him back in for another go ahead score but that just that quelch things and then you guys from there started you know a seven minute drive which is amazing look at that on a second to talk about the interception that you know we knew that they were keen on a great defender he had a couple of bad moments so it was almost like i don't want to say it's good that he had those bad moments but because he had those bad moments i think coach dan bowen and his quarterback fitzy liam fitzpatrick were were saying hey let's let's try and attack th spot on the field which is a good thing to do when you when you think you've seen something that might be a little bit weak and you know dylan's explanation for that interception is one of my favorite coaching moments of the season he explained it to coach pereira who forwarded the story to me but he said you know as we talk to our guys a lot about man coverage down the field you know eyes on the receiver and he looks you look fine the ball make a play and dylan's explanation was you know i was run a weather man i was looking at him and then his eyes got real big and i was like why are you getting excited and i turned around and i saw the ball you know and that's kind of exactly what we what we teach what we preach great job by him it was a huge moment it was a great you know in tight coverage right there with the receiver running the street down the same definitely the pointed out too he didn't feel like there were a whole lot of penalties and no neither so it was a it was a well played game on both sides yeah and that's been a really big focus for us because i mean you guys have seen us all year we've had some penalty issues in past games you know woodburne is a great example of that that's a game that even right now going into the playoff mix that we're wishing we had back a little bit you know we play that game again so we were really happy about the fact that we were we played pretty much penalty free football we didn't have a hold we had a false start that was a tough call we got in the jump and they they call a false start on our center kevin who was our side judge is really good guy and kind of having a good laugh about that he and i were having a good laugh about that you know how can my center jump he snap you know and so they're trying to we had that one and then i had the delay of game that was that was my penalty wasn't it wasn't there that was my delay again and outside of that we played a really good clean football game and so did th you know and now here you go you guys have the ball seven forty three to go tie game and this is really to incredible because i know what you're thinking you're probably said hey we want to seven minute and forty three seconds dr jauhar and we're going to win this game right at the end and you know if you didn't nearly do it i mean used up all but ninety seconds of that time and just a great drive ten carries for benji and you're really just you know you know who to turn to when the biggest moments and trying to get to control clock you know you don't want them to get the ball back just talk about that final drive in every you know just  you know my my players obviously executed what it was that were we were calling but in a situation like that where you're really trying to manage clock and you're trying to keep track of where you are on the clock and where you are on the field in time outs and field goal range and what the wind is doing and what hast you want to be on that's really a staff effort you know so coach bawn is talking to me about my time outs and he's giving me my clock updates he's checking with the official to make sure that the a clock on the scoreboard is the actual official time you know coach  's checking in and making sure that you know we're within our down packages and making sure our personnel packages are getting in right so that we're not taking a stupid penalty in that moment to take us out of a drive because that's definitely the time you don't want to take a delay a game and we don't want to have to use a timeout in that drive that you know we don't need to use because there might be a situation where we need to stop the clock in order to try and set a field goal up or set an end zone play up so all credit first off goes to just my staff you  bleed clock we've got a great running back cal had a couple carries a carry i think on that try maybe maybe not but he was a good option quarterback for us in that game he had a couple good carries on the ground and then we got into that fourth down situation ended up running a deep stop to pollock and that was the play there are two plays of the drive that was one you know to have faith in our quarterback and eighty four there who's definitely one of our marquee receivers to come up with that play and then ben busted a big trap play you know take it down to the one and we were able to clock in with an open eye so and have him ship it right outside and kind of tried into the end zone so we were definitely happy with kind of all facets of what it is that we did in our game we were happy with our execution we were happy with our personnel adjustment we were happy with our coaching we were happy with our scheme we were pretty happy with our call there were a couple risky ones in there but all in all that was just a full staff and full team effort great seven minute drive to ice the game and good thing because you don't want to give them the ball with a minute left to go yeah even with one thousand seconds left it felt like a lot of time in fact the fact that ben got down to the one and couldn't get in the air you know was actually a blessing to eat a lot to kill off a few more seconds yeah we had a little but we also had to call we had to use a timeout there just to organize everything we were a little slow getting back to the huddle and you definitely don't want the clock to run out on you when you're on the one yard line that's that's a that's a recipe for some angry fans and angry kids and angry coaches so you know we thought hey let's call a timeout let's make sure we get this ball in the end zone we had another timeout to use in case we needed to kick a field goal and we didn't get in so our plan was you know kind of let's run this one play try to put in the middle of the field from the one if he doesn't get anywhere in the middle of the field it's pretty much an extra point then we believe the clock down to one call a timeout kick a field goal and just so i remember it's three times three fulls and two thirty falls into thir yeah that's right ok which is a lot it is a lot so i just want to go ben goes over the thousand yard mark for the game is actually over eleven hundred yards now for the year averaging almost eight yards a carry which is incredible thirteen touchdowns in the year which puts him in a three way tie for second the three by the way you know off the top of your head max jones but johnson the last couple years some touchdowns they had and i know that means i can't find the state yeah i had mci last year had i believe twenty two touchdowns on the ground in two through the air maxes touchdown total was probably lower just because we were working out the kinks of creating a new program culture you know i think  probably put max in our offense now he's just as successful as his brother is the spite the fact that they're different so i'd have to look at max's totals i mean he had a couple really big games i'd say which i was at that's why i remember i scored a lot probably up around the eighteen nineteen twenty touchdown marquis somewhere around there with a lot of yards so you know ben going in the week three with a week seven with thirteen touchdowns he's got the opportunity to do some good th all right well we're looking ahead to lexington before we do that i'm going to give you about sixty seconds to try to explain the eastern mass playoff system to me because i tried it a couple times on the air last week during the broadcast and i was getting a yes i got a popsicle had a try  so you guys are you're you're almost i was seeing you guys were in with the wind but yeah well i mean i think that we thought we were in with the win and we're in good shape we're tied for the eight right now with medford who we beat but that's not exactly how the power rating system works so the way the system works is that you get points for your wins you get points more points for beating a team that is a in a higher division than you you get a certain standard number of points for beating a team that's in the same division or lower division than you and then you get points for the wins of your opponents that you've beaten so you get more points for the wins of the opponents that you've beaten and then you also get points for the wins of the opponents that you lose to so with which we're tied for the eighth spot has gotten has played the number one team in their league already and gotten a bunch of points from playing everitt and that's medford that you're tied with you peter earlier this year pretty soundly that yeah one of the games we broadcast nets we have not played that equivalent in our league yet which obviously is lexington lexington is six and zero zero so regardless of the outcome obviously we'll talk about lex but we want to win the game but we were going to get a bunch of points from lexington medford play somerville on friday night so go highlanders where we're rooting for somerville to win that game and make life a little bit easier for us but you know we've talked a lot about controlling our own destiny and that's something that we really want to do we have our destiny in our hands we've got a tall order and a great competition coming up this week we want to win and get into the playoffs which would be a first first time it would be first time in since two thousand and nine belmont football making the playoffs and again i don't know if you specifically mentioned she said there were eight teams you're tied for the eight seed there's twelve teams i guess in division two north they do have sectionals just like most of the other high school sports twelve teams in division two north top eight make the playoffs bottom fo where you've been the first two years if you're coaching rain here at belmont you end up playing in the loser's bracket or what i'm going to concious go in the consolation if you don't make the you don't make the dance so you know one of our major program goals was to be a playoff team and we see ourselves as a playoff team and we're in the position to be a playoff team and as of right now you know i think we are a playoff team so we wanted to play meaningful games at the end of our league schedule we wanted you know week seven week six week seven to mean something other than pride and they certainly did you know winchester was a big game there with with implications and lexington has for us and for them too if they win they're the sole shareholders of the middlesex large title who middlesex liberty title if we when we have a great shot to bring in a playoff game to harris field so this is a game that we want to we want to play off game at the harrison like this is you know this game matters and it means something  and you know bobby always used to say well played meaningful games in november and december want to play meaningful games and i think we have taken that monitor and i know it's october but the schedules structures little bit different also we want to play meaningful games in october and we're doing that strange sales a great athlete he's a great running quarterback and watching him on film is if we didn't have to play and watching him on film would be fun he's tremendously fast and he's tremendously agile and he's you know he just puts his foot in the dirt and he goes and it looks like everybody's kind of playing at a different speed i remember back to tech mobile back in the video game old video game days bo jackson nobody could catch bo jackson on in the video game because his speed was so much greater than everybody everybody else in the algorithm and sounds got a little bit of that going on a lot of their success has to do with sales ability to extend plays so a lot of roll out and a lot of run around and then you know he'll roll out to the right he'll reverse field back to the left he'll make a guy missile set up and come off of their routes a lot you know if their man coverage is zone cover and they come up to play him against the run and he's got a gun he's a b c baseball committee can throw a ball fifty yards downfield when he wants to so a lot of guys are coming off and so you see a lot of big plays and watching them on film and i just i see a lot of big plays you know a lot of sal breaking three tackles and running for fifty yards a lot of cell making guys miss in the backfield and pass it and chucking the ball downfield so our big concern is let's keep this kid off the field that's number one let's let's keep our office on the field as best we can to let's work to prevent the big play and we're trying to do that schematically we've got a couple of things that are going on try to do that a little bit personnel wise and lex is a great team and we're going to have to we're going to have to do some things really really well and but we definitely talk and we definitely believe that we can we definitely believe that we have the capacity to to beat the team that set up at the top of our division right now  we're not taking anything for granted you know we were going to have to go over to lexington at one o'clock on a saturday game and work our butts off and execute and play with passion and heart and pride and quality tackling organ have to execute the scheme that were put in place in order for us to get the win this may be a silly question but this is i think it was the first day game you've played this year for saturday game i remember back you know when i was first covered on my football before the but you know there were only a couple of teams that even had like it's a mixed bag yes it was just talk about you is there an adjustment is there something else that you have to think about when you're getting i mean sports and athletics a lot of it is about routine you know and it's just getting in there and getting used to what it is that you do and doing the same thing over and over and over again so you know obviously one big concern about a saturday game is that we break that routine a little bit how are our guys going to respond to that we have pretty mentally resilient guys  smart guys and so i think they do a pretty good job i mean the plus side is that we get an extra day of practice you know so i was talking with with dave today and go coach prayer and he said i ate saturday games i hate them and i go well you know i  yesterday i mean i like playing on friday it's his birthday today by the way happy birthday dave right now so so you know so maybe it's killing his birthday weekend and he's a little bit frustrated that you know the downside is that we're breaking out of our routine the good side is we get an extra day practice on friday that we might not otherwise have and then on the plus is a fan of football is that we get to go watch the somerville medford game which about two minutes from my house we get to go watch some of the medford game and you know watch a game that has pretty big implications for where it is that we fall so you know that's from a fan perspective that's going to kind of fun and i'm going to be the i'm going to take responsibility this week for going over because i know because i asked some extra questions and in lieu of our cues for q this week i think i threw out the earlier question about the playoff system saul take credit for that to answer a follow up question from last week as i had asked you about the brass bonanza reitman's out it's an art oh dorian traditional no way to yeah because i talk to well it's a ball catch and he's not a player back in the day i'm probably a little out of practice i haven't picked my saxophone up since probably about july so be a little bit off a living i harmonica however is on point i play the harp pretty do you enjoy playing the most which one i guess you're most active with the harmonica or which one if you had a chance to devote your time to just one of all the ones you play that's a really tough question i mean i guess i guess the harp i came across the harmonica really or like not to carry this long which i well i'm going to carry along so well with it within like within like sixty seconds and i came across the harmonica very organically my mom was very insistent that i learn how to play an instrument so she started me with the piano and and then when the agreement was when i turned twelve or thirteen i think i could switch to whatever instrument i wanted but i had to play the piano until i was thirteen and so well as soon as i got to thirteen i picked the answer as far away from the piano as i could that was the drums and then in band one year they they needed a baseline for pomp and circumstance and the graduation ceremony so my my eighth grade music teacher asked me if i would mind playing the bass clarinet and i never played a woodwind instrument before so i learned how to make an armature and play the woodwind and learn the line for a bass clarinet but i really don't want to be a clarinet player because it wasn't cool  then i switched to the saxophone the following year i was a sax player for a long time and the harmonica i didn't pick up until i was in college and i was literally walking down the street in cambridge and i saw a guy a homeless guy who was playing the harp and you know busking ton of bands and that's where i really got got my chops so i'd have to say the harmonica i'm a pretty fair singer i do a lot of vocals too and well you could record all the tracks for your own i have a good player all the music and hip hop hip hop has been hip hop has been my soul since i was and i just just you know just from the pre you know we mention this during the pre game in our broad time we're going to get a new one by the way we didn't have any more has more song thank you i will gladly make the donation love it cause i want to do so just yet talk about the you know the it was a really nice ceremony have for the game for the veterans so cool all credit to mr davis our athletic director he said all that up all the teams at belmont were involved with operation hattrick it's essentially a fundraiser for a veteran service  organization and providing assistance to our to our warriors coming back home so all the kids on the team pretty much picked up one of these for twenty bucks and all that money goes to operation hattrick and then we had the belmont veterans organization who also hosts  thanksgiving day dinner with watertown the belmont v f w and you know those guys coming down and you got you know vietnam vets and gulf war vets and war on terror afghanistan vets and you know they have those guys on our sideline and get to shake their hands and see them out at center midfield was really special and the kids were able to give them hats always t hat's too and we were just really honored to be able to do that and really honored that they you know got to stay and watch this play an absolute best to make that happen for you and for us and for everybody who comes to support us and watch us play and just a big thank you to our our booster organizations friend of football the belmont boosters my administration and the fans who came out that place was rockin again third game in a row that the place is rock and we're open to give you another one to come to yeah not a coincidence you guys undefeated at home three you know three big crowds through twelfth man three big with the belmont twelfth man i'm telling you those low mojo going all right well good luck to you with the marauders this week as they take on the election minutemen of course we all know what there's more be a sports coverage with the football team thanksgiving day of course watertown ninety fifth all time meeting but before that hopefully maybe some playoff action as well looking forward to the to the